Chapter 1

could _never_ correct flying gossip; everybody knows that. People always arrange the little details as they want them arranged, according to what makes the most exciting story, and they never pay the smallest attention when you come in with a just, mathematical face and say: "You haven't got it quite right _there_. There's a little mistake _here_...."

Worry, clearly, was out of place. It never does any good, as all philosophers agree; and besides, it brings wrinkles in or near the forehead. Carlisle turned on her other side and snuggled with more relaxation beneath the pale-blue quilt. Drowsiness stole over her, seducing thought. Presently she slept, and dreamed of Mr. Canning.

IV

Mr. Hugo Canning, of the well-known Pursuing-Sex; how the Great Young Man pursued Miss Heth to a Summer-house, and what stopped his Thundering Feet.

Nor were the figments of sweet sleep too fanciful or far-flown. About eight-thirty o'clock, when Mrs. and Miss Heth stepped from a descending lift into the glaring publicity of the main floor, the first object that their eyes fell upon was Mr. Hugo Canning in the flesh. The second was Cousin Willie Kerr, even more in the flesh, trotting loyally at his side. At this precise instant, in short, the celebrated transient quitted the dining-room for the relaxations of his evening.

The coincidence of the moment was pure: one hundred per cent, as they say commercially. One takes it to mean that Destiny, having handled a favorite child somewhat roughly for a time, now turned back its smiling mother-face. The ladies Heth, having dined refinedly in their sitting-room, descended in search of cooling breezes, or for any other reason why. Over the spaces of the great court, half lobby, half parlor, Miss Heth had seen the masculine apparitions an instant before they saw her: or just in time, that is to say, to be showing them now her flawless profile....

It is easily surmised that Miss Heth's manner in action was contained, her habit the very reverse of forward. One seeing her now would be cheaply cynical, indeed, to say or dream that, with reference to some such conjuncture as the present, this girl had left a happy home many hours before. Her presence shamed every unworthy surmise. With a lovely unconsciousness she was spied walking her innocent ways toward the piazza with mamma, even now girlishly unaware that an opposite and uproarious sex was in headlong pursuit....

If this pursuit--to be doggedly literal--appeared to lag for a moment, if it did not seem to start with that instant _élan_ which one had a right to expect, be sure that there was a complication of sound reasons for that. Kerr, in the circumstances, was the appointed leader of the chase; and Kerr hesitated. Canning's desire to avoid the local society and be left free to outdoor exercise and sleep was, in truth, only too well known to him. And to-night, worse luck, the distinguished visitor appeared even less socially inclined than usual: annoyed when the select little party he had expected from northerly haunts had been found represented at the Beach by a telegram instead; increasingly bored by the desolate air of the all but empty hostelry. "When's the next train out of this hell-hole?"--such was Mr. Canning's last recorded remark up to this not uninteresting moment.

Kerr, when he saw Mrs. and Miss Heth over the distance, merely made a genial exclamation, and then gazed. He was nearing forty, was Willie, short and slightly bald, with an increasing appreciation of the world's good things and as much good nature as his round figure called for. Canning's acquaintance he had by the chance of a lifelong friendship with Mrs. Allison Payne. By reason of a native clannishness and certain small obligations of a more material nature, he was more than ready to share his privileges with his brilliant cousins. But....

"So that's the drowned lady," said Canning's voice, rather moodily, at his elbow.... "Well, then, I know her."

"Dandy girl, Carlisle," exclaimed Willie, instantly. "Great little piece of work...."

One hundred feet away, opportunity unconsciously receded toward the piazza. Willie, having hesitated through no unfaithfulness, plunged with no want of tact.

"Got to speak to 'em a minute--make inquiries--cousins, y' know. D' ye mind?"

"My dear chap, why should I?"

"Awright--just stop and say howdedo," said the plump diplomatist. "Won't take a minute...."

And Canning, perceiving then that Kerr expected to make this stop in his company, said with an assurance not unbecoming to his lordly bearing: "If you please. And don't start anything, for pity's sake. I'm for bed in fifteen minutes."

So it all fell out, according to the book. So it was that the pursuing feet were free to thunder. So Mrs. Heth heard the voice of the leal one, subdued from a distance: "_Howdedo, Cousin Isabel! How're you an' Carlisle this evening_?..."

And so the maid turned, startled from her other-worldly dreams....

He was the greatest parti that had ever crossed her path, that was ever likely to cross her path. But Miss Heth faced him with no want of confidence; received his greeting with a charming bright negligence. One saw readily that such a matter as "making an impression" was far indeed from this maid's mind. If doubts, a vague uneasiness relative to the afternoon, still fretted the hinterlands of her mind (and they did), she was much too well trained, too resolute withal, to let them appear troublously upon the surface. Moreover, the nap of forty minutes, not winks, had been like the turning of a new leaf; and she was fortified, woman-wise, with the knowledge that she looked her best. Over her shoulders there clung a shimmering scarf, a pretty trifle all made of the scales of a silver mermaid. It was observed, however, that the gray crêpe-de-chine quite justified its choice....

The meeting of four had been effected in one end of the wide garish space: among the loungers of the lobby, all eyes were turned in that direction. There were salutations; the introduction of Mr. Canning to Mrs. Heth; inquiries after Miss Heth's health. Quite easily the square party resolved itself into two conversational halves. Mrs. Heth, it was clear from the outset, preferred Willie Kerr's talk above any other obtainable at that time and place. She was, and remained, absolutely fascinated by it....

"It seems quite unnecessary," Mr. Canning was saying--but he pronounced it "unne's'ry"--"to ask if you are any the worse for the ducking...."

"Oh, no--I'm quite well, thank you. We've suffered nothing worse than the spoiling of all our plans in coming here!"

The man's look politely interrogated her. "Oh, really? I'm sorry."

"We came, you see, to be very quiet. And we were never so frightfully noisy in our lives."

He smiled; made his small distinguished bow.

"You've reason to feel annoyed on all scores then. At any rate, it's charming to find you as our fellow guest."

And his eyes flitted from her toward Kerr, and then turned briefly upon mamma, and her strange little downy mustache.

Carlisle now perceived the disinterestedness, if not the faint weariness, in Mr. Canning's manner; she saw that he had forgotten the five minutes at the Country Club. The strong probability was, moreover, that he thought the worse of her for allowing herself to be nearly drowned in so vulgarly public a way. However, she was untroubled; she thought him, for her part, adorable to look at and of a splendid manner and conceit; and aloud she inquired, with her air of shining indifference, if Mr. Canning was not delighted with the Beach in October.

"Well, you know, I think I've been here before"--he said _bean_, most deliciously--"only I can't be quite sure. It seems to me a most agreeable place. Only, if it isn't indiscreet to inquire, what does one do in the evening?"

"Usually, I believe, one goes to bed directly after dinner. If one does this, and dines extremely late, the evening slips by quite nicely, we find."

"But the afternoons? Wouldn't they perhaps loom a thought long at times, waiting on for dinner?"

"There's napping provided for the afternoon, you see. And many other diversions, such as reading, walking, and thinking."

"Perhaps one should arrange to spend only afternoons at the Beach. You make them sound simply uproarious."

"We're a simple people here, Mr. Canning, with simple joys and sorrows, easily amused."

Mr. Canning looked down at her. However, Carlisle did not meet his gaze. Having already, in a quiet way, given him two looks where they would do the most good, she was now glancing maidenly at mamma, who conversed vice-presidentially of her Associated Charities policies.

"They must be brought to help themselves!" Mrs. Heth was saying. "Wholesale, thoughtless generosity is demoralizing to poverty. It is sheer ruination to their moral fibre."

"Promiscuous charity!--ruination! Just what I always say," chirped Willie. "Look at ancient Rome, ma'am. Began giving away corn to the poor, and, by gad!--she fell!"...

"Delightful! I see I shall like it here," Mr. Canning was observing--and was there perceptible the slightest thawing in his somewhat formidable manner?... "I too," said he, "have dwelt in Arcady."

The girl looked over the spaces, a little smile in her eyes.

"Ah, then you didn't need to be told that the sandman comes early there."

"But not, I think, when the moon shines bright--and the simple amusements you speak of seem to be waiting? Surely games in the evening are not altogether forbidden, or does my memory of the place deceive me?"

"You seem to remember it perfectly. But I thought your complaint was that there was nothing at all amusing to do in Arcady."

"Ah," said Mr. Canning, "but I'm having my second thoughts now."

She had given him a third, uptilting look with her speech; and now it was as if the great eligible had seen her for the first time. If the gaze of his handsome eyes became somewhat frank, this girl had been fashioned to stand all scrutiny victoriously. A mode which defined the figure with some truthfulness held no terrors for her; rather the contrary. Her skin was fine and fair as a lily, with an undertone of warmth, dawn pink on the cheek; the whiteness of her neck showed an engaging tracery of blue. Her mass of hair, of an ashy dull gold, would have been too showy above a plain face; but the case was otherwise with her. Her mouth, which was not quite flawless but something better, in especial allured the gaze; so did her eyes, of a dusky blue, oddly shaped, and fringed with the gayest lashes ...

"Besides," added the man, looking down at her with a certain lightening in his gaze, "as I remember, I did not say that there was nothing amusing to do. I merely, as a stranger, came to you begging some guidance on the point."

"I see. But I very much doubt my ability to guide you in that way, Mr. Canning--"

"I can only observe that you've thrown out a number of perfectly ripping suggestions already--walking on the piazza, for example. Mightn't we steal that diversion from afternoon temporarily, don't you think? Perhaps Mrs. Heth would agree to pursue the missing breeze so far?"

"That would be nice," said Carlisle.

You could distinctly hear his thundering feet now....

Strolling for four was agreed upon, and that simple afternoon amusement started. But, arriving at the piazza, the dowager discovered that, after all, the night air was just a little cool for her, and turned back, not without some beaming. She mentioned the Blue Parlor as her port of call, where smoking was forbidden. Willie, doing his duty as he saw it, dropped his cigar into a brass repository. He had faults like the rest of us, had Willie, but his deathless loyalty deserved a monument in a park.

Carlisle and Mr. Canning strolled on alone. She walked outwardly serene as the high-riding moon, but inwardly with a quickening sense of triumph, hardly clouded at all now. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had fallen out....

Many eyes had followed this shining pair as they quitted the common gathering-place. She, as we have seen, was inviting as a spectacle. He, to the nobodies, was simply one of the sights of the place, like the Fort. And his distinguished House was still a small one, at that, not yet arrived where another generation would unfailingly put it. If the grandfather of Hugo Canning had founded the family, financially speaking, it was his renowned father who had raised it so fast and far, doubling and redoubling the Canning fortune with a velocity by no means unprecedented in the eighties and nineties. To-day there were not many names better known in the world of affairs, in the rarer social altitudes, even in the shore-hotels of the provinces....

And the son and heir of the name and fortune, who now trod the Beach piazza with Miss Carlisle Heth, was obviously more than many sons of wealth, much more than a mere trousered incident to millions. This one saw in the first glance at his Olympian bearing; but Carlisle Heth knew more than that. Upon this young man the enterprising vehicles of modern history had, long since, conferred an individual celebrity. Often had the Sunday editors told their "public" of his exploits in the sporting and social realms, as they called them; not rarely had journals of a more gossipy character paragraphed him smartly, using their asterisks to remove all doubt as to who was meant. Before such an evening as this had ever crossed her maiden's dreams, Carlisle Heth had read of Hugo Canning....

It was a bad throat, a God-given touch of bronchitis or whatnot, that had sent the great young man south. This was known through Willie Kerr, and other private sources. Also, that he would remain with his Payne cousins through the following week; and in December might possibly return from the Carolinas or Florida for a few days' riding with the Hunt Club. Meantime he was here: and it was but Saturday, mid-evening, and a whole beautiful Sunday lay ahead....

From the piazza, after a turn or two, Miss Heth and Mr. Canning sauntered on to a little summer-house, which stood on the hotel front-lawn, not far from the piazza end. She had hesitated when he commended the pretty bower; but it was really the discreetest spot imaginable, under the public eye in all directions, and undoubtedly commanding a perfect view of the moonlight on the water, precisely as he pointed out.

In this retreat, "What a heavenly night!" exclaimed Miss Heth.

Canning, still standing, looked abroad upon a scene of dim beauty, gentle airs, and faint bright light. "Now that you say it," he replied, "it is. But depend on it, I should never have admitted it quarter of an hour ago."

"Oh! But isn't it rather tedious to deny what's so beautifully plain?"

"Should you say that tedious is the word? A better man than I denied his Lord."

"Yes," said Carlisle, not absolutely dead-sure of the allusion, "but he was frightened, wasn't he, or something?"

"And I was lonely. Loneliness beats fear hollow for making the world look out of whack."

"Doesn't it? And is there a lonesomer place on the globe than a summer resort out of season?"

"But we were speaking of fifteen minutes ago, were we not?" said Canning, and sat down beside her on the rustic bench.

The walls of this little summer-house were largely myth, and lattice for the rest. Through the interstices the dim brightness of the moon misted in, and the multitudinous rays from the hotel. There reached them the murmur of voices, the languorous lap of water. A serene and reassuring scene it surely was; there was no menace in the night's silvern calmness, no shadow of stalking trouble....

Carlisle imagined Mr. Canning to be capable of a rapid advance at his desire, and was opposed on principle to such a course of events. Still, she was saying, a moment or two later:

"And in the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road--I suppose you never feel lonely there?"

"Why fort, if one might know?"

"I've been told that you were awfully well barricaded there, prepared to stand any sort of siege."

Canning seemed quite amused. He declared, on the contrary, that neglect and unpopularity were his portion in a strange land.

"I'm an invalid on sick-leave," said he, "and my orders are to go to bed. Please don't smile, for it's all quite true ..."

He appeared to develop a certain interest in the moonlit talk. He proceeded in a voice and manner no longer purely civil:

"And, to bare my soul to you, I'm no fonder of being lonely than another man.... Do you know that, but for Kerr, you're my one acquaintance in all this part of the world? What shall we say of that? I sit at dinner, consumed by blue devils. I emerge, and behold, you walk across the lobby. Haven't I some right to feel that the gods are with me even at the Beach?"

Perchance she might have given him some information there, but instead she laughed musically.

"The god of the pretty speeches, at any rate! Must I tell you that you didn't look quite overjoyed when dear Willie came dragging you up?"

"I've no doubt I looked all sorts of ways, for I'd never felt more unfit for any society, including my own. The more is my debt to you for chasing my devils away.... But perhaps I owe you no thanks after all, as one guesses that you do these little services for others without any particular effort."

Carlisle glanced at him, smiling a little from her dusky eyes.

"Your experience is that most people find it a great effort to speak pleasantly to you, I suppose?"

"Again I point out to you that our talk is not of most people, but of you."

"Oh! And is there something particularly original about me? This grows exciting."

"I, for one, think that beauty is always original," said Canning, with sufficient impersonality, but no more.... "Still, we know, of course, that unaided it cannot drive the blues of others very far."

"After the sugar-coating comes the pill. Tell me in what way I have been deficient."

"Ah, that's yet to learn. To be charming by habit is an agreeable thing; but you haven't convinced me yet, you know, that you know how to be kind."

Her lashes fell before his masculine gaze; she did not answer. About them was the sweet hush of the night. She was aware that he had moved nearer upon their bench; aware, too, of a faster beating of her heart. And then, quite suddenly, a new voice spoke, so close that both started sharply; a rather shy voice, yet one possessed of a certain vivid quality of life.

"I beg your pardon--but _is_ this Miss Heth?"

They turned as upon one string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares passed between the dim trio.

"I am Miss Heth."

"Could you possibly let me speak to you--for a moment, Miss Heth? I realize, of course, that it's a great intrusion but--"

Canning started up, annoyed. Carlisle, without knowing why, was instantly conscious of a subtle sinking of the heart: some deep instinct rang a warning in the recesses of her being, as if crying out: "This man means trouble." She glanced at Mr. Canning with a kind of little shrug, suggesting doubt, and some helplessness; and he, taking this for sufficient authority, assumed forthwith the male's protectorship.

"Yes? What is it that you wish?"

The tall stranger was observed to bow slightly.

"As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few moments--privately. Of course I shouldn't venture to trespass so, if the matter weren't vitally important--"

"Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about? Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!"

The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was indefinably suggestive of a conflict.

"I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie--the boy who got into all the trouble ... Ah...."

The involuntary ejaculation, briefly arresting his speech, was his perfect tribute to the girl's beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart.

"This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarrassed rush. "I--I appreciate, I needn't say, that it seems a great liberty, to--"

"Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady's battle with lordly assurance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...."

But the stranger's vivid voice bore him down: "_Do you, Miss Heth?_... The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but--I--I'm afraid he may take matters into his own hands--"

Canning took an impatient step forward.

"Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady, sneaking for favors now. Let's--"

"Mr. Canning, I--I'm afraid I _ought_ to speak to him!"

"_What?_" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.

"_Oh!... That's kind of you!_"

Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the person of the sudden stranger--and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied mistakenly upon Dalhousie's gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he then said: "Well, then, I'll just have to speak before your friend."... What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of her anyway?

Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector's gaze with a look of appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice:

"I'm so dreadfully sorry. But I don't quite see how I could refuse just to--to hear what he has to say. Under the circumstances, would it--wouldn't it be simply unkind?"

Canning said, with small lightening of his restrained displeasure: "Ah! I'm to understand, then, that you wish to give this--gentleman an audience alone?"

It was, of course, the last thing on earth she desired, but God clearly was out of his heaven to-day, and Mr. Canning would like her better in the long run if he stepped aside for a space now. She said, with a restraint which did her credit:

"_Could_ you forgive me--for five minutes? You must know how I--dislike this. But _oughtn't_ I--"

The great parti gave an ironic little laugh.

"As you please, of course. I shall await your pleasure on the piazza."

And he stamped out and away into the moonlight, passing the silent intruder with a look which said loudly that he would have kicked him if it had promised to be worth the trouble.

The silver cord was loosed. The village-clock, quarter of a mile away, struck nine, and all's well. Hugo Canning's stately back receded. Coincidently the shabby-looking stranger who had displaced him stepped forward into the summer-house. The first thing Carlisle noticed about him was that he was lame.

V

Dialogue between V. Vivian, of the Slums, and Mr. Heth's Daughter (or his Niece); what the lovely Hun saw in the Mr. Vivian's eyes, just before he asked God to pity her.

Dalhousie's tall friend advanced with a limp, in silence. He halted at a courteous distance; it was seen that one hand held a soft hat, crushed against his side. A faint wave of the ethereal light immersed the man now, and Carlisle dimly descried his face. She observed at once that it did not seem to be a menacing face at all; no, rather was it kindly disposed and even somewhat trustful in its look. It was the second thing that she noticed about him.

Perhaps no girl in the world was less like the popular portrait of a fat horse-leech's daughter than this girl, Carlisle Heth. Surely no advance ever less resembled the charge of a hating prophet upon a Hun than this man's advance. Carlisle, to be sure, was never one to think in historical or Biblical terminology. But she did note the man's manner of approach upon her, and his general appearance, with an instant lifting of the heart. The whole matter seemed desperately serious to her, full of alarming possibilities, a matter for a determined fight. And she felt more confidence at once, the moment she had seen how the emissary looked, how he looked at her.

Chiefly for strategic reasons, she had sat down on the bench again, well back in the shadows. She did not speak; had no intention of speaking till speech might gain something. And the stranger, silent also, wore an air of hesitancy or confusion which was puzzling to her and yet quite reassuring, too. If he had come to say that Dalhousie would talk unless she did, would he be this sort of looking person at all?...

The man began abruptly; clearly nothing plotted out in advance.

"He's quite crushed.... I--I've just come from him...."

And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced his steps for a better start.

"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a--a stranger, in this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It's all so curiously confused. But it doesn't seem that he can be quite so bad as they're saying here to-night...."

The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.

"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can't remember the boat's upsetting at all."

His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle's ear caught that note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie's shabby friend as a determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face, though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it, odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and surer, not dangerous at all.

Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there came a lovely voice from the shadows--lovely, but did it sound just a little hard?...

"Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, and tell me who you are, and what it is you want."

"Yes, yes! Quite so!" agreed the author of the Severe Arraignment, rather hastily....

A little easier said than done, no doubt. Yet it may be that one of the young man's inner selves still hovered over the belief that this girl must be Mr. Heth's (of the Works) niece, or haply a yet more distant relative....

"I mentioned that," said he, "because it was naturally uppermost in my mind. I--ah.... But to begin at the beginning, as you say.... I got a telegram in town, telling me that Jack Dalhousie was in serious trouble. It was from Hofheim, a fellow, a sort of druggist, who happened to know that I was one of his best friends. So I caught the six-ten train and Hofheim met me at the station. _My_ name's Vivian...."

He stopped short, with an odd air of not having intended to stop at this point at all. So bystanders have watched the learning bicycle rider, irresistibly drawn to his doom against the only fixed object in miles. However, no association of ideas woke in the mind of the silent girl upon the bench. Not easily at any time did brick-throwing Socialists gain foothold there; and this day had been a disruptive one for her, beyond any in her experience.

"The name," hastily continued the young man, with an intake of breath, "probably conveys nothing to you. I--I merely mention it.... Well, Hofheim, this sort of--fellow, wasn't in the hotel when the--the occurrence took place, but he told me what everybody was saying, as we came up in the 'bus together. I feel very sure you can have no idea.... Shall I repeat his story? I don't, of course, want to trouble you needlessly."

"Do."

So bidden, he swiftly epitomized the narrative told him by the fellow Hofheim, who had got it at fifth or sixth hand after Mrs. Heth's striking of the right note. The Hofheim rendering seemed to include such details as that Dalhousie (being an entire stranger to Miss Heth) had overthrown her boat with homicidal hands, and that, as he swam away, he had laughed repeatedly and maniacally over his shoulder at the girl's agonized screams.

"They don't say that he struck you--with an oar," the man concluded, sad and satirical. "I believe that's the only detail of the sort they omit.... As a matter of fact, Miss Heth, Dal says he never heard you scream at all."

Then he clearly paused for a reply, perhaps a reassuring burst; but there was only silence. The harried girl on the bench was thinking, intently but with some bewilderment. Somewhat aghast as she was (truth to tell) at the way in which the minor variations had been maliciously distorted, her attention had been closely engaged by the curious way in which Mr. Dalhousie's friend was going at things. Why did he sound less like a challenge and a threat than like somebody whistling hopefully to keep up his courage?

The question irresistibly emerged. Carlisle's slim fingers furled and unfurled the end of her mermaiden's scarf, and she looked up at the tall stranger in the dusk and sweetly spoke for the third time.

"But I don't understand. If he has told you all about it, I--I don't see why you have come to me at all."

Then the man appeared to recollect that he had omitted the most important part of his narrative--of course she didn't understand, no wonder!--and spoke with some eagerness.

"I should have explained that in the beginning!--only of course I don't like to trespass too far on your time.... You see--unfortunately--Dal's hardly in position to speak about the matter at all. I--"

He paused, as if seeking how to put it, and then spoke these doubt-destroying words:

"It is very perplexing, but the truth is--he says so himself--he doesn't know at all what took place."

"Oh!... _He doesn't know_!"

"I don't wonder you're astonished at his saying so," said the young man, in quite a gentle way. "And yet I do believe him absolutely...."

He now explained, in well-selected phrases, that Jack Dalhousie had been very drunk when he boarded the boat, having taken a running start on the evening preceding. Though he might have seemed normal enough, through long experience in control, he was actually quite irresponsible; and drink had played strange tricks with his mind before now. The boy could remember getting into the boat, it seemed; remember that--ah--that she had objected (very properly) to his presence; remember standing up in the boat, very angry, and the wind blowing in his face. The next thing he remembered was being in the water, swimming away. And then, when he landed, a man standing there on shore cursed him and struck him in the face.... Then he had looked out over the water; he saw the upset sailboat and the boatman rowing out, and the people, and it rushed over him what he must have done. Till then, he said, he had never dreamed that anything had happened. He could hardly believe it, even with the evidence of his own eyes. Then later Hofheim, the sort of fellow, had gone up to see him, and told him what people were saying, which so much more than confirmed his worst suspicions. Hofheim was a stranger, but he meant well....

Dalhousie, in short, was in the singular position of having to implore others to assure him that he hadn't done all these terrible things. And it appeared that Miss Carlisle Heth was the one person in the world who could possibly give him that assurance.

So spoke the stranger. That he had scattered lifelines, that all his oratory had come agrapple with nature's first law, evidently did not cross his mind. He gazed down at the girl's dimly limned face, and his gaze seemed full of an unconquerable hopefulness.

"The boy's behavior has been inexcusable in any case," he said. "And be sure he's been punished, and will be punished severely. But ... it must be that either the--the trouble didn't happen at all as this story says it did, or if--at the worst--it did happen that way, Dalhousie was simply out of his mind, quite insane, and didn't know what he was doing. He isn't, of course, a ruffian or a coward. Won't you help to make them understand that?"

The girl raised her eyes, which in the twilight were darker than the 'depth of water stilled at even.'

"I don't see the necessity for that," she said, in a firm voice. "I--I'm afraid I can't consent to be involved in it any further."

Over the little summer-house hung the sweet beauties of the serene night. About it stretched the calm lawn in chequers of large faint brightness and gigantic shadows. Within it stood the tall stranger, rooted in his tracks. Then it seemed to occur to him that there was some misunderstanding; that at least, in his anxiety about his friend, he hadn't allowed sufficiently for the properly outraged feelings of the lady--this so unreasonable-looking daughter of Mr. Heth of the Works, or his niece....

"It's all tremendously trying for you, I know," he said, with the same sort of gentleness. "I assure you the situation has distressed me greatly--from every aspect. And I think it's most kind and--and generous of you to let me speak with you when you must feel that you've been so badly treated.... But you see--as it stands, you are involved in it, really, more than any one else. I'm sorry, but in fact the whole issue is in your hands."

"I can't see that. He has given you his--his version of what took place. No one will prevent him from saying the same thing to whomever he wishes."

"But who will believe him?"

Carlisle perceived a rhetorical question, though she didn't know it under that name; she made no reply. She would really have preferred no more questions of any sort--what was the use of them? In her, as in all the Maker's creatures, the instinct for self-preservation was planted to work resistlessly. Small wonder, indeed, if, in the unexpected discovery that dependence on Dalhousie's dubious gentlemanliness was unnecessary, the uprush of relief should have swept away all lesser considerations, flooded down all doubts. All was settled again in a trice, as by a miracle: the miraculous agent here being, not the Deity (as she vaguely suspected), but only the Demon Rum, he who had taught the frail lad Dalhousie to be so mistrustful of himself ...

She had had a harassing day, including three momentous _tête-à-têtes_ with three different and widely variegated men, mostly comparative strangers: Jack Dalhousie, Mr. Canning, and now this Mr. Vivian. She was very tired of being dogged and nagged at and interfered with, and she wanted very much to terminate this interview, which she saw now had been extorted from her by a pretty sharp piece of deception. And through her mind there skipped a beckoning thought of Mr. Canning, conceived as feverishly pacing the piazza ...

"You see, his defence," Mr. Vivian was saying, with some signs of nervousness, "is merely his own word that he had no idea you were upset. I believe him absolutely, because I know he wouldn't lie, and he admits, to his own disadvantage, that his memory isn't at all clear. But--it's all so muddled and confused somehow--I'm afraid everybody else will think that a rather silly fabrication, invented by a desperate man to put himself in the best light possible. That is--unless his word is corroborated."

His inflection invited remarks, nay, urged them, but there was only silence.

And then within V. Vivian, M.D., there woke a cold doubt, and gnawed him.

"Miss Heth--I must ask--for the whole moral question hangs on this ... _Did he know that you were upset_?"

Miss Heth cleared her throat, preparatory to rising. She saw now that she ought never to have consented to talk with this strange man at all. Mamma would have known that in advance.

"It is--rather absurd--for me to be asked to decide what _he_ knew. He has assured you that--"

"But--I don't make myself clear, I see--the fact is that yours is the only assurance that will carry the smallest weight on that point.... He wasn't--may I ask?--actually _in_ the boat when it went over, was he?"

"N-no. As to that--I believe he had just got out, but--"

"Did you think at the time that he knew you were upset?"

"Unfortunately, I am not a mind reader," she began with dignity, objecting seriously to these obstacles in the way of ending the interview. "Thrown without warning into the water, I could not look into his thoughts and see--"

"Quite so. But did he show in any way that he knew you were upset?"

A kind of chill had crept into the stranger's voice. The two young people gazed at each other. The man had strange eyes (they were the third thing she had noticed about him), gray, she thought, and gifted with an odd sort of translucence, singular and speaking.

"Let me see. No, he did not. That is what I said at the time--that he didn't take the slightest notice of me--"

"He swears he never dreamed anything was wrong till he landed. Don't you feel that that's quite possible, at least? Or.... did you scream out for his help, so loudly that he _must_ have heard you, if he'd been himself?"

"The--the first few minutes in the water were very confusing. I can't pretend to say exactly what I did or didn't do. I had to think about saving my life--"

"Of course. But if you'd screamed a number of times in saving your life, you would be likely to remember it, wouldn't you?"

"Really I can't acknowledge your right to--"

"Miss Heth--_why didn't you scream_?"

His swift cross-examination touched the quick of her spirit; and she came to her feet, trembling a little, and feeling rather white.

"I will not allow you to catechise me in this way. I will not...."

Dr. Vivian, from the Dabney House, over the Gulf, stood still, quite silenced....

The thought had struck V. Vivian, and shot him down, that this girl was lying, deliberately suppressing the truth that meant more than life to Dal. She hadn't screamed. Dal hadn't known she was upset.... Yet was it thinkable? In the fiercest denouncing of the yellowest Huns, who had ever dreamed anything so base of them as this? _Lying?_ With that face like all the angels, that voice like a heavenly choir?...

The tall doctor saw that his suspicion was unworthy and absurd. His was no simple choice between his friend's shameful cowardice, and this girl's criminal falsehood. No, Dal was crazy-drunk at the time, and himself cried out in his misery that the worst that they said of him was probably true. And even supposing that this girl was no more than a fiend in seraphic shape, what conceivable reason could she have for such infamous suppression? Motive was unimaginable.... No, the fault must be his own. He had pressed too hard, pried too tactlessly and inquisitively, not made her understand sufficiently the dire swiftness of the poor boy's need....

These two stood face to face. Carlisle saw that Jack Dalhousie's friend was becoming excited; but then, so was she. The man spoke first, in a low, hurried voice:

"I don't mean to catechise--indeed, I don't. You must try to forgive me for the liberties I seem to be taking.... The thing's so serious, so pitiful. This story already flying around back in town--making him a base coward--he'll never live it down. And it's to-night or never, a--a misstatement travels so fast and far, and has so long a life--"

"You should have reminded him of all this," said Carlisle, her rounded breast rising and falling, "before he got into my boat."

"Oh, you have a right to say that! He's been wrong, insanely wrong! But does he deserve disgrace--ostracism--ruin? You alone stand between him and--"

"I don't feel that it--it's right for me to be brought into it further. I've explained that. And I must ask--"

"But you _are_ in it already, you see. Whatever anybody does or leaves undone, now and for the future--_you are in it_...."

The enemy paused, gazing at her; and then suddenly, before she could make just the right opening to go past him, he abandoned restraint, and flung himself upon entreaties.

"Couldn't you make a statement--just a little statement--saying that you feel certain he didn't know the boat was upset? that perhaps in the excitement you forgot to scream?--that you know he wouldn't have left you if he'd understood you were in trouble? Couldn't you at least give him the benefit of the doubt?--say or do something to show you've no bitter feeling toward him?--"

"Did he show any regard for my feelings? I must ins--"

"All the finer is your opportunity--_don't you see_?... Even strain the truth a little for him, if that's necessary. God," said the shabby young man, quite passionately, "would count it a virtue, I know, for it's now or never to save a man.... Couldn't you do that? I promise you you won't be bothered any more about it. I know how awfully hard it's all been for you. Couldn't you say _something_ to help him a little?"

Miss Heth, facing him, imperceptibly hesitated.

For a second, offended though she was by his religious reference (she never heard the name of God mentioned in polite society), this quaint begging Mr. Vivian had her upon the balance. Her flying thoughts swept down the parting of the ways. But they flew swiftly back, stabbing all hesitancies....

She wished as much as any one that it had all been started differently, as it might have been had she been perfectly certain in advance that no one would dare say anything the least bit horrid about her. It was not her fault that gossip was so notoriously unreliable. And now it was simply impossible to rake up the whole subject again, just when it was all settled, and go through another long explanation with mamma. Of course she didn't believe all this about Dalhousie's being ruined and disgraced forever: that was just the man's way of working on her feelings and trying to frighten her. She knew very well that the whole thing would blow over in a few days, if just quietly left to itself.

And what use, whispered the returning thoughts, would the unknown make of the "little statement" he begged so for? What would mamma say, for instance, to a black-typed piece-in-the-paper in the "Post" to-morrow? And what of Mr. Canning--nudged the wise thoughts--the happiness symbol on the piazza, whose princely feet were so plainly twitching to thunder behind?...

No; clearly the only sensible thing to do was to end all the talk and quibbling at once, definitely. Carlisle took a step forward over the dim chequered floor, resolute as her mother.

"I can't add anything to what I've already said. I cannot let you detain me any longer."

Her advance had brought her fully into what light there was, falling mistily through lattice and door. And at the look in her eyes, young Dr. Vivian's hands fell dead without a struggle at his sides. His tall figure seemed mysteriously to shrink and collapse inside his clothes. He said, oddly, nothing whatever. Yet an hour's oration could not have conveyed more convincingly his sense of irreparable disaster.

The instantaneous cessation of his verbal flow curiously piqued the girl's attention. Face to face as they stood, she was struck quite sharply with an elusive something that seemed to cling to this man's look, a subtle enveloping wistfulness which she had vaguely noticed about him before, which somehow seemed, indeed, only the sum of all that she had noticed about him before. It may have been this look that briefly checked her withdrawal. An odd desire to justify herself somewhat more clearly fluttered and stirred within her. Or--who can say?--perhaps this was no more than the beautiful woman's undying desire to appear at advantage before every man, however far beneath her.

"You--you must not think me unfeeling," she said in a sweet hurried voice. "I want to be as considerate as possible. I am terribly sorry for him--terribly--and you must tell him so, from me. But I--I am in a peculiar position. I am not free to--"

"I see. I understand now."

His strange tone fell upon her ears as a challenge, quiet though it was; and it was a challenge which Carlisle, though instantly regretting her generosity (when she might just have walked away), saw no entirely dignified way of avoiding.

"You see what?" she said, faltering a little. "I don't know what you mean."

The man replied slowly, almost as if he were thinking of something else, and the thought rather hurt him:

"I see your only thought is to gain some point for yourself--you alone know what--no matter what pain your silence may give to others.... Ah, that's sad...."

Angry and a little frightened, too, Carlisle Heth drew her gossamer shawl more closely about her shoulders, with a movement that also wore the air of plucking together her somewhat wavering hauteur.

"You are at liberty to think and say what you please," she said, distantly, and with a slight inclination of her head started past him.

But he did not seem to hear the dismissal order; stood unmoving, blocking her progress; and looking up with now tremulous indignation, Carlisle ran once more full on the battery of his speaking eyes....

Perhaps it was not difficult to guess what John the Baptist would have said, in such a case as this: but then the young man V.V. was not thinking of John the Baptist now. He was not feeling grim at all at this moment; not fierce at all. So in his look there was to be seen nothing of the whiplash, not one thing reminiscent of the abhorring fanatic on the outskirts of the city. His eyes were filled, indeed, with a sudden compassion; a compassion overflowing, unmistakable, and poignant. And from that look the richly dressed girl with the seraph's face instantly averted her gaze.

She heard a voice: the lame stranger speaking as if to himself.

"All that beauty without, and nothing at all within.... So lovely to the eye, and empty where the heart should be.... God pity you, poor little thing...."

And then Carlisle passed him quickly and went out of the summer-house upon the lawn. The escape, this time, presented no difficulties. For the last syllable had hardly died on the young man's lip before self-consciousness appeared to return upon him, staggering him, it may be, at the words of his mouth. He turned, abruptly, and fled in the other direction.

So the audience in the moonlit summer-house concluded precipitately, with the simultaneous departure of both parties from opposite exits. Carlisle Heth went hurrying across the lawn. Within her, there was a tumult; but her will was not feeble, and her sense of decorum and the eternally fitting hardly less tenacious. Strongly she ruled her spirit for the revivifying remeeting that awaited her just ahead....

But it was not Mr. Canning's voice which greeted her as she stepped up on the hotel piazza. It was the low, angry challenge of her soldier-mother, nipped in the act of charging upon the summer-house.

"_Carlisle_!... In heaven's name, what have you been doing?"

Facing mamma on the deserted piazza-end, Carlisle explained in a hurried sentence that Mr. Dalhousie had sent a pleading friend to her, whom she had felt obliged to see....

"Are you _mad_ to say such a thing? Was it for wild antics of this sort that I threw everything to the winds to bring you down here?"

"Oh, mamma--please!" said Carlisle, her breath coming fast. "I've had about enough.... I--I couldn't run the risk of his starting heaven knows what scandalous story. Where is Mr. Canning?"

Mamma looked as if she wanted to shake her.

"You may well ask," she said, savagely, and turned away.

"I do ask," said Carlisle, with returning spirit. "Where is he?"

Mrs. Heth wheeled on her.

"Did you suppose he would hang about kicking his heels for hours while you hobnobbed with low men in dark summer-houses? He just excused himself on the ground of a cold caught on the piazza, and has retired for the night. You shall do the same. Come with me."

Carlisle went with her.

* * * * *

And next morning, Sunday, the very first news that greeted the two ladies, upon their appearance for a late breakfast, was that Mr. Canning and Mr. Kerr had left the Beach for town by the nine-twenty-two train.

VI

Of Carlisle's Bewilderment over all the Horrid Talk; of how it wasn't her fault that Gossip was so Unreliable; of the Greatest Game in the World; also, of Mr. Heth, who didn't look like a Shameless Homicide.

The explosion that followed the boat occurrence at the Beach came as a complete surprise to the heroine of the small affair. When she had terminated the interview in the summer-house, she understood that she was giving the signal for talk to cease and all trouble to proceed to blow over. The want of cooöeration on the part of talk and trouble was gross, to say the least of it. The tide of excited questions and comment that poured in on and around Carlisle, upon her return to town on Monday, resembled the breaking of flood-gates. Her small and entirely private misadventure had become her world's sensation. And within a day there came a climax which secretly astonished and frightened her not a little. The primal blood-tie itself was severed for offended righteousness' sake. The proud old widower, Colonel Dalhousie, already sorely tried by his son's wildnesses, could not stomach his flagrant cowardice. It was shouted about the town that he had cut Jack off with a curse, and turned him finally out of his house.

Unplagued by the curses of imagination, Carlisle had, indeed, anticipated nothing in the least like this. She was dazed by the undreamed hubbub. For the first few days after her home-coming, she remained very closely in the house, to avoid all the worrying and horrid talk; and one day, the day Mattie Allen ran in with popping eyes to tell her about Jack Dalhousie, she pretended to be sick and stayed in bed, and really did feel extremely badly.

In these days of uneasiness, Carlisle wished far more than ever that the whole thing had been started differently; and she wondered often, and somewhat fearfully, if Dalhousie's friend, Mr. Vivian, would try to force himself on her again. That did not happen; nothing happened; and the more and more calmly she came to think about it all, the more clearly the girl saw that she personally was not to blame for the misunderstanding. It was plainly seen as one of those unfortunate occurrences which, while regretted by all, herself as much as anybody, you simply could not do a single thing about. And if it had seemed impossible to rake it all up again even that night, how much more unrakable was it now, when days had passed, and everybody had accepted everything, for better or worse, as it was? Fate and gossip had proved too strong. Deplorable, indeed; but it was to be, that was all.

It was very plain, of course, that all the initial excitement and pother could not possibly last. Withhold food from gossip, and it starves and dies. Carlisle simply stayed quiet and held her tongue; and as the days passed without more developments of any sort, she found her philosophical attitude thoroughly justified by events. Town-talk, that bugbear of the delicate-minded, shot off first to the Hoover divorce, and then to the somewhat public disagreement between the Governor of the State and Congressman Hardwicke, at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the visiting President; finally to a number of things. By the time six weeks had passed, the Beach had dropped completely from the minds of a fickle public. Dalhousie, it seemed, had considerately vanished. Talk ceased. The boat trouble blew over, much as the boat had done....

About this time, namely, about the middle of the seventh week, one of Willie Kerr's cryptic messages lay beside Mrs. Heth's breakfast plate on a morning. It ran:

I think he will come at 5.30 o'clock Wednesday. Better arrive first?

W.K.

Willie's cipher (he liked to write as if he lived in Russia, with the postal spies after him like hawks) was no mystery to Mrs. Heth, she being, in a certain measure, its inventor. Having taken the telegraphic brevity upstairs to show to Carlisle, she disappeared into the telephone booth, to rearrange her afternoon. If all subscribers to the telephonic system were as tireless users as she, probably fewer people would have made large fortunes by the timely purchase of forty dollars worth of stock.

This was a Wednesday morning in mid-December. Carlisle, recuperating from a gay debutante rout on the evening preceding, remained in bed. By this time the "season" was well under way: all signs promised an exceptionally gay winter, and Carlisle was, as ever, in constant demand. She had meant to spend the morning in bed anyway, and then besides her mother had pointed out the necessity of being fresh for the afternoon....

From the moment of their abrupt parting at the Beach, Carlisle had not set eyes upon Mr. Canning, though he was known to have lingered as a house-guest all through the following week. The circumstance had surprised her considerably at the time, until she had thought out some satisfactory explanations for it. To-day her maidenly thoughts assumed a wholly prospective character, very agreeable and cheery. Mr. Canning, having arrived yesterday from some southerly resort of his choice, was again staying at the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road, his reported design being to ride a few times with the Cold Run hounds, otherwise barricading himself as unsocially as before. Still, he expected to remain for a week at least, which was very nice; and under these circumstances it was as natural as possible that his connoisseurship should be asked to pass judgment on the new little bachelor apartment in Bellingham Court, where his friend Kerr was just comfortably installed.... Where, also, no impossible stranger could intrude himself upon the company of his betters, with revivalist vocabulary and killjoy face.

The clock stood at eleven. The drawn shades imparted a restful dimness to the bedroom, but the reliable maid Flora had been in to shut the windows and start a merry fire in the grate. This room had been done over last year in gray and old rose, with the "suit" in Circassian walnut, and wainscoted walls which harmonized admirably. It was a charming cloister, all most captivating to the eye, with the possible exception of the dressing-table, which rather bristled with implements and looked just a thought too businesslike.

Carlisle loafed and invited her soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, charmingly framing her face....

While the Beach episode itself was now long since closed and done with, it was not unnatural that the memory of Dalhousie's friend, the Mr. Vivian, should have remained in Carlisle's mind, for Mr. Vivian had addressed such words to her as had never before sounded upon her ears. These words had clung by their sheer astounding novelty. To have God petitioned to pity you by a shabby nobody in a pictorial tie: here was an experience that invited some elucidation. For a time the girl's thoughts had attacked the nobody's sincerity: he was merely failure pretending to despise success. But, not ungifted at self-suasion though she was, she had not seemed to find solid footing here; and she had early been driven irresistibly to quite a different conclusion. Evidently this man Mr. Vivian was a queer kind of street-preacher type, victim of a pious mania which rendered him dangerously unsound in the head. This, obviously, was the truth of the matter. On no other theory could his pitying her be satisfactorily explained.

It was true that, with the dying down of her own sense of vague ambient perils, she herself had come once more to feel dreadfully sorry for Jack Dalhousie, and even to admit in her meditations that she could have afforded to be more magnanimous in defending him from gossip. But then that did not at all change the fact that Dalhousie deserved the severest punishment for all the trouble and worry he had brought her. It clearly was not right, was not moral, to make things too easy for wrongdoers. She had gradually come to see herself as a custodian of the moral law in this quarter, a tribunal of justice which, while upholding the salubriousness of punition, yet strives to keep as large and generous as it can.

Therefore it followed as the night the day that Mr. Vivian, who could work himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of sane, wholesome people.

Still, in lengthening retrospect, Carlisle had become quite dissatisfied with the manner in which she had permitted the summer-house interview to terminate. It was somewhat galling to recall the tameness with which she had allowed a Shouting Methodist such a last word as that, entirely unreproved. Because unreproved, the staggering word had stuck fast; in spite of all efforts, it remained as a considerable irritation in the background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the opinions of such as he. And then, at other times, she decided that it might be best simply to ignore the man altogether, turning her back with dignity, after perhaps one look such as would completely show him up. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say....

She rose, in excellent spirits, shortly after noon, and began an unhurried toilet. The toilet was so unhurried, indeed, that she had hardly finished and descended to the family sitting-room on the second floor when her father's latch-key was heard clicking in the front door. This sound was the unofficial luncheon-gong. The House of Heth proceeded to the dining-room, where Mr. Heth kissed his daughter's cheek in jocund greeting.

"Good-_afternoon_, Cally! And you just up--well, well! Times have changed--

"'Early to bed, early to rise-- That makes us all healthy, Wise and wealthy--'

"That was my father's rule, and Lord, he kept us to it...."

Mrs. Heth, already seated, bit her lip slightly, which seemed to confer prominence upon her little mustache. Her consort's habit of quoting, and especially of misquoting, was trying to her, but she now knew it to be incurable, like her daughter's occasional mannerism. She sat as usual rather silent, plotting out the next few hours of her busy time, her remarks being chiefly of a superfluous managerial nature to that thoroughly competent African, Moses Bruce.

Carlisle, having so lately risen, ate but a _déjeuner_. Mr. Heth, on the contrary, attacked the viands with relish, restoring waste tissues from two directors' meetings, a meeting of the Convention Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, and an hour in his office at the bank. He was a full-bodied, good-looking, amiable-mannered man, of sound stock and excellent digestion, and wore white waistcoats the year round, and fine blond mustaches, also the year round. He certainly did not look to the casual eye like a shameless homicide, but rather like an English country gentleman given to dogs. He was fifty-four years old, a hard worker for all his indolent eye, and his favorite diversion was about twelve holes of golf on Sunday morning, and his next favorite one table of bridge by night in the library across the hall.

Greetings over, Mr. Heth said "Catch!" to his wife and daughter, referring to the ten-dollar goldpieces from the directors, and remarked that he hadn't been near the Works for two mornings, and that money made the mare go. A sober look touched his fresh-colored face as he voiced these observations, but then he was tired and hungry, and nobody noticed the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time régime, dispatched the exotic meal with the cheerfulness of Property.

"Effete, Cally,--that's what this age is," said Mr. Heth, pushing back his chair, and producing his gold toothpick. "Everybody looking for somebody else's neck to hang on to. And makin' a lot of grafters out of our poor class. Look at this Labor Commissioner and his new-fangled nonsense. Nagging me to spend Lord knows how many thousands, making the plant pretty and attractive for the hands. Voted for the fellow, too."

"I never heard of such a thing. What sort of things does he want you to do, papa?"

"Turkish baths and manicures and chicken sandwiches, I guess. I don't listen to his rot. Law's good enough for me. Point I make is that's the spirit of the poor nowadays. I pay 'em wages that would have been thought enormous a hundred years ago, but are they satisfied? Not on your life!..."

Winter sunshine, filtering in through cream-colored curtains, touched upon those refinements with which the prosperous civilize and decorate the brutal need: upon silver, growing flowers, glittering glass, agreeable open spaces, and fine old mahogany. It was an exceptionally pleasant room. The Heths might be "improbable people," as Mrs. Berkeley Page was known to have said on a certain occasion and gone unrebuked, but their material taste was clearly above reproach. And all this was to their credit, proving efficiency in the supreme art, that of living. For the Heths, of course, were not rich at all as the word means nowadays: they were far indeed from being the richest people in that town. Their merit it was that they spent all they had, and sometimes a little more; and few persons lived who could surpass Mrs. Heth in getting a dollar's worth of results for each dollar expended....

Carlisle and her father chatted pleasantly about the remarkable spirit of the poor, and the world's maudlin sentiment towards it and them. The lovely maid professed herself completely puzzled by these problems.

"We're always giving them money," she pointed out, spooning a light dessert in a tall glass, "or getting up bazaars for them, or sending them clothes that have lots more wear in them. And what do they do in return, besides grumble and riot and strike and always ask for more? And they stay poor just the same. What is going to happen, papa?"

Mr. Heth lit a cigar--not one of the famous Heth Plantation Cheroots. He requested Cally not to ask _him_.

"Never be satisfied," said he, "till they strip us of everything we've worked our lives away earning. They'll ride in our motor-cars and we'll sit in their workhouse. That'll be nice, won't it? How'll plain little girls like that, eh?"

She was the apple of papa's eye; and she rather enjoyed hearing him talk of his manifold business activities, which was a thing he was not too often encouraged to do. To-day the master of the Works was annoyed into speech by recent nagging: not merely from the Commissioner of Labor, but from the Building Inspector, who had informally stopped him on the street that morning....

"Don't you think, papa," Carlisle said sweetly, "that it will all end in something like the French Revolution?"

Mr. Heth thought it extremely likely.

"Well," said he, "I shan't be bothered by their college folderol. O'Neill's easy enough managed. All I need to do is invite him and Missus O. to dinner."

"Who's O'Neill?" demanded Mrs. Heth, gliding in.

For the second time during the meal, she had been absent from the table, on a telephone call. She always answered these summonses personally, regardless of when they came, appearing to fear that otherwise she might miss something.

"And who," she added, "is going to invite him to dinner?"

Mr. Heth explained, and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely. His wife was a climber--social bug, you know. "Pays to know your man, eh, Cally?..."

"I should say! And O'Neill's wife manages him?"

"Don't they always?" said he, pinching her little pink ear. And thereupon he bethought himself of a thoroughly characteristic quotation, which he rendered right jovially:

"'Pins and needles, pins and needles, When a man marries, his trouble begins,'

"As the fellow says," concluded Mr. Heth; and so departed for The Fourth National Bank. Mrs. Heth, reminding her daughter about being fresh for the afternoon, glided to her writing-desk in the library. Carlisle confronted three hours of leisure before the prospective Great Remeeting. She went to the telephone, and called up her second-best girl-friend, Evelyn McVey. It developed that she had nothing special to say to Evey, or Evey to her. However, they talked vivaciously for twenty minutes, while operators reported both lines "busy" and distant people were annoyed and skeptical.

That done, Carlisle went to the upstairs sitting-room, and sat by the fire reading a Christmas magazine, which had come out on Guy Fawkes day, the 5th of November. Presently she slipped off her pumps the better to enjoy the heat: and assuredly there is nothing surprising in that. It is moral certainty that Queens and Empresses (if we knew all) dearly love to sit in their stocking-feet at times, and frequently do so when certain that the princesses-in-waiting and lady companions of the bath are not looking. The telephone interrupted Carlisle twice, but she toasted her arched and silken little insteps well, read three stories, and thought that one of them was quite sweet. Where she got her hands and feet she often wondered. They were so clearly neither Heth nor Thompson. By this time her unwearied mother had gone out to "get in" three or four calls; also an important Charities engagement at Mrs. Byrd's, where Carlisle was to call for her in the car at five o'clock _sharp_, for their visit to the Bellingham. Carlisle now became conscious of a void, and ate five chocolates from a large adjacent box of them, the gift of J. Forsythe Avery. Then she yawned delicately, and picked up "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (by Mrs. Browning); for she, it must be remembered, had a well-rounded ideal, and believed that it was your duty to cultivate your mind. Life isn't all parties and beaux, as she sometimes remarked to Mattie Allen....

There came a knock upon the door, breaking the thread of culture. The seneschal Moses entered, announcing callers, ladies, in the drawing-room. Carlisle sighed; recalled herself to actuality. After glancing at the cards, she conceded the injudiciousness of saying that she was out, and told Moses to announce that she would be down in a moment. She kept the callers waiting twenty moments, however, while, in her own room, she made ready for the street. She was donning a hat which in shape and size was not unlike a man's derby; it was of black velvet, lined under the brim with old-blue, and edged with a piping of dark-brown fur. At a certain point in or on it, there stuck up two stiff straight blue plumes. The hat was simply absurd, wildly laughable and ridiculous, up to the moment when she got it on; then it was seen that it had a certain merit after all. It was a calling-costume (as one believes) that Carlisle assumed for the Bellingham; a blue costume, of a soft material which had been invented only about a month before, and which was silk or satin, according as you looked at it, but certainly did not shine much. The coat, or jacket or wrap, which completed the suit was arresting in design, to say no more of it. Less original were the muff and stole of darkest sable; but they were beautiful.

Carlisle, it need hardly be said, went downstairs in her hat. "Oh," the visiting ladies would say, "but you are going out." "Oh, not for half an hour yet," she would protest. "I'm _so_ glad you came."

About 4.30, J. Forsythe Avery, who had no office hours, was ushered into the stately Heth drawing-room. The lady callers withdrew promptly, but not so promptly as to make it too pointed. It was generally believed at this time that Miss Heth "had an understanding" with Mr. Avery, though it was quite well known that she, personally, much preferred young Robert Tellford. The figure, however, at which a famous life insurance company commanded Robert's undivided services made him a purely academic interest. With J. Forsythe the case was totally different: from the environs of his native Mauch Chunk the Avery forbears had dug principal and interest in enormous quantities.

J. Forsythe remained for twenty minutes, the period named when he had telephoned. Having failed to secure any extension of time, he went away, and Carlisle skipped upstairs to look in the mirror, and put on the concluding touches indicated above. Descending and emerging into the winter sunset, she sent the waiting car on ahead to the Byrds', and set out to do the five blocks afoot. Exercise makes pink cheeks.

It was a splendid afternoon, sharp and clear as a silver bell. Carlisle walked well, especially when one considers the sort of shoes she wore: she had the good free stride of one who walks for the joy of it and not because that is the only conceivable way to get somewhere. Nevertheless, just as she reached the Byrd doorstep, she was overhauled by the Cooneys, her poor but long-stepping relatives. There were only two of them this time, Henrietta and Charles, better known, from one end of the town to the other, as Hen and Chas.

The Cooneys, who were young people of about her own age, greeted Carlisle with their customary simple gaiety. Both exclaimed over her striking attire, Charles adding to his sister:

"Let Uncle Dudley stand next to Cally there, Hen--I'm better-looking than you, anyway."

"I'd like to see a vote on that first. Recognize _mine_, Cally?" cried Hen--"the brown you gave me last fall? First appearance since I steamed and turned it. It'll stand a dye next year, too. But we haven't seen you for a long time, my dear. Did you know Aunt Rose Hopwood's staying with us now?"

"Oh, is she? I hadn't heard, Hen. How is she?"

"She's bad off," said Chas, cheerfully. "Deaf, lame, and cruel poverty's hit her right at her old home address. I guess she'll come live with us later on. Come walk out to King's Bridge for an appetite."

Carlisle, with an impatient foot on the Byrds' bottom step, glanced from Chas to Hen, smiling a little. Her cousins were well-meaning young people, and she liked them in a way, but she often found their breezy assurance somewhat amusing.

"Thank you, Chas," said she, "but I've an engagement with mamma. I'm to pick her up here now. I hope Aunt Molly's well?"

"Fine," said Hen. "Come and see us, Cally. Why don't you come to supper to-morrow night?"

The lovely cousin obviously hesitated.

"Aw, Cally doesn't want to come yell in Aunt Rose Hopwood's trumpet, Hen--"

"Aunt Rose Hopwood's going home to-morrow."

"First I've heard of it. Frankly I doubt your word."

For that Hen idly smote Chas's shins with her silver-handled umbrella (Carlisle's gift three Christmases before), at which Chas cried _ouch_ in such a manner as to attract the attention of bystanders. Henrietta liked this umbrella very much and commonly carried it, like a cane, through all droughts.

"But," said she, reconsidering, "I think Hortense'll be off to-morrow, that's so. Well, come the first soon night you feel like it--"

Carlisle had been doing some considering also, her conscience pricking her on account of the cousinly duty, long overdue.

"I've an engagement to-morrow--so sorry," she said, rather hastily. "But how about one night early next week, say--Thursday, if that would suit--?"

Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And so forth....

Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds' vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys' lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's _tête-à-tête_ with Hugo Canning!

VII

How the Great Parti, pursued or pursuing to Cousin Willie Kerr's apartment, begins thundering again.

Bellingham Court was the very newest of those metropolitan-looking apartment hotels which the rapid growth and complicating "standards" of the city was then calling into being. It was on the most fashionable street, Washington, in one of the most fashionable parts of it. And it had bell-boys, onyxine vestibules, and hot and cold water in nearly every room.

It also had a fat black hall-porter in a conductor's uniform, and this functionary informed Mrs. Heth that Mr. Kerr was momentarily detained at the bank, but had telephoned orders that any callers he might have were to be shown right up. The Heth ladies were shown right up.

Willie's new apartment consisted of a sitting-room, a fair-sized bedroom, and a very small bath. About the sitting-room the ladies wandered, glancing disinterestedly at the Kerr Penates. Presently Mrs. Heth opened doors and peeped into what lay beyond.

"It's a good thing he's small," said she. "H'm, that thing looks like a foot-tub."

Carlisle, looking over her mother's shoulder, laughed. "You couldn't splash about much.... You shave at that, I suppose."

"I don't. One shaves. There's a better apartment he could have got for the same price, but manlike he didn't find it out till too late. What's this--bedroom?... Yes, there's the bed."

They stepped back into the sitting-room, and Carlisle, strolling aimlessly about, became a little silent and distrait.

It is possibly true, as crusty single-men affirm, that a certain solacing faculty inheres in beautiful ladies: the faculty, namely, of explaining all apparently unwelcome situations upon theories quite flattering to themselves. But Carlisle surely needed no such make-believe in this moment of rather excited expectancy.

Of course she knew well enough what inferences Evey and Mattie, for instance (in both of whom there was a certain amount of the cat), would have drawn from the fact that Mr. Canning, last month, had not seemed to follow up in anyway their very interesting meeting at the Beach. She alone knew the real circumstances, however, and it had become quite clear to her that Mr. Canning's demeanor was only what was to be expected. He was the proudest of men, and (that awful night at the Beach) she had expelled him from her presence like a schoolboy. Naturally he had been annoyed and offended--stung even into the rudeness of abandoning her in a summer-house to an entire stranger. How could you possibly wonder (unless feline) that he, great unsocial at best, had thereafter remained silent inside his fort?...

"How like a man," breathed Mrs. Heth, glancing at her watch, "to pick out this day of all others to be detained at a bank."

She had sat down in one of the bachelor chairs, to take her weight from her feet, which hurt her by reason of new shoes half a size too small. The sitting-room was pleasant enough in a strictly orthodox fashion, and was illuminated by an electric-lamp on the black centre-table. Mrs. Heth, who had helped Willie with his furnishings, had considered it the prettiest electrolier that fourteen dollars would buy in the town during the week before last. Carlisle had come to a halt before the bookcase. It was a mission-oak case, with leaded glass doors. For the moment it might be said to represent rather the aspirations of a bibliophile than their fulfilment, since it contained but seven books, huddled together on the next-to-the-top shelf. Carlisle swung open the door, and examined the Kerr library title by title: "Ben Hur," "The Little Minister," "Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life" (from his loving Grandma--Xmas 1904), "Droll Tales," "Religio Medici" (Grandma again--Xmas 1907), "The Cynic's Book of Girls"--

Carlisle laughed merrily. "Willie has two copies of 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'... I'd never thought of him as a divil with the women somehow."

"He could never get Helen Tellford to _look_ at him."

"'Religio Medici.' Is it religious or medical? It might be either, by my Latin."

"One of those faith-healing things, I suppose. Emmanuel Movement. I'd sit down if I were you.... Ah! There's Willie at last. Mind, Carlisle,--don't you hear the steps?"

"Well, we're invited to look at his things--aren't--"

Her careless voice died, as both together became aware that these could not possibly be the steps of a proprietor. The approaching feet halted decorously without, and instead of the door's bursting open there came only a manly knock upon it. Carlisle looked at her mother, and found that her mother was looking at her with quite a tense expression. This certainly was not the way they had wanted things to happen....

"Possibly it's only a tradesman," murmured Mrs. Heth, with hope; and she added in a commanding voice: "Come in."

The door opened, with a certain stately dubiousness. Full on the threshold stood Mr. Hugo Canning, no less: an impressive presence in loose motor-coat of black fur. Mr. Canning stood agaze; it was to be seen that he was taken considerably by surprise.

For the smallest known fraction of a second, the tableau held. Then action began, dashingly.

"Why, Mr. Canning!" cried Mrs. Heth, heartily, rising. "What a very pleasant surprise! So you're back with us again? Delightful!"

Mr. Canning came forward; he bowed with fine civility over the proffered hand, voicing great pleasure in this remeeting. And then his eye went flitting, with a certain interrogativeness, from mother to daughter.

"Such an agreeable coincidence," beamed the good little lady. "Or perhaps this is not your first visit here, like ours? When did you return? Carlisle...."

Carlisle, having forgotten more about the Great Game than her mother would ever know, was far from effusive. Advancing half a step from the bookcase, and offering the tips of white-gloved fingers, she said, smiling perfunctorily:

"How nice to see you. And Willie Kerr, our very delinquent host,--do you bring us news of him?"

"I'm told that he's unluckily detained downtown. But, indeed, it's charming to find you awaiting him too, Miss Heth."

Mrs. Heth sparkled, and declaimed of Willie's remissness. Canning stood in the middle of the floor, hat and stick under his arm, looking without pretences at Carlisle. Under the agreeable indifference of his seemingly amused eye, she felt her color mounting, which only brightened her loveliness. Perhaps it was not quite so easy to maintain the reasoning of beautiful ladies here on the firing-line, as in the maidenly cloister at home.

"Why are men the unreliable sex, Mr. Canning?" said she, laughing. "Here Willie begs us for days to visit him at his rooms--I believe he thinks there's something rather gay and wicked about it, you know, though mamma picked them out for him!--and assures us on his honor as a banker that he is in every afternoon by five at the very latest. So we inconvenience ourselves and come. And now--look!"

"At what, Miss Heth? I trust nothing serious has happened?"

"Ah, but our time is so valuable, you see. We must leave without even saying how-do-you-do. Don't you think so, mamma?"

"So it seems," said Mrs. Heth, and sank into a chair.

Canning smiled.

"Very pleasant little diggings he has here," he observed casually--"my first glimpse of them. I happened to be coming in town on business, and Kerr invited me particularly to drop in to see them, at half after five sharp."

"Really! How _very_ fortunate we are! But, oh, why didn't you come a little earlier and charitably help us through the wait? We've had nothing on earth to do but read and reread 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'"

"Had I ventured to hope that you were to be here," said he, with a little bow--and was there the slightest, most daring stress upon the pronouns?--"you may be sure I should have arrived long ago."

Carlisle, dauntless, looked full at him and laughed audaciously.

"I recall you now as a maker of the very prettiest speeches. And the worst of it is--_I_ like them!... Mamma," she added, with fine, gay courage, "it is sad to go just as the guests arrive. Yet don't you think, really--"

"I'm afraid we must, my dear. Willie's evidently--"

But the need for tactics was fortunately at an end. If Carlisle had drawn it rather fine, it was yet not too fine. The door flew open, and in bounded Willie. Destiny climbed to the wheel once more.

Willie, though heated with hurry and worry, handled the situation loyally and well, expressing just the right amount of surprise at the coincidental assemblage, in just the right places. Of his detention at the bank (where, as we may infer from his long incumbency, he discharged a tellership to the complete satisfaction of the depositing public), he spoke in bitter detail.

"If you'll excuse the French, ma'am," he summed up, "a man might's well be in hell as ten cents out."

"Why, I do think, Willie," said Mrs. Heth, "that rather than take all that trouble, I should simply have paid the ten cents from my own pocket and said no more about it."

But even Willie, perfect host though he was, did not see his way clear at the moment to explaining the banking system to a lady.

"You might call it sporting pride, ma'am," he said, patiently, and proposed a little tour of the rooms.

The tour, in the nature of the case, was a little one, almost a fireside tour, and soon over. Willie simply did not have the material to spin it out indefinitely. Then refreshments were hospitably insisted on: tea--muffins--something of that sort, you know--and Willie cried down his order through the telephone, which had already been duly admired--one in every room, etc. Next from a hidden cubby he produced siphon-water, glasses, and a black bottle of Scotch. Needed it, said he--digging two hours for ten cents out.

"Like the quarters, hey, Canning? Gad, may move again. Man across the hall--bigger rooms--wants to sublet. Like you to look at 'em sometime, Cousin Isabel. Say, Cousin Isabel, by the bye," he added, expertly putting ice into three glasses, "ran down that chap V. Vivian for you, just now. Fact. Old Sleuth Kerr--catches 'em alive. He's Armistead Beirne's nephew--just turned up here--what d'you think of that?"

"Mr. Beirne's _nephew_!" echoed Carlisle Heth, without the slightest strategy.

"Vivian? Who on _earth_, Willie?" demanded Mrs. Heth, puzzled; and looked, not at Willie, but at Carlisle.

"Don't you remember?--chap that wrote that fierce slush attackin' the Works, month or so ago? That's the bird.--Got rye right here, if you prefer it, Canning.--Walked a block with him and old Beirne just now. Remember Amy Beirne--eloped with some inventor fellow--what's his name--oh, sure, Vivian, haha! Lived in Alabama. Here's regards."

Mrs. Heth now recalled the name, and also having asked Willie, long since, to identify it. However, she thought the topic just a little inopportune at the moment.

"Ah, yes. Mr. Beirne's nephew--well! I hope you made this _very_ mild, indeed, Willie? You know I rarely consent to.... He might be better employed, one would think, than vilifying the Works, but there's no accounting for tastes, as I always say."

"Just water with a dash, ma'am. Oh, he's one of these slumming chaps, seems--kind of a Socialist, y' know--"

"The Works?" queried Mr. Canning. "Ah, yes! Mr. Heth's--of course! Is a cigarette permitted?..."

Carlisle, who had been gazing into the fire and acquiring information, roused. "Oh, here's your tea, Willie!" said she. "How very good it looks!"

Unlike mamma, she did not in the least mind Mr. Canning's hearing mention of the Works, even under attack. Shame at trade was not in her: she was confidently proud of the great mute author of her brilliant being. And it was by this pride, dating back many years and untouched by any late personal impression, that no "attack" could gain standing in her mind. At seven, she had one day asked her father, "Papa, what _are_ the Works?"--and papa had smiled and answered, "It's the place where all our money comes from." To this day, her mind's eye called up a great white marble palace, something like the New York Public Library, only bigger, from the front of which, through an enormous cornucopia, poured a ceaseless flood of golden dollars....

"I've no patience with Socialism," said Mrs. Heth, rising. "Where do you want your things put, Willie? Divide all our property up equally with the lazy and drunken classes, to-day, and by to-morrow the hard-working, well-to-do people would have won every bit of it back again. I'm surprised everybody can't see that, aren't you, Mr. Canning?"

"I'm astonished at their blindness," said Canning, gazing at the floor. "Vivian is clearly off his chump at all points."

"That's right--screw loose," said Willie, genially. "Set 'em here, boy. From the feller's literary style, I'd expected a regular riproarin' fire-eater. Gad, no! Face like a child's, kinder cute-lookin'! Fact. Polite as peaches. You pour, Carlisle, will you?"

The folding-table was set. The tea-things were tenderly arranged upon it by the dusky waiter. The little company moved and shifted. Host Kerr surveyed the pleasant scene with no little secret pride of proprietorship. His room--his tea the ripping-looking girl was serving on his patent table--his hireling just backing out of the door.... However, his also was the manifest duty in the premises; and, bestirring himself, he fetched tea and cakes for Mrs. Heth and invited her to sit with him beside the mission-oak bookcase.

Canning had dropped into a chair near the fireplace, one yard from the tea-table. He wore without concealment the air of waiting to be entertained. Carlisle poured, and thought that in ten minutes, or at most fifteen, this would be all over: if the present _tête-à-tête_ was to lead to another, and so on through a gorgeous climacteric sequence, it was now, or it was never. Here was an exciting thought, with stage-fright possibilities to some; but Carlisle, confident through her many testimonials, merely smiled prettily and asked Mr. Canning if he would not take one or more of the cunning little pink cakes. It appeared that Mr. Canning would; pink, he said, was his color.

"I believe we parted rather suddenly," said Carlisle, continuing to smile a little to herself, "the last time I had this pleasure. Do you remember?"

He desired to know if she could possibly conceive his memory to be so short.

"I was immensely mortified," said she, "to learn that I had given you a cold--it was a cold, wasn't it?--or whooping-cough?--by keeping you so long in the night air that evening. I've worried so about it all these weeks. _Am_ I too late to inquire?"

"I kick myself to have gone away leaving you anxious," said Canning, with entire gravity. "The attack, as it chanced, was transitory. There was no coughing--whooping or otherwise. The trouble was purely localized, in the head, and--"

"In the imagination, might one almost say?"

"In the head. You must have heard somewhere of cold in the head? A well-known though unfashionable complaint, throughout the north. I, on the other hand, was much troubled about you, whom I was compelled, by your command, to leave to the mercies of the nocturnal caller. However, Kerr assured me, before I was obliged to go away, that you had come through alive and uninjured."

"Ah, but did I?"... She added, after a brief pause: "Should you call a biting lecture on one's shortcomings from a strange man no injury?"

"But surely, speaking to that topic alone, my supplanter could not have spun it out for two hours, while I, luckless one, tramped alone on the piazza."

"Two hours?... As I say," Carlisle laughed at him, nibbling a little pink cake, "I like your pretty speeches."

The fire crackled merrily. The masculine paraphernalia stood, convenient. Canning stretched out an indolent but man's sized hand and refilled his glass. From across the room Kerr's voice sounded, conveying enthusiasm founded on the solid rock of patience:

"And this little poem about roses and how cold your nose is--I must really show you that, ma'am. Spicy, you know! And the witty picture!"

"I'll compromise on an hour," said Canning. "And what hideous foibles did the visitor charge you with to banish me that long?"

"With being quite heartless."

"Oh."

"With having nothing inside to be kind with. For these reasons he felt quite sorry for me."

"Ah! Is it possible that you could remember _my_ suggesting, just a thought before him--"

"I do remember. But, you see, this man is quite crazy. I suspected it then, but I know it now, for you said so not five minutes ago."

Canning looked at her.

"Your words," said Carlisle, "were that he was off his chump at all points. I hope mamma isn't listening, for she doesn't like me to use slang, and will not believe me when I say the men teach it to me."

"Oh!... Was _that_ Vivian!"

Carlisle nodded. "It makes it all quite interesting, doesn't it? To be felt sorry for by a man who writes really wicked attacks on one's father's perfectly lovely business. Only I knew all along he wasn't really quite right.... I hope you've had a very happy trip?"

"Thank you. I don't believe I have, particularly."

"Oh, I'm sorry!... Have you suffered at all from the blues, since you got well of the cold and escaped at midnight from your little fort?"

Canning continued to look at her.

"I've felt lonely," said he, "when the moon shines bright."

"You?"

A knock fell upon the door, making all look up; and Kerr bustling forward, first opened the door, and then stepped out into the hall. He returned in a moment, his round face puckered dubiously.

"It's Johnson," he explained--"chap across the hall, with the better apartment. Wanted to show it to me now. He's living down the river, and's going off in half an hour. H'm. Well, guess I better let it go till the next time he's in."

"Don't mind us, old chap," said Canning, without hesitation.

"If you wanted mamma to look at it with you, Willie? Perhaps--"

Mrs. Heth was already on her feet.

"Nonsense, Willie! Of course get the man while he's here--and _I'm_ here too! Across the hall?--it won't take us five minutes--"

"All right'm--thank you," agreed Willie, with evident pleasure. He added, smiling roguishly: "You two be trusted five minutes without a chaperon?"

Carlisle laughed dazzlingly.

"Five years, Willie. Mr. Canning is absolutely safe."

Mrs. Heth, saying archly that they would not absent themselves quite so long as that, glided out. Willie followed, engrossed in Johnson. The door was left half open. Johnson was presented. Their voices died away across and down the hall....

A momentary silence fell upon Mr. Canning and Carlisle, thus deserted in the Kerr sitting-room. It appeared to embarrass neither. Having risen, Canning stood at the mantel, sipping his Scotch and looking down at her. Carlisle went on cutting bread and butter, or something of that sort. She felt agreeably excited. In the manner of the shining passer-by she had observed just that progressiveness noted on the occasion of their two other meetings: faintly ironic boredom yielding slowly to passive interest, passive interest warming steadily....

She had taken off her coat, at Kerr's solicitation; she sat with lowered lashes, the glow of the fire upon her cheek. To what measure she engaged and intrigued the eye, Mr. Canning had had seven weeks to forget. No dull wit, we may suppose, in appreciation of feminine masterpieces, he seemed to see it suddenly with some force now, standing and sipping the pleasurable Scotch. And he began to speak in a voice not previously heard in Kerr's apartment.

"Lonely, Miss Heth, when the moon shines bright--blue, too, now that I think of it.--You are good enough to ask if I've had a happy trip. Happy!... Weeks of moping from dull place to duller, months ditto staring one in the face, and for this present--the rural villa of one's estimable cousins, with the sun and the stars for company. Really does it seem such a trifle to you to be plucked up by the ears from one's environment, transplanted bodily league on league, and set down on an empty road four miles from nowhere?"

"Nowhere? You are cruel, Mr. Canning. Four miles travelled in the right direction might bring you to a good deal. Only mountains never really come to Mahomets, not in life."

"Ah, but I'm no Mahomet in these months, alas! to scale mountains or not as the whim strikes me. If I were!... But no, no!--my sentence, you see, is expressly to avoid all mountain-climbing with whatever else is pleasant--to play the invalid, to rest, breathe deep, sleep and coddle. And for excitement--it is my revered mother's own suggestion--why, write a book if I like--my impressions of the New South, or any other reason why! Write a book! What have I to do with writing, think I, of a long morning or a longer night! I'm no scrivening professor, but blood and flesh.... You couldn't imagine the number of times I've been tempted to chuck all the mild climate tomfoolery, and cut away for lights and home!"

Carlisle gazed up at him, her chin upon her ungloved hand. Was there pose in these depictions of Mr. Hugo Canning as a morose recluse? She thought not: his light bitterness rang true enough, the note of a man really half-desperate with ennui. And she read his remarks as a subtle sign of his confidence, an acknowledgment of acquaintance between them, a bond....

"But you can't do it, I suppose?--if your health demands that you put up with us a little while longer?"

"I seem rude?--of course. But my meaning is quite the contrary.... May you, Miss Heth, never know the sorrows of the transplanted and the idle--"

He broke off, staring with apparent absentness.

Much interested, Carlisle said, toying with her teaspoon:

"I didn't think you rude at all. It seems to me perfectly natural that you should be both bored and blue--especially if you don't feel quite well.... But surely a little mild pleasuring during rest hours isn't forbidden as injurious to throats?"

"A little?"

"Of course you think we haven't much to offer, but really there is _some_ amusement to be had here. Really! Perhaps a little gambolling now and then--"

"My curse," said Canning, turning his dark eyes down upon her, "is that I can't learn when to stop. Once I begin, I am never satisfied till I've gambolled all over the place."

Carlisle's eyes fell before his gaze. "This," said she, drawing on a glove, "is a small place."

"You appear to invite me to gambol?"

"I? Oh, no! These are matters that men decide for themselves."

"Possibly the fact is that you invite without desiring to do so."

"Then what," said she, suddenly laughing up at him, "should I have to think of your rudeness in declining my invitation all these days?"

She rose on that, looking about for coat and furs.

"But you must not think of going," said Canning, instantly.

The thundering of his feet grew very audible now.

"The instant mamma comes back. She is staying a long time, isn't she? Do you realize that we've been here hours and hours, and that it looks like midnight outdoors?"

"Still, it would be a satisfaction to finish one conversation with you. We seem to remain all beginnings."

"What end is there to such conversations as this, Mr. Canning?"

"Conversations end in many ways, Miss Heth. I have known them to end like journeys."

The man left the fire, advanced to her side, took the modish wrap from her hands. But he did not at once offer to hold it for her. He stood two feet away from her, and a gleam came into his eyes, faint and a little cold.

"But I wonder," said he, musingly, "if what two men told you in a summer-house one night isn't quite true, after all."

"That I have no heart, you mean?"

"And don't know the meaning of being kind. Easter lilies are pretty on a tomb, but they were never my favorite flowers."

"No," she said, "it is not true. My heart is here"--she touched the place--"it is large--and I am, oh, very, very kind."

"You are rather adorable, you know," said his abrupt voice. "Here is your coat."

She was warm to the eye, animating, of an exquisite figure. Her nearness released a faint fragrance. She slipped her left arm into the sleeve he offered, and looking up at him, half over her shoulder, said with a mocking little laugh:

"And _you_ know that kind-hearted girls are always awfully credulous.... I sweep you off your feet. My eyes _intoxicate_ you, drive you _mad!_ Go on. I've told you that I like your pretty speeches."

"I do not always stop with speeches--you wild, sweet thing...."

So Mr. Canning; and with that speech he did in fact stop most abruptly, and at once turned a step away. In the sharp brief silence, Carlisle put on her other sleeve for herself.

From the hall, almost at the door, it seemed, had sounded the brisk approaching voices of Mrs. Heth and Kerr; presumably also of Johnson. Destiny, having had its way with their absence, was returning them upon the dot. In the sitting-room, talk of such matters as Miss Heth's wild sweetness necessarily came to a sudden conclusion.

The big man lounged with folded arms. His look was slightly annoyed.

"One more beginning, and you have your way again, after all! This becomes a habit," said he, with his faint ironic note. "Miss Heth, I am as you say quite dull and safe: the dullest of all creatures, a play valetudinarian, bored to ill-manners at times, as you have observed, by large overdoses of my own society. Could you take pity on me? Could you and Mrs. Heth give me the pleasure of dining with me, and Kerr, at the Arlington, perhaps,--or wherever else you may prefer,--on the first evening you can spare for deeds of mercy?"

Carlisle looked at him, buttoning her glove. Her lips smiled; but in truth she was a little unsteadied by the exciting moment just passed through, by the buoyant sense of triumph welling up within her. Were not all men, however exalted or difficult, alike her playthings at her pleasure?

"Of course I shall first beg," added Mr. Canning, "to be permitted to pay my respects to you and Mrs. Heth--might I say to-morrow afternoon at five?"

"We shall be so glad to see you, if you care to come," said Carlisle, looking away from him. "As to dining, that would be very nice, of course,--but are you sure your health would--"

"Oh, confound my health!" cried the great hermit. "Promise me now that you will never speak the word in my presence again."

"I promise.... Only really--if my invitation to gambol should lead you to--"

"You are as God made you, Miss Heth. It's not your fault that you invite."

He gave her a look, and, turning, swung wide the door for the chaperon.

VIII

Supper with the Cooneys: Poor Relations, but you must be Nice to them; of Hen Cooney's friend V.V., as she irritatingly calls him; also relating how Cally is asked for her Forgiveness, and can't seem to think what to say.

The Heths' poor relations, the Cooneys, lived in a two-story frame house on Centre Street, four doors from a basement dry-cleaning establishment, and staring full upon the show-window of an artificial-limb manufactory, lately opened for the grisly trade.

The interval between the families of Heth and Cooney was as these facts indicate. If Thornton Heth had married an ambitious woman, and he had, his sister Molly had displayed less acumen. The Cooney stock, unlike the Thompson as it was, deplorably resembled a thousand other stocks then reproducing its kind in this particular city. The War had flattened it out, cut it half through at the roots, and it had never recovered, as economists count recovery, and wouldn't, for a generation or two at the least. Accursed contentment flowed in the young Cooneys' blood. They had abilities enough, but the sane acquisitive gift was not in them. They were poor, but unashamed. They were breezy, keen, adventurous, without fatigue. They claimed the gasoline-cleaning establishment as their private garage, challenging any car under six thousand dollars to beat the expensive smell. A large and very popular group of family jokes centred about the plant of the legman.

Carlisle Heth "came to supper" with the Cooneys, as agreed, on the Thursday following the magic afternoon at Willie's apartment. The week intervening had been, as it chanced, one of the most interesting and titillating periods of her life; by the same token, never had family duty seemed more drearily superfluous. However, this periodic, say quarterly, mark of kinsman's comity was required of her by her father, a clannish man by inheritance, and one who, feeling unable to "do" anything especial for his sister's children, yet shrank from the knocking suspicion of snobbery. In the matter of intermealing, reciprocity was formally observed between the two families. Four times per annum the Cooneys were invited in a body to dine at the House of Heth, Mrs. Heth on these occasions speaking caustically of her consort's relatives, and on Christmas sending gifts of an almost offensively utilitarian nature.

The noisy cousins filled the dingy little parlor to overflowing; this, though Mrs. Cooney and Hen, having rushed out for the welcome, had at once rushed back to the preparations for supper. For it appeared that Hortense was absent once again, having asked to "git to git" a night off, to see her step-daughter allianced to a substitute Pullman porter. The two ladies, however, were only gone before, not lost, and through the portières joined freely in the conversation, which rattled on incessantly in the Cooney style.

Carlisle sat on the rusty sofa, listening absently to the chatter. Her unaspiring uncle-in-law, the Major, who was vaguely understood to be "in insurance" at present, parted his long coat-tails before the Baltimore heater, and drifted readily to reminiscence. Louise and Theodore (as the family Bible too stiffly knew Looloo and Tee Wee) sat together on a divan, indulging in banter, with some giggling from Looloo--none from grave Theodore. Chas informally skimmed an evening paper in a corner, with comments: though the truth was that precious little ever appeared in any newspaper which was news to the keen young Cooneys....

"And I said to Hen," observed Major Cooney to his fashionable niece, having now got his short history of the world down as far as the '80s--"now stop your whining around me, Miss. If you've got to whine, go down to the cellar and stand in the corner. Well--"

"Why could she whine in the cellar, father? That point isn't clear, sir," said Tee Wee's deep voice.

"Because it was a whine-cellar!" cried Hen, through the portières.

There was mild laughter at this, rather derisive on the part of all but the Major; but when Chas, glancing up from his paper, remarked crisply: "Aw, Miss Mamie! Like to speak to you a minute, please!"--the merriment seemed mysteriously to acquire a more genuine ring. Carlisle politely inquired who Miss Mamie was.

Looloo, who alone seemed the least bit awed by the presence of her dazzling cousin, undertook to explain.

"She's Mamie Willis, Cally,--I don't believe you know her. Well, you see she's always making the most atrocious puns, and is very proud of them--thinks she's quite a wit. So, you see, when anybody makes an awfully bad pun, like Hen's--"

"Brightest thing I've heard to-night," screamed Hen, defiantly, through the curtains.

"Aw, Loo!" came her mother's soft voice from the unseen. "Run upstairs and get half a dozen napkins, my child. The wash is in the basket on my bed."

"We always pretend like we're repeating it to Miss Mamie, just for fun," concluded Looloo. "Yes'm, mother!"

"Oh! I see," said Carlisle.

She had donned for the coming to supper a plain house-dress of soft dark-green silk, two summers old and practically discarded. ("This old thing, my dear! Why, it positively belongs in the _rag-bag!_") She never dressed much for the Cooneys. Also, by wholly mechanical processes of adjustment to environment, her manner and air became simpler, somewhat unkeyed: she unconsciously folded away her more shining wings. Nevertheless, there was about her to-night a fleeting kind of radiance which had caught the notice of more than one of her cavalier cousins, notably of pretty little Looloo, who had kissed the visitor shyly (for a Cooney) at greeting, and said, "Oh, Cally! You do look _so_ lovely!" Cally herself was aware of an inner buoyance oddly at variance with the drab Cooney _milieu_. Recent progress in the great game had more than blotted out all memory of little mishaps at the Beach....

Starting aloft for the napkins, Looloo was adroitly tripped by Tee Wee, and fell back upon him with a little shriek. Instead of checking the tumult that followed, Major Cooney, including Carlisle in the proceedings with a mischievous wink, called out: "Give it to him, Loo! Give it to him!" Loo, having got her small hand in his hair, gave it to him, good-fashion. Tee Wee moaned, and Chas made a fairly successful effort to gag him with the newspaper. In the midst of the uproar, Mrs. Cooney's gentle voice could be heard calling, "Supper, supper," and Hen, entering with a large dinner-bell, conceived the whimsey of ringing it loudly in everybody's ear.

Presently, after much noise and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest to the younger Cooneys.

"She's nursing a little bunch of violets she got three days ago," Tee Wee explained to Carlisle. "Says she's going to wear 'em to the Masons' to-morrow, though anybody can see they can't possibly live through the night."

"I thought I saw a purple box in the front window as I drove up," said Carlisle. "Is it a secret who sent them?"

"'Bout forty," said Chas, making a fine one-hand catch of a napkin. "You'd hardly call 'em a bunch, Tee Wee--more like a nosegay."

"Pass this coffee to Cally, son."

"Bob Dunn sent 'em, Cally, down at the bookstore," said Looloo, sweetly. "And he wrote Hen a love-letter Thanksgiving beginning, 'Darling Miss Cooney.'"

"That so?" said Tee Wee, who was just home from the University for Christmas and not up on all the news yet. "How'd he sign it--'Your loving Mr. Dunn'?"

"'Ave some werry nice 'am, Cally?"

"Yes--thank you. But do go on and tell me about Mr. Dunn. Does Hen like him?"

"No, but she loves violets," said Tee Wee. "Made me sit up half of last night, fanning 'em for her."

"Loo, pass Charles's plate, daughter."

Carlisle surveyed the noisy table as from some lofty peak. She knew that the Cooney habit of monopolizing all conversation, and dashing straight through every topic, was only their poor-but-proud way of showing off: sometimes it was a little irritating, but to-night only rather fatiguing to the ear-drums. The children came two years apart, as regular as some kind of biannual publication; Looloo, seventeen, being the youngest, and also the best-looking and the most popular in the family. But then all the Cooneys were good-looking, including the Major, and all were popular in the family. In fact, they were more like a house-party than a family at all: and in some ways they rather resembled a queer little secret fraternity, enjoying strange delights and responding with shrieks to unintelligible catchwords.

To-night the talk was more than usually disjointed, owing to the regrettable absence of Hortense. There was constant jumping up, infinite "passing." Mr. Tee Wee, manipulating the water-pitcher from the side-table, complained aside to his mother at the universal thirst. Chas, it seemed, had charge of the heating-up of the later crops of biscuits: he kept springing off to the kitchen, now and then returning with a heaping platter of what he called his little brown beauties.

In the midst of the confusion, Hen strode in, looking somewhat defiant, and instantly drew the fires of all.

"How're the little patients, Hen? Number 9 looked pretty sick to me this--"

"Best thing I know is running 'em up and down the hall, and then brisk massage--"

"Gargled 'em yet, Hen?"

Hen, laughing wildly, stood her ground.

"That's all right!" she retorted to the last sally, which happened to be Chas's. "There are swains in this town who might boost their standing a little if only _they'd_ patronize the florist once in a while!"

This drew loud approbation, and Chas (who was understood to be very attentive to a Miss Leither--_Leither!_--of the Woman's Exchange), laughing with the majority, threw up his hands, saying, "Hellup! Hellup!"

He fled to the kitchen to look after his little brown beauties. The noisy supper proceeded. Presently Major Cooney, the easy-going and reminiscent, gave the conversation a new tack.

"And where are your violets, Cally, my dear?" he asked, directing one of his mischievous winks at Looloo. "You must have a flower-shop full at home, if what we hear is true."

Carlisle, on the point of saying something slightly caustic about Chas as a swain, found the tables abruptly turned. All the Cooneys were looking at her. She said with equanimity that, on the contrary, she got so few flowers that when she did have any, she sat up at night with them just like Hen.

"And I'll wear 'em to the Masons' to-morrow night, too!" said Hen, throwing round a look which challenged contradiction.

"Now, cousin, what's the use?" said Chas, reëntering with his platter. "The Visitor is giving you the rush of your young life, and we're all on. Take a handful of my beauties."

"You mean Mr. Canning? My dear Chas, if he only were!"

There was no rebuffing the Cooneys. They began their little third-degree system.

"He called on you last Thursday afternoon, didn't he, Cally?" said Looloo, laughing, with a little face for her daring.

"One call, my dear child!"

"You went motoring with him on Friday," said Theodore, gravely, "and stopped for tea at the Country Club at 6.20, you taking chocolate--"

"One motor-ride!"

"You dined with him at the Arlington on Monday night, table decorations being small diamond necklaces--"

"Good heavens!" laughed Carlisle, coloring a little. "All this is terribly circumstantial! I had no idea my movements were--"

"Movement is useless--don't move, lady! We have you covered--"

"There, there, children!--stop showing your jealousy," laughed Mrs. Cooney; and her eyes rested with a brief wistfulness on the shining niece who plumed eagle's feathers for flights where her daughters would never follow. "You'd all give your eye-teeth to be half as pretty and attractive as Cally ..."

"Yes'm," said Chas. "Well, then, Cally, have one more sardine, _please_. Nothing on earth for the complexion like these fat saline fellows that mother catches fresh every morning with her little hook and line.--Mind, _Loo_! You're joggling The Bowl."

Carlisle was hardly to be overwhelmed by the Cooneys' teasing, nor perhaps was she seriously displeased by it. Even less did the detail of her eccentric cousins' knowledge surprise her. If there was a fight or a fire, a _bon mot_ launched or a heart broken, money made or a death died, it invariably happened that one of the Cooneys was "just passing."...

In the middle of the table stood an object of shiny green crockery, which seemed to be a cross between a fruit-dish and a vase. Most of the table service was quite familiar to Carlisle, not a little of it having started life as Christmas presents from the Heths. But this crockery piece was new, and, upon Chas's admonition, its shiny hideousness caught and riveted her attention.

"Aunt Rose Hopwood's parting gift," said Tee Wee, softly, following her fascinated gaze. "Oh, Cally, ain't it boo'ful!"

"Theodore," said his mother, quite sharply, "I don't think your stay at the University has improved your manners."

Theodore colored abruptly and deeply. "Why, I--I was only funning, mother."

"I think that's a very poor sort of funning. And this applies to you, too, Charles."

"Yes'm," said Charles, starting.

The eldest-born made no other reply to his mother, nor did Theodore: meekness under parental reproof being another of the odd Cooney characteristics. Conversation seemed about to languish; but Mrs. Cooney, as if to show that the episode was closed, said equably:

"By the way, Cally, Cousin Martha Heth is coming next week to make us quite a visit. If you are not too busy, do try to come in some time, and cheer her up. She is going to take treatment for her nose and also for flatfoot, and I fear is very miserable."

After supper Carlisle sat on the sofa, feeling rather sardiney, and had an irritating talk with Aunt Molly, the subject being Chas's affair with his Leither, for the furtherance of which he was reported to be even now arraying himself upstairs. The complacence with which Aunt Molly regarded the threatened alliance--all possible objections being answered in her mind by a helpless, "If she is the girl he loves?"--was most provokingly characteristic of the Cooneys' fatal shiftlessness. And they were popular, too, in their way, and Chas might easily have married some socially prominent girl with money, instead of bringing a nameless saleslady into the family. It was impossible for Carlisle not to contrast her aunt's flabby sentimentalism with her own and her mother's sane, brilliant ambitiousness. If nothing succeeds like success, how doubly true it was that nothing fails like failure.

Carlisle had reached a point where she longed to shake her aunt, when Hen, who had been "scrapping up" with Looloo, came in, putting an end to the futile talk.

To her mother's demand if they had stayed to wash the dishes, Hen replied that they thought they might just as well: there weren't many, and the water was nice and hot. And Chas, hearing the clatter from aloft, had slipped down the backstairs in his suspenders, and lent a hand with the wiping. Mrs. Cooney chided, saying the dishes should have been left for Hortense, to-morrow morning before breakfast. She asked Hen whether Chas knew that his white vest had come in with the wash, and though Hen was pretty sure he did, Aunt Molly presently made an excuse and slipped away upstairs. She was a great hand for being by when the children were dressing to go out, and no one in the family, not even Chas, could tie a white lawn bow half so well as mother....

Looloo lingered in the dining-room, the family sitting-room of evenings, where Theodore had engaged his father at checkers. Hen, dropping into a chair by the sofa as if she were rather tired, asked Cally for gossip of the gay world, but Cally answered briefly out of regard for the chasm between: how contract the name and fame of Mr. Canning to fit this shabby little "parlor"? Hen was thin, colorless, and sweet-faced, and was known in the family (for the Cooneys, strange to say, knew of enormous individual differences among themselves) as the most thoughtful and considerate of the children, and as alone possessing the real Ambler nose. She rather suggested some slender pale flower, made to look at its slenderest and palest beside her cousin's rich blossom. Still, Hen was accounted a fine stenographer: they paid her sixty dollars a month at the bookstore, where she earned double at least.

For five minutes the talk between these two girls, of about the same age and blood but, it seemed, almost without a point of contact, was considerably perfunctory. Then, by an odd chance and in the wink of an eye, it took on a very distinct interest. Carlisle inquired if Hen had ever heard of a man named V. Vivian, said to be a nephew of Mr. Beirne; and Hen, with a little exclamation, and a certain quickening of countenance, replied that she had been raised with him. Moreover, she referred to him as V.V....

Though the Cooneys knew everybody, as well as everything, and though Carlisle had thought before now of putting an inquiry to Hen or Chas in this particular direction, the manner of her cousin's reply was a decided surprise to her, and somehow a disagreeable surprise.

"Oh! Really?" said she, rather coldly. "I understood--some one told me--that the man had just come here to live."

"He's just come _back_," explained Hen, with interest. "Why, he was born here, Cally, three doors from where we used to live down on Third Street--remember? Well, Dr. Vivian lived right there till he was sixteen or seventeen--"

"Why do you call him Dr. Vivian?"

"Well, that's what he is, you see. He's a doctor--medical man."

"He doesn't look in the least like a medical man to me," said Carlisle, as if that ought to settle something.

"Oh! You know him, then?"

"I have spoken to him," replied Carlisle, her gaze full on Hen's face. "You see a great deal of him, I suppose?"

"No, we don't," said Hen, with an odd air, suggestive of regret. "He keeps so terribly busy. Besides being sort of a missionary doctor, he's always working on dozens of grand schemes of one sort or another. His latest is to raise about a million dollars and buy the Dabney House for a Settlement! How's that for a tall one? He just mentioned it to me this morning, _en passant_, and says I must help him raise the million--"

"I suppose you didn't know that one of his grand schemes was to write a terrible article in the paper attacking papa and the Works?"

"Oh!" said Hen, plucking a thread from her old black skirt. "Oh, that letter in the 'Post,' long ago, you mean? Yes, I--knew about that; I wanted to speak to you about it at the time. Did you read it, Cally?"

"I glanced at it," said Cally, shortly.

Full of the interest of thundering feet as the week had been since Willie and mamma had given her the connecting link, Carlisle had in fact made a point of getting hold of a copy of the old paper containing that particular piece. Not being at all familiar with Works and newspapers, she had found the process involved with considerable perplexity and trouble, but she had felt amply rewarded in the end. The piece came to her hand like a weapon, against any possible remeeting with its remembered author.

Now she regarded Hen with steadily rising annoyance.

"What was your friend's idea in writing such outrageous stuff, do you know? Is he really crazy, as they say, or is he just an ordinary notoriety seeker?"

Colorless Hen looked rather hard at her pretty cousin. She allowed a perceptible pause to fall before she said:

"I thought you said you knew him."

"No; I said that I barely spoke to him once."

"If you only said good-morning to him--if you only _looked_ at him once, on the street--I don't see how you could possibly imagine.... Why, Cally, he's about the least self-seeking human being that ever lived. He's so absolutely un-self-seeking that he gives away every single thing he's got, to anybody that comes along and wants it. In the first place, he's giving away his life.... Some of his ideas may be visionary or mistaken, but--"

"I should think so, after glancing at his article. What _was_ his object, then, my dear?"

"Well, that's simple, I should think. He went to the Works, and thought that conditions there were bad, and being what would be called the reformer type, I suppose he thought it his duty to tell people so, so that the conditions would be corrected--"

"Well, really, Hen! Don't you know, if conditions _were_ bad at the Works,--whatever that may mean, and I for one have never felt that working-girls were entitled to Turkish baths and manicures,--don't you _know_ papa would correct what was wrong without being called a homicide by--by eccentric medical men?"

Hen hesitated, and then began: "Well, business is hard, Cally, and men in business--"

"Why doesn't your friend try attending to his own, then, the medical business, instead of interfering all the time with other people's?"

The Cooney answered quite easily: "You see, he'd say this _was_ his business." Then she smiled a little, thoughtfully, and said: "He'd say, Cally, that the world's all one family, and everybody's responsible for everybody else. The cute part about it is that he absolutely believes it.... And it worries him that people aren't as happy as they ought to be, the poor because they haven't anything to be happy with, the rich because they have too much. He and Mr. Beirne argue about that for hours. He's absolutely the only person I ever saw who really doesn't care for--"

"Why, my _dear_!" interrupted Carlisle, smiling rather dangerously. "You'll make me believe that you _admire_ the man immensely."

Hen laughed, and replied enigmatically: "Well, it's nice to feel free to admire what's admirable, don't you think so?"

"You do admire him very much?"

"I think he's perfectly precious," said Henrietta Cooney.

A peal of triumph from the rear room indicated that Major Cooney had reached the king-row in the teeth of bitter opposition. The peal came from Looloo, who should have been reading "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" with a big dictionary instead of hanging over her father's shoulder. Footsteps above suggested that Chas and Aunt Molly were making a careful toilet indeed for his call upon the obscure inamorata.

In the Cooney parlor, the two girls looked at each other. Carlisle tried hard to stare Hen down, and failed. In this moment she felt that she positively disliked her commonly negligible cousin. She had proved and re-proved to her own almost complete satisfaction that the man who had spoken the affronting words to her in the summer-house was a virulent religious fanatic, or (since she had read the piece) a crazy Socialist, like the man who had thrown the brick at papa, or both; almost certainly both. She was, it might be said, deeply and irrevocably committed to these beliefs: they settled and explained everything, and no more need to think or worry. It was simply not to be endured that Henrietta Cooney should cheekily sit there and try to unsettle everything, pretending....

"But understand me, Cally," Henrietta was saying, with provoking calm. "Of course I didn't like that letter a bit. You see--Heth wasn't any more than a name to V.V., a sort of symbol, when he wrote it. But I think it was a mistake all through, and I scolded him well at the time--"

"Oh, did you?" said Cally, her cheeks very pink. "I imagined you thought it perfectly precious of him to call papa a shameless homicide."

"Why, you know I never thought anything of the sort, Cally dear," answered Hen....

She seemed surprised by the signs of her cousin's displeasure (which really did seem excessive for a business controversy nearly two months old) and went on in what was evidently intended to be quite a soothing manner:

"You know, men are always hammering each other over things like this--it's really not nearly so awful as it sounds!... And honestly, Cally, that letter wasn't at all representative of V.V.--even though he probably thought it was! I mean ... he may talk in that fierce way about whole classes, but when it comes down to people--individuals--he's about the kindest person. What he really thinks is--well, that _everybody's good_.... Here's what I mean, Cally," said Hen, laughing a little, but with a certain eagerness too, as if it were of some importance for Cally to see what she meant.... "You know him, you say--slightly, of course. Well, instead of writing any more letters about the Works, do you know what it would be exactly like him to do now?"

"Throw a bomb in at papa's office-window?"

"No, speak to _you_ about it!" laughed Henrietta, unabashed--"some time when he sees you at Mr. Beirne's or somewhere--ask you in the nicest, most natural way to ask Uncle Thornton if he won't build a new Works! And you'd see from the way he looked at you that he was perfectly _sure_ you were going to do it, too!"

Cally gazed at Hen silently for at least ten seconds.

"I'd enjoy immensely having him try it," said she slowly. "_Immensely!_ I--I've wanted for some time to say a few words to him...."

At that moment the broken Cooney doorbell rang feebly, and within one minute V. Vivian came walking into the little parlor.

Supping at the Cooneys was not usually so interesting as this.

When the bell rang, Looloo, springing up from the Major's side in the dining-room, hurriedly pulled shut the folding-doors between. She apologized to her cousin through the diminishing crack, saying that it was probably awful Bob Dunn, and Cally could come hide in there with them if she'd rather. But Cally said briefly that she was not afraid, and had to go home in a little while anyway.

In the same moment Carlisle heard the voice of the caller in the hall, for whom Hen had just opened the door. She recognized this voice at the first word. And she involuntarily rose in the Cooney parlor, feeling the oddest, suddenest, most unreasoning impulse to go at once into the dining-room, after all, and be with Looloo, and watch them play checkers for a little while....

It was the surprise of it; nothing more. And Carlisle overcame that impulse. She remained standing motionless, reconsidering as by lightning flashes the quite complicated point of etiquette that so suddenly confronted her. What was a lady's proper attitude toward a nobody who has called her father a shameless homicide and herself a God-pitiful poor little thing? There was no experience to guide here. But clearer and clearer it seemed to become to Cally that to hold any converse with such an one could only be, after all, essentially debasing. Icy indifference was the stingingest rebuke....

Henrietta came through the door, with the lame medical man behind her. Without looking at him, Cally gathered that the man found the sight of her properly disquieting.

"You know my cousin, Miss Heth, I believe--_Doctor_ Vivian, Cally."

"Oh!... How do you do!" said the doctor.

Carlisle, not advancing from the sofa-side, said:

"I remember Dr. Vivian."

"Well, sit down, both of you," said Hen.

And then Henrietta, with that audacious forwardness which the Cooneys mistook for humor, smiled treacherously at her cousin over the caller's shoulder, and said:

"And entertain each other a moment, won't you? I have _got_ to speak to mother...."

On that Hen left them. Through some bias in its ancient hinges, the parlor door swung to behind her. It shut with a loud click. From behind the other closed doors, the merry voices of the checker-players and rooter grew very audible.

Despite the hostess's cordial injunction, the two young people in the shut Cooney parlor did not immediately sit down and begin to entertain each other. Both remained standing exactly where Hen had left them, and there ensued a hiatus of entertainment just long enough to be quite distinctly appreciable.

Then the absurdity of her--Miss Heth's--feeling constraint before this Mr.--no, Dr.--Vivian, this friend of the Cooneys and malicious attacker of the Cooneys' relatives' characters, rushed over the girl inspiritingly. Then it occurred to her simply to incline her head coldly, and leave the man without a word: dignified that, yet possibly open to misconstruction. So, taking one graceful step toward the door, Carlisle said, with a sufficiency of distant hauteur:

"You can entertain yourself, I hope? I am going."

The tall young man removed his gaze from the blank space left by Hen's exit, with a kind of start, and said hurriedly:

"I hope you aren't letting _me_ drive you away? I--I merely stopped a moment in passing, on a--a professional matter...."

"Why should you imagine that I am anxious to avoid you?"

He said, with gratifying embarrassment: "I naturally couldn't hope that--you would wish to see me--"

And then suddenly all her just and fortifying resentment seemed to return to her, and she said with frosty calm:

"Yes, I've rather wanted to see you again. I didn't quite place you when--I had this opportunity before...."

The man regarded the floor. He looked as if he knew what was coming.

"I've recently read your letter in the 'Post' about my father. Tell me, what pleasure do you find in writing such wicked untruths about people who've never harmed you?"

In her mind it had seemed exactly the thing to say, the rebuke which would put him finally in his place on all scores, show him up completely to himself. But the moment it was out, it acquired somehow the wrong sound, jangling and a little shrewish and somewhat common, and she rather wished she hadn't said it. She had never seen anybody turn pale so suddenly....

The man wore the same clothes he had worn in the summer-house, she thought; indubitably the same large four-in-hand, floating the fat white painted shad, or perch. He was rather better-looking in the face than she had supposed; and in this light she observed more clearly the rather odd expression he wore about the eyes, a quality of youthful hopefulness, a sort of confidingness: not the look of a brick-thrower, unless you happened to know the facts in the case. All this, of course, was his own lookout. If he wanted to say and do outrageous things, he had no right to appear so pained when he got his merited punishment. He had no right to put on that appealing look. He had no right to be lame....

"It is perfectly natural for you to say and think that," he was saying with an odd air of introspection, quite as if he were reassuring somebody inside of him. "I don't think there was anything untrue in that letter, but--no doubt it must have seemed so. And of course ... I _don't_ suppose you can go to the Heth Works much, or be very familiar--"

"It isn't necessary for me to go to the Works to learn that my father is not a homicide."

Her voice had lost something of its first ringing assurance. It seemed to shake a little, like an indignant child's.

The young man said hurriedly:

"No, no! Of course not! I--indeed, I think you misunderstood what I meant to say in--in that letter. I must have expressed myself badly. I did not intend so much a--a criticism of individuals, as of society, for--"

"Oh, please don't apologize. That's always rather silly, I think. I like to see people with the courage of their convictions, no matter how wrong they are. Good-evening."

"Don't go," said the slum physician, instantly, much as Mr. Canning had said at a similar yet totally different moment--"that is--_must_ you--go at once? I--there is something I've wanted very much to tell you."

She stopped still; stood in silence gazing at Dalhousie's friend, the shabby author of the two Severe Arraignments. Undoubtedly there was a sinking feeling within her, unsteadying in its way. But she was spirited, and into her eyes had come a hostile challenge. Passionately she dared this man to ask God to pity her again....

Her eyes were oval and lifted the least bit at the outer corners. The bow of her upper lip drew up a little most engagingly at the middle (like Teresa Durbeyfield's), an irregularity more endearing to the eye than any flawlessness. There was the possibility of tenderness in this mouth; more than the promise of strength in the finely cut chin. Her thick lashes began pure gold, but changed their minds abruptly in the middle, and finished jet black....

She was the loveliest thing this man's eyes had ever rested upon. And as at the Beach, he seemed to begin with a plunge:

"Jack Dalhousie's gone away, Miss Heth--gone to Weymouth, Texas, to live. I had a letter from him, day before yesterday. He's got work there, on a stock-farm--among strangers. He hasn't taken a drink since--October. He's making a new start, with nothing to remind him of what's past. I ... hope he will be happy yet."

Carlisle's breast rose and fell. "Why do you tell this to me?"

"Because," said Vivian, "I've felt I--did you such a wrong--that night...."

Under the flickering Cooney gas, the two stood staring at each other. The young man hurried on:

"I've had it on my mind ever since, and have wanted very much to tell you.... I've felt that--what I--I said to you was all wrong--most unjust...."

He hesitated; and the gold-and-black lashes, so piquant and gay, fell. "Take your jump! Take your jump!" called Major Cooney in the dining-room. You could hear him plainly, straight through the folding doors. And young V. Vivian, who was merciless as a social philosopher but somewhat trusting as a man, took his jump with a will.

"I was much upset about it that night--and excited, I suppose. I can't account for--for what I said in any other way. I've hoped for the opportunity to tell you.... Why, of course I don't believe that at all.... It was all so confused and mixed up; that was the trouble. But of course I know that you--that you wouldn't have said anything that--that wasn't entirely consistent with the facts...."

He paused, expectantly it seemed; but there came no reply.

Cally Heth, indeed, stood in a dumbness which she seemed powerless to break. Well she knew what sort of reply she ought to make to these remarks: what was the man saying but what she had already said a hundred times to herself? He was simply making tardy admission that her position had been exactly right all along; that was all. Yet somehow the sane knowledge did not seem to help much against this sequence of unique sensations she was at present experiencing,--odd, tumultuous, falling sensations, as of bottoms dropped out....

"I suppose," said the man's faraway voice, sounding a sudden loss of confidence, "it's rather too much to hope that--that you can forget...."

Again his words dropped into the brief, expectant silence.... It seemed that he had happened to say the one thing to which no reply was possible. And somehow the effect of it was worse, even, than the never-forgotten moment in the summer-house.

"And forgive," finished the voice.... "I've felt--"

And then, in good season, there sounded welcome footsteps, Hen's, in the hall. They broke at a stroke, the strange petrifying numbness which Carlisle had felt mysteriously closing over her. She murmured the name of Henrietta, and turned away. And her voice was the voice of Lucknow, as the friendly columns poured in....

Hen came walking in, saying something lively and Cooneyesque, and glancing with an air of interested expectancy from her friend V.V. to her cousin Cally. But Cally only said once more that she must be going, and asked where Aunt Molly was. She then let fall the word good-night for Hen's caller, while looking at a point some ninety degrees removed from his whereabouts: by which the caller understood that his forgiveness was problematical, to say the least of it.

IX

Concerning an Abandoned Hotel, and who lived there; also of an Abandoned Youth, who lived somewhere else, Far Away; how a Slum Doctor dressed for a Function, such as involved Studs; and how Kern Garland wishted she was a Lady.

Mrs. Garland, catching sight of Doctor as he came up the decayed grand-stairway, cried out, well, she never, just in the nig of time! Why, the words was no more'n out of her mouth that the stoo was just done to a hair, she did declare, and Kern she said, quick as anything, what, a hair in the stoo, now, mommer, that'd never do....

The clocks of the city had just struck six for the last time that year. Dr. Vivian, having placed his suitcase and overcoat on the second-hand operating-table in the office, washed face and hands, brushed his coat-collar with a whisk whose ranks had been heavily thinned in wars with dust and lint, and, repairing in sound spirits to the Garland combination dining-and living-room, with the kitchen in the corner, made his interesting confidence relative to the suitcase. He made it in mouth-filling phrases, with many teasing generalizations about the ways of the world and the evils of modern society, which was only his gempman's way when playful. But by close application his auditors soon got at the heart of his meaning, to wit: Doctor actually was going uptown to his swell Uncle Beirne's swell Noo Year's reception to-night in Mr. O'Neill's fulldressuit.

Naturally the Garlands were much interested and excited by the tidings, which brought them so close to great events that, practically speaking, they themselves became members of the fash'nable set: and Mrs. Garland publicly thanked God that she was not as other women were, lazying and keeping back their gentlemen's shirts till Saturday night, or worse. Laid away tidy in the second bureau drawer, her shirts were. The doctor himself seemed not a little enlivened by the evening's prospect. It is imaginable that the Dabney House grew a little lonely at times....

"And to think your swell uncle wants you so special, sir!" said Mrs. Garland, in her harsh, inflectionless voice. "A compliment, I'm sure. And his party all a fizzle unless you come, and his gai'ty a mockery! Well!"

Such indeed was the way in which Vivian had been pleased to depict his fashionable uncle's attitude. He smiled slightly, sipped his feeble coffee and said:

"Bear in mind that he's a bad, bad (though personally not displeasing) old man, ridden by ruinous ideas about the almightiness of the dollar, or lucre as we term it.... I have observed for some time that he desires to corrupt me with his Persian luxuries."

"Persian! Well, I never!"

Mrs. G., a stout woman and a dress-reformer by the look of her, got hot corn muffins from the kitchenette in the corner, and added:

"Them rugs is beautiful."

"He said lux'ries, mommer, like lowneg dresses, and tchampagne, and ice-cream all like animals," said Kern.

"I do declare! Well, they do say the mawls of some of them swells is something nawful. Not alloodin' to your uncle now, well, of course, sir."

"I know a girl named Sadie Whirtle," continued Kern, "and there was a man named Toatwood made a lot of money, corntracting, and his wife she took some of the money and went to Europe in a steamer and stayed more'n two months buying clo'es. And one day Sadie Whirtle goes up to him and says, 'Mist' Toatwood, hear your wife's come home with some fine Parisian clo'es.' And Mist' Toatwood says, 'Shucks'--on'y he says somep'n worse'n shucks--'Shucks,' says he, 'why, my wife never been to Persia in her life.'"

Kern was eighteen, with six years of bread-winning behind her, but she told her story exactly in the manner of a child of eight. That is to say, she told it in a monotone without evincing, and clearly without feeling, the slightest amusement in it, and at the end, continuing quite grave, watched for its effect on others with a curious, staring interest. Her immobile, investigatory expression made the doctor laugh, which seemed, of late, to be the object in life of all Kern's anecdotes.

"Where'd you get that story, Corinne?"

His odd habit of so calling her had often been privately discussed between Kern and her mother, who had so long ago shortened their own original Kurrin that even that had passed from memory. They had concluded that this was only one of his jokey gempman's ways.

"Off Sadie Whirtle," said Kern, rocking backward and forward in her chair. "On'y I don't see anything comical in it."

And then she giggled for some time.

The talk and stoo went forward cheerfully. Beside the Goldnagels, on the ground floor, these two women were the doctor's only fellow lodgers, for Mister Garland, of the wanderlust, had not visited his family since the day in October, and so hardly counted. In the early weeks of the doctor's tenancy, which began only last September, he had walked three times a day to the Always Open Lunch Room, known among the baser sort as the Suicide Club, and had then become possibly the most discriminating judge of egg-sandwiches in all the city. Later, having made the better acquaintance of the Garlands, he had rightly surmised that the earnings derivable from a medical boarder might not be unacceptable in that quarter. The present modus vivendi, then worked out, had proved most satisfactory to all, from both the financial and the social viewpoints.

"I wisht I had a red satin dress, and a necklace all pearls, and was going to the party, too, and had a dark sad-faced man with a mustache and a neye-glass engaged to me, like a count. I wisht I was a Lady," said Kern.

"You don't need a red satin dress to be a lady."

"It'd come easier, kinder, with the dress, Mr. V.V. And I wisht I had a writin'-desk, too. And a founting pen."

"Lawk's sakes, Kern, an' I've asked you a hundred times what would you do with a writin'-desk, now?"

"Mommer, I'd set at it."

"An' what time you got for settin', I'd like to know? Fairy-dreamin' again!"

"An' I'd keep notes in it in the pigeonholes. Like it says in my Netiquette."

"You don't get no notes."

Kern was silenced by her mother's addiction to actuality, but presently said: "I'd get notes if I was a lady, wouldn't I, Mr. V.V.?"

The doctor assured her that she would, and that all these things would come some day. He sighed inwardly and wondered, not for the first time, where the link could possibly lie between the matter-of-fact mother and the strange child of fancy. There was nothing to do but attribute the phenomenon to Mister, the whimsical knight of the open road. The boarder asked what he should bring Kern from the party: he feared they wouldn't have writing-desks, it not being at all a literary set. The girl thought a rapturous moment and then asked could she have three of them marrowglasses, all in curly white paper.

Vivian promised, and departed on his duties. First there was a call at the Miggses' down the block, where the little boy Tub lay with scarlet fever, very sick; and then there was his seven o'clock office hour for workers, in which one, a teamster with Bright's disease and seven children, remained long....

These matters occupied the doctor till eight o'clock: alone in his office he computed the fact roughly from his watch, a battered heirloom whose word was not to be taken literally. Good!--half an hour before time to dress. Leisure, being a scant commodity, was proportionally valued. The young man advanced to his secretary, before whose open face plain living and high thinking could be so freely indulged in.

The secretary was of fine mahogany, hand-made in Virginia in the year that Sir Edward Pakenham did not take New Orleans. It was the hero of so many travels that its present proprietor once called it a field-secretary, a pleasantry which would doubtless have convulsed Miss Mamie Willis, if only she had ever heard it. The great tall office, bare but for cheap doctorly paraphernalia, was even more storied. A bleak grandeur clung to it still. Decayed mouldings, it had aplenty: great splotches on wall and ceiling, where plaster had been tried through the year and found wanting; unsightlier splotch between the windows whence the tall gilt mirror had been plucked away for cash; broken chandelier, cracked panes, loose flooring, dismantled fireplace. But view the stately high pitch of the chamber, the majestic wide windows and private balcony without, the tall mantel of pure black marble, the still handsome walnut paneling, waist-high, the massive splendid doors. No common suburban room, this: clearly a room with meaning, a past, soul.

The look was not deceptive. Royalty had on a time sat in this room: here granted audience to the great's higher circle, of greatness; there, beyond that door, nowadays admitting ragged sufferers from a fourth-class "waiting-room," slept in state with doubtless royal snores. This, in fact, was the old Dabney House's famous "state suite," Vivian's office the culminating grand sitting-room, the building art's best in the '40s. A famous hostelry the Dabney House had been in its day, the chosen foregathering-place of notabilities now long dusted to the common level. Hither had trooped the gallant and the gay, the knight in his pride and beauty in her power, great statesmen and greater belles, their lovers and their sycophants. Here, in the memorable ball still talked of by silvered ladies of an elder day, the Great Personage had trod his measure with peerless Mary Marshall.

A great history had the Dabney House, and now nothing much else beside. Built upon a flouting of a common law, it had lived to see the westward course of progress, deaf to sentiment as ever, kick it far astern. Long since had the world of fashion deserted it to its memories. Desolate and mice-ridden stood the fading pile in a neighborhood where further decay was hardly possible, enveloped by failure and dirt and poverty, misery and sin and the sound of unholy revelry by night. 'The lion and the lizard keep the courts where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep.' And the vast moulded corridors, historied with great names, echoed to the feet of Garlands, Vivians, and Goldnagels, and over the boards once ennobled by the press of royal feet, a shabby young man sat writing into a book with a villainous pen, as follows:

Rent $12. Board 20. Laundry 3.25

Dr. Vivian had, in short, induced himself to the casting-up of his monthly accounts, a task of weariness and travail. As to-morrow was the first day of the year, it was natural that he should thus occupy his half-hour of leisure, but as he was unmethodical by nature it was also natural that he should be casting up the account for November, December (which included Christmas) being as yet unlooked into. Jottings on loose bits of paper supplied the necessary data, or didn't, as the case might be.

The young man scratched his head, and continued:

Car-tickets $1.25 Tobacco .40 Soap .15 Shaving ditto .19 Gas 2.40 Pencils .03

"Aha!" said V. Vivian, after a considerable interval; and penned triumphantly:

Matches .05 Beads (Corinne) .49

Followed a long pause.

On the opposite, or left-hand, page of the ledger there stood:

Income 50. Receipts 6.40 ----- Total 56.40

Vivian's dead father, though the absent-minded inventor of the turbine that would never quite work, had somehow contrived not to make away with every penny of his wife's Beirne inheritance. Very few unsuccessful inventors could say as much. And this fact accounted for the complicating term "Income," whose regular presence in the budget was certainly a trifle awkward for the despiser of property, aligning him out of hand with the wealthy classes; but to the individual was undoubtedly most comforting, since it set a man economically free forever. You never have to do anything for money, with fifty dollars a month. Receipts were, of course, moneys taken in for services rendered. If Vivian's sick insisted on paying him a little something for his trouble, he thought it moral not to restrain them. However, the sick's attitude was commonly the reverse of the above....

Ignoring "Receipts," as a highly uncertain quantity, the scheme of income and outgo commonly left a net monthly balance of about ten dollars for works of a philanthropic nature. From a strictly scientific point of view, the budget contained an unsoundness, in that it allowed nothing for depreciation of plant, so to say: the necessity for fresh supplies of a personal nature really was not duly faced in it. However, the doctor had so far eliminated all expenditures in that quarter, save only for a little half-soling matter week before last. He was confident that it would all work out very satisfactorily when occasion arose.

The trial balance to-night developed a shortage of $1.22. Before the budgeteer could precisely place it, his attention became diverted by something else, to return no more that evening. Having drawn a stray sheet of paper toward him to scribble on it "Milk for Miggs," he was caught and engrossed by other inscriptions on the sheet, noted down in the early forenoon. They ran:

Heth Works (Pickle) Art in _Factory Worker_ See Mr. Dayne--Settlement--Begin canvass not before Feb. 1. H. Cooney Todd Inst.--Night School? Socks?--Or darning Playground. (Council Com. meets Fri. 5 P.M.) Jack D. Mrs. G. Loan 20c.

Through the next to the last item, Vivian absently drew a pencil mark, the weekly cheering letter to Weymouth, Texas, having been written just after the memorandum. However, the young man's eye remained fixed on the item erased. He lit his pipe, took his head in both hands and continued to stare....

Dalhousie had called at the Dabney House on the night of his departure for the new country. His reappearance in the flesh proved at least that that fierce instability of character, which betrays men in moments of disaster to the irreparable rashness, was not in him. So much was a comfort, for the witch fear had ridden Vivian in the silent weeks following the Beach.

But the reparting was a heart-rack none the less. Dalhousie was no lifelong friend like O'Neill, or even like Chas Cooney. But Vivian, having made his acquaintance most informally one night in the summer, had responded at sight to the unconscious claim of weakness; he had come to feel a strong bond, conceived splendid reformatory plans. The boy's fall and disgrace, coming like a crash from the blue, had been a severe shock to him, which would last. His self-exile, while probably advisable for a time at least, had been a prospect full of sadness. If poor Dalhousie had, woven into him, a vitiating twist for self-dramatization, if he said, "My God, why can't I die?" less with the terrible dignity of ruin than like a lad portraying his idea of ruin on the stage, his native missing of the utter ring of truth never occurred to Vivian. To him this boy, broken for cowardice and cast off by his father and friends, was as tragic a figure as Oedipus.

And what made the farewell so peculiarly sad was that Dal, out of his painful bewilderment, was evidently still clinging to some sort of hope. He himself had said, and said again, that there was no hope for such as he. He admitted with bitterness his insane passion that sunny afternoon; remembered and acknowledged a wild impulse to overturn the boat, and let come what might. He paced the floor and cried out that nothing that they said of him could be too bad. And yet he hoped. He had come to the Dabney House with hope. He had given his Texas address with a falter of hope.

But of course there was no hope. Drink, the great fowler, had bagged one more....

Without, there rose a lonesome booming, far and ghostly in the stillness of the great empty hotel. It was the Garlands' crazy clock, memento of Mister in his prodigal bridal days. Harried forever by some obscure intestinal disorder, the mad timepiece stayed voiceless for days together, and then, without warning, embarked upon an orgy of profligate strikings. Now it struck fourteen, and fell abruptly silent.

Vivian stirred, and remembered the reception. His uncle, who derided and castigated his Dabney House career, had said emphatically that he would consider it most disrespectful if his solitary nephew absented himself from the annual greeting of friends. The nephew, since his home-coming, had grown very fond of the old gentleman. Yet he knew quite well that he wasn't giving up this evening solely to please his uncle.

He rose, relit his pipe, and walked about. Though useful bones were missing from his left foot, he liked to walk: was rather an accomplished pedestrian. In time he came to a halt before a dilapidated little cabinet partly full of the shiny tools of his trade. The cabinet seemed quite out of place in the tall state chamber: but then so did the man. He did not look in the least like a doctor (just as Miss Heth had said). The faint scent of iodoform that he now gave off was a heterogeneity, like a whiff of brandy on a parson.

The young man stood gazing into his cabinet, fathoms deep in thought. That Miss Heth was responsible for a meaningless lie which took away more than life itself from one who had loved her truly in his way: this was a hypothesis so wild and weak that it collapsed at the first opportunity for calm, just examination. The sight of her again, the other night, had merely clinched the matter; driven by a glance the last nail in the coffin of Dalhousie's hope; and by the same stroke, swept away the last lingering trace of diabolical suspicion. But that Miss Heth had treated Dal pretty badly before the Beach was only too probable. The boy's bitter complainings had left small doubt of that.

It is a world in which we must be just before we are generous. Unfortunately, there could be little question that this girl with the heavenly face had a certain touch--should we say?--of earthy hardness in her, a certain induration of the spirit. She had shown it quite plainly in her general attitude toward Dal in the hour of his need. She had shown it again, in a sort of way, in her attitude toward the Works.

Not, indeed, in her resentment at his letter. Anything but resentment there would have been unnatural, not to say inhuman and despisable, in a daughter. Of course no girl worth a pinch of salt would allow you to stand up and say that her father was a shameless homicide. Her anger there did her the greatest credit: showed beyond doubt that she was absolutely sound at heart.... Trouble was, of course, that she didn't know anything about the Works, and didn't want to know. She supposed that those scores of girls who went daily to her father's bunching-room had nothing to do with her.

The night was cold; V. Vivian stood warming his hands over a second-hand gas-stove, which leaked perceptibly.... Great heavens, how could it possibly be otherwise? Was not this the way of all the world? Let a little prosperity come to a poor peasant, and the first thing he did was to stop eating five from the same bowl. That was Tolstoy; and that was the way, through all peoples and all times, riches had meant segregation from the Common.... Round and round them pulsed the great warm tide of real life, and, stung by this mad blindness, men sweated and fought their lives away trying to scramble up out of the enriching stream upon a sterile little island. You could almost have forgiven them if they were happy upon their island. But happiness is born in the heart, and they who seek it elsewhere in the end hold Sodom apples in fingers through which the pearl of great price has somewhere slipped on the way....

"Mr. V.V.! Ain't you dressing _yet_!" said a voice from without. "Mommer says remind you it's after nine o'clock."

The tall young man came to earth with a thud. A startled frown gathered quickly on his brow.

"_What?_... Then I'm late indeed. _Nine o'clock!_ I don't see how it's possible...."

He seized Commissioner O'Neill's suitcase from the operating-table, with a panic show of hurry.

Kern's voice took on a cheering inflection.

"Don't you mind, Mr. V.V. All the swells'll be late. D'you want me to help you, sir? Don't you want me put in your studs 'r something?"

Mr. V.V. set down the suitcase, dealt a mortal blow.

"I have no studs," he said, in a quiet, scared way.

A little exclamation without was followed by: "Can I come in, sir?"

"Yes, yes; come in. But this is rather serious. I confess I--don't see how it's going to work out...."

The door opened and Kern tripped in with a little kick, and a flash and tinkle of jewelry at neck and waist. She never merely walked when it was possible to dance.

"My regular shirts," said the young man, standing on the floor and brushing his hair with a worried hand, "have the buttons sewed on, of course.... Seems to me O'Neill might have thought of this contingency."

Kern repressed a desire to giggle at Doctor's air of helplessness, and controlled her itching feet. She was not wanting in the resourcefulness of the poor.

"I'll get you studs, Mr. V.V.," said she, eagerly. "Less see now--where'll I get 'em?... I'll get 'em at Lazarus's--that's where! I'll have 'em here in five minutes, and right in your shirt."

Lazarus? Why, they shut up at six o'clock. Yes, but Willie Walter, he slept behind the counter, and was abed right now, on account of getting up so early. Just let her bang the door in the alley a couple of times, that was all. Moreover, Walter being obliging, it agreeably developed that the studs would come as a temporary loan, if desired. An evening's wear out of them, and then back on the card and into stock again, the same as new, and nobody the wiser. Lazarus would do the same.

"It's very nice of you, Corinne," said the young man, picking up the suitcase again. "Something in pearl or plain gold, perhaps. Come straight back now. I don't like at all for you to be running the streets at night--"

"Maybe I won't come back at all," said Kern, improvising a barn dance about the long office. "Maybe I'll run off with a count and go to Europe on a steamer like, and have mand'lins played under my winder by moonlight, and sit at a gool' writin'-desk all day and make up po'try."

"That would be rather hard on the count, wouldn't it?" said Mr. V.V., absently; and added at once: "What makes you do that?"

"Stitch in me side," said she, impishly. "Machineetis, _I_ call it. Like 'pendicitis, y' know? It's gone now. I don't get tired when I dance."

Kern had a quantity of dark brown hair, covered now by a picture hat supporting a base red imitation of a willow plume; she put on the hat every night nowadays, whether she was going out or not. By two years' steady practice she was esteemed one of the best operatives in the Heth Cheroot Works; but her new passion in life was to learn from Mr. V.V. what it was to be a lady. Dearly as Kern loved beads, pins, buckles, and all that shone and glittered, her particular desire for Christmas had been a Netiquette and Complete Letter Writer, and this Mr. V.V. had duly obtained for her, though it had run to a dollar and a quarter. The little girl might have been any age or no age; she was unformed for her years, somewhat elfin of countenance, and thin in the cheek. On one of these cheeks, Dr. Vivian now laid the back of his hand, and told Kern to stick out her tongue. She did it as she did everything (except cheroot-making), like a game, sticking it out much farther than was necessary and repeatedly winking her left eye.

Vivian set down the suitcase again.

"You go to bed," said he. "I'll attend to the studs."

Kern stuck back her tongue and unwinked her eye, with something like consternation.

"I feel _very_ well, Mr. V.V.--honest! I'll get 'em and come straight back, sir,--truly, truly!"

The young man reached for his overcoat. "I don't want you to go out to-night. It's just the same as if you did it for me, because you want to do it. That's what counts. Now go on to bed. You aren't well at all, I fear."

Kern turned, much depressed. "It was me thought of Willie Walter. I think you might lemme."

"You must do what I say, Corinne."

"Ain't I doin' it, no matter how hard it is, sir?"

"Don't call me sir, I've told you."

Kern sadly retired. However, she did not do exactly what Mr. V.V. said. When, after forty minutes of storm and stress, he emerged from his bedroom and shouted to Mrs. Garland to come and see him if she liked, Kern, too, came running down the hall, still in her hat. Her interest in the gay evening being so peculiarly strong, Vivian did not have the heart to scold her very hard, especially as she cried ahead the promise to go to bed the very minute he was gone. And it might be that he was secretly rather glad to have his little friend see him in his splendid regalia.

He stood under the chandelier in his decaying chamber, revolving himself with complacence for the Garlands' inspection. It was O'Neill's old suit that he had borrowed, which, as the Honorable Commissioner had pointed out, really made a much better fit than the costly brand-new one just from Begg's. At the first sight of their boarder in it, the two women cried out with pleasure, likening him to dooks and dashing villains on the stage, well seen by them from upper galleries of the past. But with the dying of the first enthusiastic burst, Kern, the connoisseur, who had herself been clasped by gentlemen's fulldressuits at union hops, developed a more searching tendency. By the elbow she incited the doctor to keep on rotating.

"There's _something_ wrong, sir, Mr. V.V., but I can't make out just what it is."

"It's these shoes," said Mr. V.V., frankly. "I really ought to have patent leathers to look like the rest of the bloods, but these'll do very nicely, when I have them well shined up. I'll stop by the stand at Ninth Street."

"This spot right in front of the coat don't look so _very_ good," said Kern, scratching it with a small finger, which only whitened it up.

"Shuh, Kern! That!" said Mrs. Garland, who had seen the spot, but decided to say nothing about it. "Why, hot suds and a drop ammonia'll fade it out like sunshine, and nobody never know't was there. Wait till I get my pan now, Doctor."

"I wisht the coat could set a little snugger round your neck, Mr. V.V. But mercy, who cares, when you look so beautiful anyway! And you'll have the most beautiful lady and set and talk to her, won't you, Mr. V.V.?"

"Stranger things have happened, my dear Corinne!"

"There'll be roses and violets and little pink lights and chicking salad and conservatories and fountings all lit up. And what'll you and her talk about, Mr. V.V., with the band playing kind of soft and settin' behind some rubber-plants like?"

"Probably something for her own good," said Mr. V.V., with a close-set mouth; leaving Kern to reflect that that was a funny way to talk at a party.

Mrs. Garland rushed in with a steaming pan, and plumped down on her knees at the unshone feet. The little girl prattled on. But the tall doctor, on his own word, had relapsed abruptly into a brown study....

"It sags a little in front," Kern was saying. "Lemme just get my hand on the buckle a minute. Mr. V.V., what makes you look so mad, kind of?"

The young man started a little.

"I was thinking," said he, "that life is hard at times."

"It's truth, Doctor.... Hadn't his negtie ought to be tightened up a weeny bit, Kern, now?" said Mrs. Garland harshly, staring up from her adoring position. "Not but _I_ think the shine of his gool' collar-button ain't pretty...."

* * * * *

When Mr. V.V. and his gala raiment were gone, Kern skipped into his bedroom and hastily tackled the marked disorder there prevalent. She thought that an extra minute or so stolen for this purpose would not really be so very wrong. Care of the rooms was strictly included in the boarder's twenty dollars a month, but Kern was not thinking of it that way exactly.

"Mommer, what makes him have that kinder sorry look all the time, I wonder?" she said, when Mrs. Garland followed her in.

"Sorry, what you talkin' about? A pleasanter spoke gempman I never see. Hand me them pants."

"I'll fold'em, mommer.--I don't mean speakin', but the look he's got, just the same when he's laughin' and jokin' and all. It's the look he's got, don't you notice, someway?"

"It's that foot o' his, I reckon. Pains him prob'ly. The mess he's left things.... He'd ought to have a fulldressuit of his own, 'stead o' borrowin' that fat O'Neill's."

"Mommer, if he had one, somebody 'd ask it off him. Like he gave Mister his Sunday cutaway coat.... How'd he hurt his foot, mommer, jever hear him say?"

"Berkler bone, _I_ hear."

They worked in silence for a time.

"I'm right tired to-night. Put 'em here in his clo'es-bag, mommer.... Don't seem it could be just his foot. Torm Hartman's leg's right off to his hip, and he's got a fat look to him. Mr. V.V.'s sorry like he wanted to do something, and something in him knewed all the time he couldn't ever."

"Somep'n in him knewed--jever hear such foolishness! I'll take the broom to this floor. You go along to bed now. Didn't I hear you promise him?"

"Mommer, I'm going. Only I druther of went to the party," said Kern.

X

A Beautiful New Year's Party, and who spoiled it, and how; how Something is done, after all, for she tells the Man plainly that he mustn't speak to her any more.

By eleven o'clock the festivities approached their height: even the ultra-fashionable had arrived, even the ultra-conservative had not departed for bed. The affair was none of your wholesale routs. Old Mr. Beirne, who had long claimed the eve of the New Year for the hospitable repayment of his social dues, had lived to see the list of his friends shrink fast as Old Years ticked out. Nevertheless, the scene now was indubitably inspiriting. Lively groups decorated all the purview. White shirt-fronts gleamed: white shoulders did the same. The fragrance of flowers filled the air, filled likewise with the gay hum of voices. From behind a coppice of shrub and palm Professor Wissner's band of select artists continually seduced the feet. Toward the dining-room regions rose the sounds of refined conviviality. Servitors moved about with trays. Mrs. Clicquot's product fizzed, for the proper ceremonious induction of another year.

It was a most enlivening ensemble, full of pleasant attractions to the senses; and through it moved Carlisle Heth, the most beautiful lady, with a look like that of a queen in a book. In that gay company she was the proudest figure, the object of all most captivating to the eye, save one; and that one, an Olympian in evening dress, sauntered splendidly at her side.

Mr. Canning to-night made his début in the local gay world. Constant as had been his attentions for a number of days, he had hitherto held steadfastly to his valetudinarian stand against general society. He had gambolled, indeed, but he had gambolled strictly _à deux_. In his present willingness to break through his invalid rules, and appear as her acknowledged squire before the flower of her world, Carlisle's heart had recognized the crowning proof of his interest. Small wonder if in prospect this victorious evening had been starred in her mind in purple and gold....

The shining pair had just arrived, lateness being reckoned very differently in Houses of Heth and Houses of Dabney. Their brilliant progress down the long gay room, stopped often for the giving and taking of greetings, left behind awake of _sotto-voce_ compliment. Cally Heth, though the familiar sight of every day, was a spectacle, or view, not easily tired of. In a company in which most had known each other from birth, her distinguished stranger and captive naturally drew even keener interest.

"Look, there he is!" whispered an excited debutante. "Oh, what a dream!..."

"I never saw Cally look better. If she were _only_ a little taller, what a match they'd make." (This was Cally's second-best friend Evelyn McVey, herself a tall girl.)

"Wissner ought to hit up that well-known snatch from' Lohengrin' ..."

"Certainly, Mrs. Bronson. Delighted to introduce you--introduce him, that is. Just a little later, though. Wouldn't have me interrupt _that_, would you?"

Thus faithful Willie Kerr, somewhat harassed by the responsibilities of being next friend to a crown prince.

Backbiting among the well-bred murmurs there was of course. Mrs. Berkeley Page, the hostile one who had made the remark about the Heths being very improbable people, naturally spoke in her characteristic vein. She made her observations to her great crony, Mr. Richard Marye, who plucked a glass of champagne from a beckoned lackey, and answered:

"Whoever conceived a Canning to be an anchorite?... My dear, why are you so severe with these very excellent and worthy people?"

"Is it severe," said the lady, "to refuse to be cozened by gay lips and dramatic hair?"

"Aspiration," mused her elderly friend, sipping comfortably, "is the mainspring of progress. Don't you admire onward and upward? What harm can a little climbing possibly do to you and me?"

"Oh, Mr. Dick! All the harm that the tail does when it begins to wag the dog. Don't you observe how these people set up their own standards, and get them accepted, whatever old fogies like you and me may say? They _unsoul_ us--that's what they do, and we may scream, but we can't stop them. Their argument is that money can do everything, and the intolerable part of it is that they _prove it_. Ah, me!--"

"Also, O temperament! O Moriarty! For my part, Mary, I'm a Democrat--"

"You're an old-fashioned Church of England man, and incidentally a great dear," said Mary Page. "And nothing on earth sickens you, and you know it, like this godless modern materialism...."

But who could smile more unaffectedly than Cally Heth at the bitter little peckings with which the dying order ever seeks to avenge itself on its brilliant supplanters? She passed on down the long room, stunning admirer in her train. High hope beckoned imminently to-night. By the subtle intuitions of her sex she had been notified that the steady approach of the symbol of her happiness consummate now quickened toward its shining end....

Mr. Hugo Canning, having returned for a week at most, had already remained for a fortnight. And it was obviously for her sake that he had lingered. Day by day, emerging from his Payne barricades, he had sought her out: loud his feet had thundered behind, with no more promptings of hers. Of the genuineness of his interest she could feel no trace of doubt: a score of "passages" since the interesting moment in Willie's sitting room rose to the eye of memory. And the prince of partis attracted her no less compellingly. On nearer view, he had revealed himself as full of a fascinating contrariety, various as a woman. Moods played up and down upon him, charming mysteriously. He could be distrait and silent, the portrait of distinguished boredom. And then, as by the turning of a sudden page, he was gay again, tender, witty, all ardors....

More than the strains of the lovesick waltz beat in the girl's veins to-night. For this present there was no hope even of connected conversation. In the midst of the gay company the invasions of privacy were constant.

"All these nice people, and all so eager to be friendly with you!" laughed Carlisle, with some want of naturalness, as she for the dozenth time detached herself and him from a little surrounding group. "And yet you've complained to me of _loneliness_!"

"There are times, Miss Heth, when one is never so lonely as in the midst of the crowd."

"Oh!... Then to save you from loneliness to-night I must remove you from the crowd?"

"You grasp my meaning. I want a lodge in some vast wilderness."

"That is rather rude, isn't it? Where should I come in?"

"You come into the lodge," said Canning, and smiled faintly.

Though the smile was faint, her eyes fell before it. When she raised them, they ran upon another interruption.

"This is Mrs. Mason, Mr. Beirne's sister. You will like to meet her, Mr. Canning."

"Delightful," murmured Mr. Canning.

Because of his consistent recluseness, foregone to-night for her pleasure, Carlisle had meant rather to exhibit Mr. Canning to enraptured eyes than to subject him to a flood of undesired introductions. But because she did not want people to refer to her as catty behind her back, some sharing of her honors was inescapable. A few of her dearest girl-friends, a handful of the more prominent young men, a somewhat larger sprinkling of the older people: these were all who received the golden benediction. Evey McVey was of course among the favored few, but Mattie Allen, as usual so late in the evening, was not to be seen. She was undoubtedly "off" somewhere, probably high up on the stairs, with the most interesting man she had been able to attach.

Canning accepted all the introductions with a charming courtesy, but Carlisle detected beneath his agreeable manner a faint undercurrent of stoic weariness. The cold weather had lately touched the troublesome throat: Mr. Canning spoke to-night with perceptible hoarseness. Carlisle assured him that he had won a permanent place in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" (of which she had heard the other day), and invited him to partake of refreshments, for they had now at last reached the doors of the dining-room. He declined, as she had done, but accepted a glass of champagne from a bald-headed Greek who was pulling corks at a small table near by. On the point of pledging his lady's health, he was invaded again, this time by resolute Mr. Robert Tellford, who held the opinion that Carlisle looked an angel this evening, and was long since addicted to celestial society.

"The wine is excellent," said Mr. Canning, clinking glasses with Mr. Tellford.

"The rooms are warm," said Robert, in about that sequence.

"People are beginning to leave, I observe," said Mr. Canning.

"Others are just coming in, I note," answered Robert, doggedly.

Carlisle laughed. "To-morrow will be a fine day. You talk like people in a play. Let's all wish each other a happy New Year...."

"Duty is done," she added later, with a small sigh, when Robert had been persuaded to remove himself. "We can now give ourselves up to lives of the grossest selfishness.... Oh, oh, _oh!... How_ would sitting down appeal to you, Mr. Canning?"

"Ice-water to Tantalus, Miss Heth. And seats are about as probable."

"_Look!_"

She nodded dramatically toward the hall and her sudden discovery: Mr. Beirne's private lair, presumably; a pleasant little retreat on the other side of the house, luring the eye through a half-open door. A little to the back, and off the beaten track, this nook seemed to have escaped the irruption of guests altogether.

"My lodge, as I live!" said Canning, with interest. "And, for once, I really don't believe we'll find a spoony couple sitting in the best place. Let's advance casually, yet with lightning speed...."

They passed out of the drawing-room into the hall, the hum of various gaiety in their ears. No voices reached them from the rest-haven ahead. Carlisle was suddenly silent. A subtle and thrilling sense of expectancy possessed her, making talk somewhat difficult....

However, on the very threshold of privacy, her agreeable feelings met with a cool _douche_. A brazen couple _was_ already there, sitting in the best place. In this world of trouble there always, always was. The fact was disappointing enough, to say the least of it, but what made matters worse was that it was impossible merely to exclaim reprovingly, as one usually does, "Oh, there's somebody _here_!" and step back at once. Carlisle saw in the first glance that the girl in the best place was no other than her special friend Mattie Allen, already looking around over her shoulder, spying her. To withdraw from Mattie, under these circumstances, was simply not to be thought of.

She gave Canning a quick, backward, upward look which said, plainer than print, "How long, O Lord, how long?" Recomposing her features hastily, she stepped on in.

"Oh, _Mats!_ It's you at last! We've been looking everywhere for you. Mr. Canning was _so_ anxious to meet you...."

She ended dead. The intruding "couple" had risen together, turning; and Carlisle saw, with the suddenest and oddest little sinking sensation, that the male half of it, Mattie's astounding capture, was the lame physician from the slums, he whose face and words had become inextricably a part of the most disturbing memories of her life.

She, in her radiance, had met the slum doctor's eye with a shock of recognition; she looked at once away. She felt like one who has walked singing into a malicious trap. Why, oh, why, need the man have been ambushed here, of all places under the sun, obtruding his undesired presence and marplot countenance once again on her and Mr. Canning?...

However, if there was no withdrawing, neither was there the slightest break in the smooth outer continuity of things. Dear Mattie (already with a sheep's eye for the king among men in the doorway) had seized the conversation even before Carlisle left it hanging.

"Hello, darling Cally! Do come in and share our lovely little snuggery. Isn't it cunning?--don't you think we were awfully smart to find it? Oh, do you know Dr. Vivian?--Miss Heth."

"How do you do?" said Cally, without a second glance.... "_This_ is she, Mr. Canning--Miss Mattie Allen, whom you've heard so much about...."

Canning, hardly less piqued than Carlisle by the presence of strangers in his lodge, and unable to remember having heard the name Allen before in his life, of course rose gallantly.

"I hope Miss Allen won't think me impertinent," he said, most delightfully, "if I claim her as an old friend...."

Miss Allen's response acquitted him of all impertinence. It was she who then recalled an omission, and in her sweet artless way bade the two gentlemen be acquainted. Dr. Vivian (who could not exactly recollect the steps by which he had come to be duetting in his uncle's den with Miss Allen) looked as if he expected to shake hands with Miss Heth's handsome squire; but Canning, having shot him with a quick curious glance, merely bowed, in silence. Through the minds of both men (and also of Miss Carlisle Heth) had swept at the same moment a darting memory of their last meeting....

And then it was suddenly seen by all that Mr. Canning had been gathered in by his adroit old friend Miss Allen, and smartly withdrawn from the general society. And Cally was left to face alone the last man upon earth she wanted to see.

She, whose own plans had been so utterly different, had been on her guard against such a contingency as this; but Mattie's born gift for strategics had simply been too much for her. Mr. Canning had been surrounded and backed against a bookcase, as it were, before anybody realized what was happening to him....

"But oh, you're so dreadfully tall," she heard the voice of her gifted girl-friend, as from a distance. "I don't believe you can look far enough down to see poor little Me...."

All had happened at speed: the lines of division were still just forming. And Carlisle, of course, had no idea of tamely accepting such an unfair distribution of things. As to this man, Dr. Vivian, her attitude toward him now, after the Cooneys', was simply one of cool polished politeness. She had told him what she thought of him about the Works, and he had humbly apologized for the wrong he had done her at the Beach: that disposed of him forever, and altogether to her advantage. Cool polished politeness; but she did not intend to talk with him any more, of course, admitting him as a social acquaintance; and she was, in fact, just moving after Mattie and Mr. Canning, really opening her mouth to join in their pleasant chat, when--

"I wonder, do you know if there are any _marrons glacés_ to-night, Miss Heth," said the voice she had first heard in the summer-house--"with the little white jackets on them?"

The girl felt a number of things. From every point of view this inquiry, so queer yet so clearly social, so almost glaringly inoffensive, came as a surprise and an annoyance. He had merely asked that on purpose to detain her. Continuing to look at her two friends, so near and yet such worlds away, she said, coldly:

"I really do not know. I've not been in the dining-room."

"Then I may still hope," he answered, with the same air of friendliness, eager in its way. And, continuing his out-of-place remarks, he said: "I promised to bring some from the party to a little girl that--that I--well, I board with her mother, in fact. She seemed to have set her heart on _marrons_, though how she knew that such things existed passes imagination."

"I hope you'll find them, I'm sure."

"Oh, thank you," said the Severe Arraigner, quite gratefully, it seemed....

Through the open door of the pleasant little room, there floated in the continual murmur of voices and the sighing refrain of the waltz. As from a great distance, Carlisle noted that Mr. Canning found Mattie agreeably amusing. (What on earth did I he men see in her, with her baby airs and great pop-eyes?) But she was not thinking of her two special friends now. The flat brusquerie of her two remarks to the man had struck her own ear unpleasantly: they were neither polished nor courteous. Why was she so silly as to let this nobody, who had nothing whatever to do with her, so annoy and distract her at his pleasure? Above all, by what trick of his look had he made her feel, the moment his eyes fell upon her, that his apology had not settled the Beach episode, exactly, after all?...

The whole situation seemed to be growing intolerable; and suddenly it came over her that polished courtesy was not the note at all. Doubtless the trouble was that she could not forgive his remark in the summer-house, after all, no matter how generously she tried. What was needed now was to put the man down in such a way that he would take care not to come near her again....

Dr. Vivian, who seemed to hold fast to his one topic, was adding: "I don't want to disappoint her, of course, particularly as \ she's sick to-night. Just a little touch of fever, to be sure,--but she hasn't much constitution, I fear...."

Miss Heth made no reply; the pause threatened to become a silence; and then he said hastily, as if to save the conversation from total wreck:

"By the way, this child--Corinne Garland, her name is--is an operative in your father's factory, Miss Heth. She's been there over two years."

Cally's head turned. For the first time she looked fully at the Cooneys' poorhouse idol. And now she remembered that she had an annihilative weapon against him.... Had he led up to this subject on purpose?

"Oh!... She works at my father's factory?"

The young man's look was plainly not controversial; no, it was as if he were pleased that at last they had tapped a vein of common interest. In one glance Carlisle's trained eye, going over him, took in his sartorial eccentricities: in particular the "shined" shoes, the large brass shirt-studs, and the "full-dress-suit" (exactly that) so obviously made for a much stouter person. She saw that the man looked absurdly out of place here, at his own uncle's. Against this background of gaiety and glitter, of music, powder and décolleté gowns, he really looked quite like a stray from some other world: only the more so in that he himself appeared quite unconscious of any alienship.

Well, then, let him keep to his own world. That, in fact, was precisely what she desired of him....

"Yes, a buncher there, as they're called," he was quaintly explaining--"quite the best one in the shop, I'm told, though she's only eighteen years old. She has a record of 6,500 cheroots in one day--"

"But she has been taken sick at it, you say?"

"Undoubtedly she has a temperature to-night," said he, in an intent sort of way, desirous of giving his information accurately. "I didn't stop to take it,' as perhaps I should have done--"

"And she caught her fever at the Works, you think?"

"Oh!... Well, of course I shouldn't say that. You know--"

"But of course the Works _are_ full of terrible diseases, and everybody who works there quickly catches something and dies?"

Then the unmistakable hostility of her tone caught his engrossed ear. Carlisle saw his expression change a little; only it did not change nearly so much as she meant it to. He gave an embarrassed little laugh....

"But oh, _please_," said the voice of Mats, near by, "do go back and tell me what _terminology_ means. You don't know how _terribly stupid _I am...."

"Of course, it isn't nearly so bad as that," said he. "Factory work is hard at best, you know. And conditions in it are never very good, rarely even so good as they might be, as it seems to me. But this little friend of mine that I--I mentioned, she's--"

"Why did you mention her to me at all?"

The tall young man in the fat-man's dress-suit gazed down. He pushed back his crisp hair....

It was true that one from the outskirts could rise now and gird up his loins: the scribes actually called before the flap of his tent. True, in the most technical sense, that is.... And yet--was the passing social moment a proper occasion to shout and preach at the unlessoned upon the grim subject of their moral opportunities in this so complex world? Where was even the solitude be hind the rubber plants which Kern had (practically) guaranteed? Was it kind, was it even well-mannered, to spoil a young girl's pleasure at an evening party with bitter talk of fire-escapes and overstrained floors? John the Baptist, God knows, should have been a gentleman....

But if any thoughts like this played through the alien's mind, he certainly wore no air of perplexity or hesitancy. He answered without pause, in quite a gentle way:

"Well, it just seemed to come in naturally somehow. We just seemed to drift into it...."

But it was no time for gentleness now. Carlisle Heth was whipping up her anger to destroy him. And all the time, a part of her (the largest part, it seemed) knew quite well that she was whipping it up: wondered why it didn't surge more spontaneously, as she had such a perfect right to expect....

"But conditions _are_ homicidal in my father's factory, are they not?"

"Oh," said the man ... "Well, as to that--of course opinions would differ somewhat as to what consti--"

"You seem to--to have more courage in your opinions when you're writing letters," she flung at him, bright cheeked.... "Are they homicidal?"

V. Vivian's eyes had fallen before her indignant gaze. It was only too clear by now that she hadn't forgiven him--what wonder?--and probably never would.... Still, when he raised his eyes again, the girl saw in them a look quite different from what she had meant to arouse there. The man was feeling sorry for her again....

"Miss Heth, I consider them homicidal. I'm sorrier than I can say to--to worry you with all this now. Some day if you could give me--"

"You mustn't say these things to me," said Carlisle, feeling her anger to be real enough now. "I won't permit them. And--"

"You don't imagine that I say them for pleasure," the tall doctor interrupted hurriedly. "I'm compelled to speak the truth, however disagreeable--"

"Indeed? I've not noticed that you feel bound by any necessity that way."

To that he made no reply at all. But she saw, by the look he wore, that he was doing his best to convict her once again of having said something unfair and rather cheap and horrid....

Turning from him, she delivered the coup de grâce, in a voice not quite so firm as she would have wished:

"I don't wish to talk to you any more. You must not speak to me again...."

And she added at once, to a more congenial audience: "Oh!"

"Oh, oh! Cally!" whispered Mattie Allen, turning simultaneously, and for the first time, from Mr. Canning.

And Mr. Canning said: "Ah!--what's happened?..."

In almost the same moment all three had become aware that the rattle of talk and laughter outside the little room had entirely died away. There had fallen upon the house of gaiety a strange silence, in which a pin-fall might almost have been heard, and the slow speaking of a single voice, the length of the house away, was heard most distinctly.

To neither of the two girls was this proceeding a mystery. They were familiar with the New Year's Eve rites, and Mattie, after a number of pretty _Sh-h-h_ gestures, whispered the explanation to Mr. Canning:

"They're reading out the Old Year. We must all go see it. It's so cunning and quaint...."

So conversation of all sorts was summarily suspended. Even whispers sounded loud in the sudden hush. The four young people moved toward the door. For a moment they had almost the air of a company of friends. Young Dr. Vivian, who was nobody's friend, stood back for Miss Heth to pass out; but, seeing that she lingered beside her gallant, he turned again silently after Miss Allen, who beckoned to him _sh-h_ingly, whose property he seemed mysteriously to have become....

The alien passed out of sight, limping. If his only party that year had gone rather badly with him, it was not less so with another. Behind him in the firelit den, Carlisle looked up at Canning, color coming back into her cheek, her breast rising and falling. The sight of him, all to herself again, was more than balm to a wound, more than harbors to storm-swept mariners.

"Is there _any_ rest for the weary!" she whispered. "Oh, me! Let's _go home,_ right after this!"

Canning, who also wore a faint air of persecution for righteousness' sake, took her gloved hand, and she did not withdraw it.

"Do you know," he answered, with a little smile, "that's the cleverest thing I've heard said to-night...."

"We can have a little party all to ourselves," said Carlisle, rather tremulously. "It's been so _horrid_ to-night...."

* * * * *

They opened the back door to let the Old Year out. They flung wide the front doors to let the New Year in. They lowered all lights to the dimness of obsequies. The gay company, standing, ranged the long room in a ghostly half-light, and old Mr. Beirne, from his immemorial post between the tall windows, read from a great book "The Dying Year," in a voice as slow and solemn as he could make it. The stately lines brought home with a certain force, rather emphasized by the festive contrast, the certain passing of all mundane things. Here was another milestone left behind, and you and I would pass this way no more. Over the long loose dim ring, your eye fell upon a familiar and friendly face, fallen suddenly a little sad; and memory stirred of the many times you had looked at that face, and with it wonder of what another year might bring to you two. Would you stand here like this, friends good and true, with hearts tuned to the same feeling, a twelvemonth from to-night? There was felt a quick, childlike impulse for hands all round and such a singing of "Auld Lang Syne" as would have brought the police on the run.

By long practice and the most accurate chronometric reckoning, old Mr. Beirne timed his proceedings to a decimal. The last line of the slow-read poem died in a deafening uproar without. Every bell in the city, it seemed, every whistle and chime, every firecracker and penny-trumpet and cannon (there was but one), to say nothing of many an inebriated human voice, hailed in a roaring diapason the birth of a new year. At Mr. Beirne's the outer tumult was echoed in the manner of the well-bred. The doors were shut, with the infant inside; the lights flew up; glasses clinked, merry healths were pledged, new fealties sworn by look alone. Gaiety overcame silence. All talked with one voice.

Carlisle Heth descended the stairs in a carriage-robe of blue-and-fur, giving and taking lively good-nights. Canning, already mufflered and overcoated, stood awaiting her near the door: over many heads she caught sight of his splendid figure and her heart leapt a little. If it had been horrid for her to-night so far, no one would have guessed it, looking at her. Her shining loveliness upon the stairs attracted considerable attention; even her best girl-friend Mattie Allen noticed it, spoke of it to Evey McVey....

And then at the foot of the steps, she ran right into Jack Dalhousie's friend once more, the lame stranger whom she had just finally disposed of.

Encountering the man's eyes by mischance, she would of course have looked away at once, but her glance was trapped by the expression on his face. He was smiling; smiling straight at her. An odd smile it was, and complicated; not without diffidence, but certainly not without hope; quite an eager smile, confiding somehow, by the gift he had. It was as if he was saying that of course he knew she hadn't really meant what she said back there; and that he, for one, would never let a hasty word or two cut him off from the hope of being good friends yet.

Having thus by a trick captured her attention, he made a pleased sort of gesture toward the breast-pocket of his fat-man's coat, and, while she passed silent within a foot of him, said quite eagerly:

"_I--I got the marrons!_"

XI

In which Mr. Canning must go South for his Health, and Cally lies awake to think.

Midnight stillness hung over the House of Heth, five doors from Mr. Beirne's. Dim sounds from above indicated that Mrs. Heth, who had come in a few moments earlier, did not mean to sit up for anybody. She had, however, left the door "on the latch" as agreed. Carlisle and Mr. Canning passed within, out of the biting New Year.

It was like stepping into heaven to be at home again, after the rabble and rattle at Mr. Beirne's. Canning shut the door with something like a sigh.

"A lodge at last! We've had--well, a fragmentary time of it, haven't we?... That chap with the game foot is simply my hoodoo."

Carlisle winced a little. "Oh! Then you did remember him?"

"Could I forget my Beach supplanter, my giver of colds in the head? What's wrong with the fellow anyway?"

"Everything," said she. "Let's go into the library."

"Why should he remind me of a camp-meeting funeral, I wonder?" mused Canning, following behind--"or is it something I read in the book of Job?"

The girl answered with a vague laugh. Mr. Canning's odd but evident antagonism to the man she herself had such cause to dislike was agreeable to her, but the topic was not. She had had enough of the Vivians of this world for one night. She led the way through the dark drawing-room, and at the switch beyond the door turned the light into two soft-tinted dome-lamps. The library was massive rather than "livable"; it had books, which is more than can be said for some libraries; but they were chiefly books in stately sets, yards and yards of them just alike: a depressing matter to the true lover. However, it was at least solitude; solitude enveloped with an air of intimacy vastly agreeable and compensatory. It did not seem so certain now that the golden evening was ruined past hope....

"You and he seemed to be having a terribly earnest discussion," said Canning. "Of course I did my best to eavesdrop, but Miss Allen was so charming I caught only a word now and then."

"He was lecturing me about how my father ought to run his business. He always does...."

She replenished the dying fire with a soft lump, and poked it unskilfully, all but stabbing the life out of it. Canning, standing and staring half-absently into the soft glow, did not offer to relieve her of the poker. They knew each other very well by now.

"Only don't let's spoil our little party by talking about him," she went on--"he rubs me the wrong way so. And do please take off that polar overcoat. It positively makes me _shiver_...."

"Lecturing appears to be the fellow's specialty.... Well!"

He threw his overcoat, stick, and white gloves on the fire-settle, turned and glanced down at her. After the long and broken evening, he looked somewhat fatigued. Carlisle, already seated, was just beginning to unbutton her left long glove.

"Fine hours, fine hours these, for even a play sick-man! Yet I linger on...."

"You must stay," said she, "till the last person has gone from Mr. Beirne's."

The mantel clock stood at twenty minutes past twelve. With a little laugh she reached up and turned its small commemorative face to the wall.

"Or," she added, becoming grave, "are you really quite tired out with being with me?"

"I was hardly thinking that," said Canning.

He dropped into a chair and stared into the fire. Carlisle glanced at his face in profile; a virile and commanding face it was, and to her, singularly attractive.

"My thoughts were running in the contrary direction," said Canning. "Do you remember my saying long ago that once I began to gambol, I was never satisfied till I had gambolled all over the place? I suppose I need a guardian, but unluckily I have one. Miss Heth, I've some sad news--sad for me, I mean. I must go south to-morrow."

Carlisle turned her head with a little start.

"To-morrow! Oh, _no_!"

"No--you're right! I _can't _go to-morrow! The day after at the farthest, or I suppose Heber'll be down after me with a couple of sheriffs."

"But I don't understand," she said, hurriedly. "What's happened? I--I hoped you would stay till the end of the week at least."

Canning's gaze remained upon the fire.

"So did I, though of course I've known I'd no business hanging on the skirt of Mason and Dixon's line this way. I might almost as well be in my office at home--tackling the pile of work that's been rolling up while I go on with this invalid's mummery.... Well, Heber's found me out, as of course the clever beggar would. He's been thinking, you see, that I was in Pineburst, at the least. I had a red-headed telegram from him this afternoon ordering me to move on to Palm Beach instanter, or he would bring my revered parents down on me like a thousand of brick--no small matter, I assure you.... Palm Beach--Havana, perhaps!--till winter breaks!... A happy New Year message, isn't it?"

"It's very sad for me," said Carlisle, looking away from him.

"Well, I can't say that I feel exactly hilarious about it, you know."

There fell a brief silence, in which the crackling of the large new coal became noticeable.

"Duty is a hard word, Miss Heth," said Canning. "A thousand times I've wished that I wasn't an only son--my family's one hopeful. But I am, alas.... And hence the little rest-cure...."

"Yes, it's hard," she answered. And instead of going on as some girls would, "Don't you think you could _possibly_ stay a little longer?"--she added, in tones of comforting: "But of course you will enjoy Florida immensely. You know you'll find agreeable people, and plenty of fun--"

"Of course! It is my particular delight," said Canning, in his hoarsened voice, "to stay in an attractive place just long enough to fall in love with it, and then be whipped away like a naughty schoolboy."

Carlisle slowly drew off her glove.

"I'm glad you've liked it here," said she.... "Shall you stop again, on your way back home?"

The man's eyes turned from the fire full upon her face. His voice changed a little.

"What do you think?"

"I only know what I hope," said she; and her gold-and-black lashes fell.

The firelight played upon her half-averted face, twisted shadows into the sheen of her hair, incarnadined her smooth cheek. Whiter and softer than swan's down gleamed her round bare shoulder, her perfect neck. Canning's blood moved. He turned more fully and leaned toward her, his elbow on her chair-arm.

"Could you think that all these happy days with you have meant so little to me?... You've a poor opinion of me, indeed. Didn't I say in the beginning that you did not know how to be kind?"

At his tone, the girl's breath came faster. She sat in silence pulling her long gloves between slim little hands.

"You are hard, Miss Heth," said Canning, slowly. And he added, with that touch of unconscious pride with which he always spoke of the Cannings, their position and serious responsibilities in the world: "When I compel myself to think of my duty toward my father and my family, I make sacrifices which ought, I think, to win me your approval. I've a place to fill some day.... But since you ask, I shall think also of myself. I shall come again to the old Payne fort."

She gave him a look which said that she was not really unkind. And Canning immediately possessed her ungloved hand in both of his. Her heart flattered at his touch; her hand seemed to feel that this indeed was where it belonged; but, on the whole, training and intuition appeared to indicate a contrary view. There was a moment of stillness, of acquiescence, in which she became aware that he bent nearer. And then Carlisle rose, with a natural air, taking the hand along with her, incidentally as it were. Standing by the fire, looking down into it, she said:

"The town will be empty without you."

Behind her, Canning had risen too, with a sort of sharpness. He was silent. And then it was borne in upon her that the proud young man was moving toward his trappings, to go....

"Your friendly words are much appreciated," said he, smiling. "But I observe that I've overstayed horribly."

The girl regarded him. Hardly since the first moments in Kerr's apartment, had she heard that ironical note in Mr. Canning's voice; and yet she understood at once, and was not alarmed. Gently as she had removed herself, he had felt himself rebuffed; and he could be abrupt at his pleasure.

Nothing good could come out of this horrid evening, but there would be another. And in her heart, besides, she did not believe that he would go away day after to-morrow....

"Perhaps you'll drive with me to-morrow afternoon?"

"Oh, I'd like to so much," she said, naturally, as if nothing had passed between them. "And I'm so sorry about to-night, really. You've been such a saint, and all for me. You deserve a beautiful reward, a big medal, at least, and instead, an icy five-mile ride--"

"Reward!" said Canning, wheeling, still smiling a little. "What under heaven does the inconsequent sex know of reward? Up they trip, and with one flip of a little high heel kick a man's settled plans topsy-turvy. And for this upsetting he must thank his stars if he gets in return one kind smile a week. Punishment, not reward, strikes me as the feminine idea...."

"I think," she said, a little embarrassed, "the only person I've really punished to-night is Me."

And she felt a twinge, half regret, half compunction, which was not tactical at all. After all, this man had been extraordinarily nice to her, and she was letting him go feeling that she did not appreciate it....

She offered him her left hand to say good-night, and invested the gesture with a sweet air of penitence.

"But don't speak as if you were displeased with me, just when I'm so sad about your going away.... _Are_ you displeased with me--or do you like me very much?"

"I am displeased with you, and I like you very much."

As the small hand lingered with him, warming by contact, the man's clasp tightened. He brought up his other hand and folded it over it.

"I'll miss you dreadfully--you know that.... Very, _very_ much? That's the largest amount of liking known, isn't it?"

"Then that's the amount ..."

Outside sounded the blasts of horns and the wheels of departing guests from Mr. Beirne's: 'low on the sand and loud on the stone.' In the soft-lit room no sound broke the nocturnal stillness except the mechanism of the clock, pushing busily toward the three-quarter mark. Carlisle was looking up at Canning with eyes full of unpremeditated sweetness. Into Canning's face the blood leapt suddenly. Without other warning, he leaned back against the heavy table, and took her almost roughly in his arms.

"I'm mad about you, you lovely little witch. Do you hear? It grinds my heart that I must leave you...."

The turbulence of the sudden demonstration swept the girl from her moorings. If she had seemed to invite it, it yet came quite unexpectedly. For the moment she stood still in Canning's embrace, yielding herself with a thrilled passivity, as one who, with a full heart, touches high destiny at last. And in that moment her cheek, hair, eyes, then at last her lips, felt the sting of his Catullian endearments....

But the moment of bliss in culmination passed with fainting quickness. The willing ear heard not. Unsteadied intuitions began to work again, chilling the girl's blood with the knowledge of wrong here, of glaring omission. And the more her gallant murmured, it seemed, the wider gaped the sudden lack....

"You've been so good to me--so dear, so sweet--charmed away my hours as no one else could. Darling!... It's hard to be the stranger and the passer-by! I know you'll forget me, only too soon.... How can I tell you how grateful I am for all you've given me, in sweetness and happy days?..."

How, indeed, since this was the utmost of his wish of her?

The girl's blood warmed again with a leap, overflowing upon her fine skin. Understanding now came to her, with crushing force. Her knight made for her a pretty summary of an episode that was past. There was to come no coronation of words to ennoble these caresses: Mr. Canning, at parting, desired to thank her for her sweetness. And this was the high moment toward which she had been dancing on the fleece-pink of clouds through many days....

And then his arms about her were suddenly a burning and a torture; she felt a blush sweep her from head to foot, enveloping her as in a garment of fire, shaking her with a wild mysterious shame. And she took herself, almost with violence, from the enfolding embrace.

All tenderness, Canning came after her, Pan and his fleeing nymph....

"You darling, I've frightened you! Forgive my roughness. You can't know how your utter adorableness throws me off my guard...."

She turned to the mantelpiece, and, laying a rounded arm upon it, buried her face from his view.

Canning had come near, intending a gentler caress; but something in the dead unresponsiveness of her bowed figure abruptly allayed that intention. The complete repulse, the girl's silent emotion, had surprised him, indeed, like a box on the ears. Well he knew the feministic curve of advance and recoil. Yet he found himself unexpectedly, profoundly, stirred.

"I'm a brute," said he, presently, with an odd ring of conviction. "You go to my head like drink sweeter than was ever brewed. I've had a hard fight all these days to keep my hands off you...."

Carlisle raised her head and turned. Canning had expected to see her face stained with tears, or, more probably, flaming with (at least half-feigned) anger. His heart turned a little when he saw how still and white she was.

"You must go now, please," she said, in rather a strained voice, not looking towards him; and by some strange and subtle process of association she fell into words which she had used within the hour to another: "I don't wish to talk with you any more."

The man's handsome face flushed brightly. He said in a throbbing voice:

"I can't let you dismiss me this way. I can't endure it. Have I offended so--"

"I can't talk with you any more now. I must ask--"

"But you won't be so cruel! If I've offended, won't you make some allowance for my temptation? Am I a snow-man, to come so near and be unmoved? Am I to be a monk, because I live under sentence in a monastery? You ..."

To do him justice, he did not look in the least like either of these things. However, Carlisle missed his look. Standing with lowered eyes, she said again, colorlessly:

"Please leave me now--I beg you--"

"But I can't leave you this way!" said Canning. "It's impossible! You misjudge me so--"

"Then I must leave you," said Carlisle; and started to go past him.

But Canning blocked her way, his face, troubled with deep concern, more handsome and winning than she had ever seen it. Only she still did not see it. He thought, with a whirling mind, that this was carrying the thing rather too far; but he saw with chagrin and a curious inner tumult the entire uselessness of more argument to-night.

"I am heartbroken," he said, a little stiffly, "that I've brought you somehow to think so hardly of me. Your thought does a great wrong to the--respect and deep devotion I feel and shall feel for you." He wobbled the least bit over these words, as if himself conscious of a certain inadequacy, but went on with his usual masculine decisiveness: "Now it must of course be as you wish. But to-morrow I shall make you understand me better."

He picked up hat, coat, and stick, defeated, yet not spoiled of his air. But as he turned to go, and looked at her for his formal bow, he was all at once aware that she wore a wholly new dignity in his sight, a subtly enhanced desirability. Unexpectedly her marble loveliness shot him through and through, and he said in a low throbbing voice:

"You darling--darling! How can I bear to part from you like this? Forgive me _now_, Carlisle ..."

But Carlisle's only response was to move away toward the hall.

A moment later the front door shut, rather hard. Carlisle's second impassioned parting within an hour was over. She switched off the tall newel-post lamp, and went upstairs in the dark.

* * * * *

She was a long time in going to sleep. Not since she had the fever, as a little girl, was the great god of forgetfulness so elusive to her wooing. Not since the night at the Beach, and never in her life before that night, had the merry imps of thought so strung her brain upon a thumbscrew. Now came Self-Communion, rarest of her comrades, and perched upon her pillow.

All was plain now, by one instant of merciless illumination. She sufficed to beguile Mr. Canning's leisure for an invalid sojourn far from his normal haunts, but apart from that she had no existence for him. He could see her daily, monopolize her time, for these things happened to amuse him; he could make love to her, lead her in a hundred subtle ways to feel that her companionship was sweet to him; and then he could board a train and ride handsomely away, and woe is the word to the conquered. And by this freedom that he felt, and in particular by the license of his prodigal kisses, it appeared that she read the heart of his secret opinion of her.

Never again should he show her this opinion, at least: he should board his train with no more sight of her. On this her thought was crystal-clear from the beginning. That such short shrift to Mr. Hugo Canning was suicidally impolitic, she naturally had no difficulty in realizing; the dread of reporting the affair to mamma had already shot through her mind. But for the moment these things seemed oddly not to matter. She was clearly in the grip of one of those mysterious "flare-ups" which her mother disliked and objected to so intensely: to such lengths borne by her recoil from Mr. Canning's familiarity. She had met the common fate of beauty. Flaming young men had kissed her before now. But none had kissed her without the desire of her love, none as the fair price exacted for a couple of weeks' lordly attentions. By their lightness, as by their passion, Canning's kisses had seemed to sear and scar. They had given her body to be burned. For this was the fulness of his desire of her, her favor to wear in his button-hole; and his thought stabbed at her, beneath his gallant's air, that by now he had fairly earned it.

In the dark as it was, the memory of her moment of revelation had turned the girl's face downward upon her pillow. How, oh how, had he come to image her on so low a plane? How did it come to be that men should have slighting opinions of _her_, of all people, and so slap them across her face?...

It was the first time that such a thought of herself had ever risen before her mind, though in a sense not the first time she had had a pretext for it. Her painful meditations included brief note of Vivian, the eccentric stray across her path who had once considered her deserving of pity as a poor little thing. He, of course, was only an unbalanced religious fanatic, whose opinions were not of the slightest consequence to anybody, whom everybody seemed to take a dislike to at sight (except ignorant paupers like the Cooneys), and whose ideal type of girl would probably be some hideous dowd, a slum-worker, a Salvation Army lassie, perhaps. Yet this man had felt sorry for her at the Beach; he had done it again to-night.... And if he was quite out of her world of men, was of course not a man at all as she counted men, the same could not possibly be said of Mr. Canning, a man of her own kind in the royal power....

The thought of herself as vulnerable and vincible to the hostile sex had come upon the girl, fire-new, with disruptive force. It was pulling out the pin which held her life together. For if she was a failure in the subjugation of men, then she was a failure everywhere: this being the supreme, indeed, you might say the only, purpose of her life....

Below in the still house, the soft-toned chimes rang two; and, almost on the heels of that, it seemed, three. Step by step, Carlisle went back over all her acquaintance with Canning from their first meeting; and gave herself small glory. She had pursued him to the Beach; she had pursued him to Willie's apartment; and on both occasions, and since, she had used her arts to lure him into reversing the pursuit. A dozen times she had sought to lead him, so it seemed now, further than he ever had the slightest idea of going. Was it really a wonder that he, whose experienced eyes observed everything, had seen in her merely his ready plaything? Repulsed, he could wear an air of genuine tenderness, but never doubt that in his heart he was laughing at her, and had a right to....

And she herself ... Were these the pangs of unrequited love that tore her breast? In her desire to land the great catch, by hook or by crook, when had she paused to consult her heart about the glittering prospect? What else did it all mean but that she, calculating, had offered herself to him at the price of his hand, name, and enduring complement of happiness, and he, lightly responding, had rated her as worth, at most, only his counterfeit coin. Why else should the memory of the moment downstairs continually return to her like an affront?

She was of her world and time, not unsophisticated; but it chanced that she possessed a mind natively maiden. Through all her vigil, through all her questioning and novel self-criticism, her mind's-eye picture of Canning, as his arms went round her, ran like a torturing motif. The portrait became detestable to her. She hated him, she would hate him forever as the man who had cruelly revealed to her that love and his base brother can speak with the same voice and hand.

And next day, when a box of glorious and penitent blossoms was followed within an hour by Canning's card and presence at her door, the girl's resolution to see him nevermore held staunch. It held to deny him a second time on the afternoon following. After that it was subjected to no more tests. And the social columns of another morning made it known to the general public that the Paynes' distinguished house-guest had departed for points south.

XII

How V. Vivian still felt the Same about the Huns, No Matter what Sam thought; also, how Kern Garland lost Something at the Works, and what made Mr. V.V. look at her That Way.

While Vivian was still engaged with his sick, O'Neill, recently returned from a three weeks' industrial tour of the State, stuck his head informally through the office door.

"Oh! Busy, hey?"

"This is the last, I think. Step into the waiting-room and come in when I whistle."

In three minutes Vivian whistled, and O'Neill instantly opened the door. It looked as if he had meant to come in just then anyway, and he had.

"Say, V.V.!--step out here!" he said in a low, interested voice. "There's a whiskered bum dodging around your back hall here, and if I'm not very much mistaken, he's got your Sunday pants!"

"It's Mister," said V.V., looking round from his secretary. "Shut the door."

"Oh!--_Garland_, hey? But he's swiped your best pants!"

"They were a gift," said V.V., with a touch of soberness. "_Sh!_ he'll hear you."

"Oh!" said the Labor Commissioner again, and looked a little disappointed.

He shut the door and came on in, a substantial figure in his glossy suit. It was the 30th of January, and he had been taking on flesh since October.

"Well, when'd _he_ blow in? Say, he's a ringer for Weary Waggles, all right."

"Sometime in the night," replied the young man, tilting back in his swivel-chair. "Mrs. G. found him in the entryway when she went down for the milk, asleep in the Goldnagels' hall-rug. I'm afraid he's only come to be outfitted again, and she will not be firm with him, no matter what she promises.... By the way, they were not my best trousers at all, except in a sort of technical sense. Never had 'em on but once, at a funeral.--Well, how was the lunch with the Governor?"

The Commissioner, having pushed a new brown derby to the back of his head, walked about.

"Pretty good," said he--"we had a very satisfactory talk. One of his cigars I'm smoking now. I told him what I'd noticed around the State, and gave him an outline of the legislation I want next year. Said my ideas were just right. Paid me some nice compliments. Speaking of legislation," added the Commissioner, flicking cigar-ash on the bare floor with a slightly ruffled air, "you'll be interested to hear I've been down to Heth's since I was in the other day. Saw Heth himself...."

The doctor remarked that he had been thinking of Heth's, not five minutes before.

"I let Corinne go back to work this morning, you see--not that she's well again yet by a good deal, or that that's the place for her at any time. However.... You saw Mr. Heth himself?"

"Yair. I saw him--last time I'll fool with him, too! Says he guesses the law's good enough for him. Told me pointblank he wouldn't spend a cent till he had to. How's that for public spirit?"

Having halted by the secretary, the Commissioner looked down at his friend in the open manner of a speaker confident of sympathy.

"Trouble is," said the friend, frowning and sketching circles over some yesterday's memoranda, "Mr. Heth probably doesn't know anything about it himself. Got a lot of other interests, you see. He allows that blackguard MacQueen an absolute free hand at the Works--takes everything he says for gospel. He probably--"

"Don't you fool yourself, V.V.! Heth's too smart a man to turn over his principal business to anybody. And I'm sick and tried of jollying with him. Say, remember that letter you wrote in the 'Post' last fall?"

It appeared that V.V. did recall the thing, now that Sam mentioned it. He said introspectively:

"So you think he's still got a grudge about that?... Well, I'm sorry, but that letter was all true, Sam, absolutely true, in all particulars.... Why," said he, "what's the use of talking? You can't have omelettes without breaking eggs. You cannot."

"That's right. 'S what I came to talk about. Now, what do you say to another strong letter to-morrow, right in the same place. These--"

"_Another_ letter!..."

"You betcher--hurt their feelings, anyway, if it don't do anything else. I guess you had it right, that a heavy dose of public opinion is--"

"Well, no," said V.V., frankly--"no.... Another letter would be a mistake, at just this stage of the game--a great tactical blunder--"

"Why d'you think that?" said Sam O'Neill, rather taken aback.

"Why do I think it, you say? Well, I--I know it."

"Well, I don't know it. It's a blame good thing to make these swell obstructionists feel ashamed of themselves. Let 'em see their names right in print. As for damages, Heth's shown that he's afraid to go into court--"

But V.V. waved aside the idea of a suit. "The whole thing," said he, "is merely a question of tactics. Things are going along very satisfactorily as they are. There's a drift on, a tendency--you might say. The clothing people have come in. Magees have come in. Why, they've agreed to do every blessed thing you asked--fireproofed stairways and fire-doors, ventilators and rest-rooms--"

"That makes the attitude of these others all the worse. I tell you they've practically told me to go to hell."

The good-natured Commissioner spoke with a rare touch of irritation. To have bagged all four of the offending local plants, without the aid of law and relying only on personal influence and tactful pressure, would undoubtedly have been a great card for the O'Neill administration. Moreover, Mr. Heth's manner of superior indifference yesterday had been decidedly galling.

"Well, give 'em a little more time," counselled V.V., lighting a pipe which looked as if it had had a hard life. "You must make some allowance for their point of view, Sam. Here's Mr. Heth, just to take an example,--not making much this year, you say, and mortgaged up pretty well, besides. Well! Just when he's probably getting worried about his book-keeping, down you drop on him and ask him as a favor to you to put up a new building, which is practically what--"

"He'll have to do it, too. If he don't do it now, I'll have a law next year that'll get him right in the neck."

"Exactly. _But_--mark my words, he won't wait for the law, now that we've got this drift going. Don't you be deceived by what he may say now in--in pique. Give him a little chance to adjust himself to the new idea, that's all. Rome wasn't built in a day, Sam--as you've said."

"Look here, old horse, what's struck you?"

"How do you mean, what's struck me?"

The two young men gazed at each other.

"You're pipin' a mighty different tune than you were when you wrote that letter. I've noticed it for some time."

The look of the fine-skinned young man at the desk changed perceptively. O'Neill was made to feel that his remark was in questionable taste, to say the least of it.

"I wish you wouldn't speak as if I were a band of travelling bagmen. I'm not piping or tuning in any way. I say now precisely what I've said all along. Rouse these people to their responsibilities, and you can tear up your factory laws! Different cases require different methods of--"

"Why, last fall--"

"Now, Sam--here! Arguing's no good--I'll tell you what. Suppose you just leave Heth's to me. Go ahead and hammer the Pickle people if you think that'll do the slightest good. But you leave Heth's to me for a while."

"Well! That's an order," said the Commissioner, somewhat derisively, yet looking interested, too. "And what'll you do with them?"

"All that I care to say at present," replied the tall doctor, apparently choosing his words with care, "is that I--ah--feel everything's going to work out very satisfactorily in that quarter."

O'Neill stared at him, the gubernatorial cigar forgotten. "Oho!... You've met the Heths personally?" "I've met some of them personally, as you call it,--far as that goes."

O'Neill, puffing again, digested this information speculatively. Presently he looked knowing and laughed.

"Say, remember my saying to you, time you wrote that letter, that if you knew any of these yellow captains and horse-leeches' daughters personally, you'd feel mighty different--"

"But I don't! I don't! You don't seem to get me at all, Sam. I've just shown that my position's exactly--"

"They're a lot of Huns, and that's why they'll shell out thousands and modernize their plants just because you ask 'em?"

The two men eyed each other again, O'Neill good-natured and rather triumphant. V.V., for his part, was smiling just a little sternly.

"Sam," said he, "you thought I was a mad ass to write a letter a few months ago. Now time passes and you say I was quite right, and won't I please write you another in to-morrow's paper. This time, I tell you that a letter will only do harm--great harm--"

"'Phone, Doctor!" bawled a husky young voice from below. "Aw, Doctor! 'Phone!"

"All right, Tommy!" shouted Doctor.

Rising to his height, he shot at O'Neill: "And once more you'll see I'm absolutely right! I don't change, my dear fellow, the simple reason being that I've got a guiding principle that doesn't change. I must answer that 'phone."

"Well, I'll trot along with you. I've got to get on up the hill...."

They headed together for the door. By reason of the prohibitory expense, Dr. Vivian had no telephone of his own, but through the courtesy of Meeghan's Grocery just across the street (which establishment was in receipt of medical attendance gratis), the initiate could always "get a message" to him. Commissioner O'Neill, at once puzzled and somewhat impressed by his friend's air of confidence, resumed conciliatively:

"Now, jokin' aside, V.V., what's the proposition? D'you honestly think Heth can be made to clean up by your persuading his wife or daughter to ask him to? Is that it?--You met 'em at your uncle's reception, I s'pose?"

But V.V.'s reserve had fallen, like a mysterious wall between. "You say you're at the end of your rope," said he, stepping with his long stride into the hall. "Well, suppose you give me a few months, that's all."

The two friends descended the long stairs in silence. Vivian's meditations were rather tense. He recalled the hard words of the Severe Arraignment; he remembered the unforgivable speech he had made in the summer-house; before his mind's eye rose the moment in his uncle's lamplit den when he had told the girl to her face that her father was a homicide. Sacrificing natural inclinations to kindliness, he had done and said these things. And Sam O'Neill, knowing practically nothing of the facts in the case, had the nerve to stand up ...

O'Neill, descending, reflected that old V.V. was undoubtedly a queer one. Chuck full of hazy optimism, he was of late. Hazy optimism: O'Neill repeated the phrase, liking it. Still it was possible he might manage to work on the girl's feelings--O'Neill was sure it was the girl--whatever that was worth. He was a kind of appealing fellow, and did have connections with the swells, though it was really he, O'Neill, and Mrs. O., who ought ...

"Well, be good," said he, as they emerged from the decayed grand entrance. "I'm breakin' in a new stenographer--troubles of my own. See you again in a day or two."

"All right. And by the way," said the tall doctor, speaking with polite restraint, "please don't get it into your head that I'm letting up on these people, or anything of that sort. As a matter of fact, my tendency is all the other way. Not to judge them too harshly--not to do the--the most serious injustice--that's what _I've_ got to guard against...."

He turned away, bareheaded in the mild January sunshine, and crossed to Meeghan's, where his telephone call proved to be from Rev. Mr. Dayne, desiring a personal conference later in the day. Cumbered with many cares though he was, the kind-faced Secretary of Charities had been captured at sight by Vivian's plan of buying the old Dabney House, and bringing it to life again as a great Settlement. The problem now engrossing both was how to raise the necessary money, twenty-five thousand dollars being a large sum, particularly with the benevolent field just swept clean by the Associated Charities canvass. However, the tireless Secretary seldom despaired, V. Vivian never. The young man promised eagerly to call on Mr. Dayne, whom, in common with most of the rest of the world, he admired immensely.

Hanging up the receiver, Vivian purchased a five-cent box of blacking, a commodity not ranking among Meeghan's best sellers, and returned to make ready for his professional rounds. In the closet of his bedroom, where he went for hat and coat, he was struck with the brooding sense of something lost, and readily recalled the episode of the trousers. He became conscious of a certain feeling of destitution. Undoubtedly the whole question of new clothes would have to be taken up seriously some day. For the present there did not lack a sense of economic precariousness: it was he and these trousers against the world....

While brushing his hat in the bedroom, Vivian wondered if Mister had yet donned the gift articles, and how he looked in them. He fell to musing about Kern's erring parent, thinking what a strange life he led. It was many and many a year ago since Mister and society had parted company; and through all this time, it was certain that every hand had been against him. In many cities he had stood before sarcastic judges, and been sent on to serve his little time. Adown highways unnumbered he had sawed wood, when necessary; received handouts, worn hand-me-downs; furnished infinite material for the wags of the comic press. Long he had slept under hedges and in ricks, carried his Lares in a bandana kerchief, been forcibly bathed at free lodging-houses in icy winters. Dogs had chased him, and his fellow man: he had been bitten by the one and smitten by the other. Ill-fame and obloquy had followed him like a shadow. And yet--so strong and strange are our ruling passions--nothing could wean him from the alluring feckless ways which had heaped all these disasters upon him....

Thus and otherwise philosophizing, V. Vivian slipped on his overcoat (which had so far escaped Mr. Garland's requisitions) and flung wide the office windows to rid his chambers of the medical smell. He had had a busy morning, his habit of having no billheads, while regarded as demoralizing by professional brethren of the neighborhood, being clearly gratifying to the circumambient laity. It was now getting toward noon, and the doctor was in a hurry. Besides calls on his sick, he was very anxious to get uptown before dinner and inquire after his uncle Armistead Beirne, who had lain ill, with a heavy, rather alarming illness, since a day or two after his New Year's reception. This call was purely avuncular, so to say, Mr. Beirne employing a reliable physician of his own....

The young man picked up his doctor's bag and opened the door. At the far end of the long hall, where the Garlands' apartments were, he caught a glimpse of a skirt, just whisking out of sight. He thought he recognized the skirt, which was a red one, and called, in surprise:

"Corinne!"

There was no answer.

"Corinne!" he called, louder. "Is that you?"

Sure enough, Kern's face peeped out of a door, a long distance away.

"It's me, and it ain't me," she cried, mockingly. "I'm here _in-cog."_

And her head bobbed back out of sight again.

"What're you talking about?" called Vivian into the emptiness. "Did you feel too weak to work?"

"Like in the books," said Kern, and stuck her head out again with a giggle. "Why, I thank you kindly," she went on in a mincing stage voice. "I'm feeling very, very, _very_ well, my Lord Dook, Mr. V.V. On'y I decided I'd spend to-day lazyin' at my writin'-desk, readin' over my billy-doox from peers of the rellum, 'stead of working my hands and legs off in that nasty, _nasty_, NASTY--"

"Stop that cuckoo-clock nonsense!" called Mr. V.V., starting to walk towards her. "What are you doing here, I say?"

"I'm helping mommer soak colliflower, Mr. V.V. Honest!" "But why didn't you stay at the Works? Come, stop this foolishness, Corinne, and answer me sensibly."

The girl's cheek rested against the door-facing. She stopped her foolishness.

"Mr. V.V., I'm fired."

A bullet would not have stopped Mr. V.V.'s advance more abruptly.

"You're WHAT?"

Kern nodded slowly a number of times. "I wasn't goin' to tell you till I got me another job, and maybe never, on'y you caught me--"

"Come here," said Mr. V.V. in rather a queer voice. "Walk," he added, as she began to take the long hall at a skip.

Kern came at a walk. Eyeing Mr. V.V. as she drew near, she soon made out that he was taking it even harder than she had expected. She herself had accepted the loss of her position with the easy fatalism of the poor, though it was a serious enough matter, in the slack midwinter and following three weeks of idleness. However, after her sex, her present overweening instinct was to erase that sort-of-white look from Mr. V.V.'s face.

"It's on'y some of that sickenin' MacQueen's foolishness," she called out from some distance away--"and I was tired of workin' in that old nasty place anyway. Up and said he didn't have no job for me. Didn't have _a_ job for me. So I just laughed at him and stayed round a little while, havin' a good time, and then he happened up to the bunchin' room and told me to git. So I gitted ... Lor, Mr. V.V.! I can find all the good places _I_ want. Goodness me, sir! I'll get more orfers of jobs--"

"Come into the office," said Mr. V.V., turning back.

In the office, Kern, acting under medical instruction, sat down on the horsehair lounge with one leg gone, and told her simple story in detail.

In these weeks, while she had gone down with mild pleurisy, been successfully "tapped" and haled back to something like an economically valuable condition, the work of the world had marched on. That another operative sat now on Kern's stool and manipulated Kern's machine might appear natural enough, as the superintendent, it seemed, had insisted with his sour smile. But this was not to consider Kern's exceptional skilfulness, known and recognized throughout the Heth Works. Replace a girl who could bunch sixty-five hundred cheroots in a single day? No, no, you could hardly do that....

For this dismissal there was an explanation, and it was not hidden from the young physician. He spoke slowly, struggling not to betray the murder in his heart.

"The devil's doing this because he knows you're a friend of mine. He hits you to punish me.... By George, I'll show him!"

The intensity of his face, which in all moods looked somehow kind-of-sorrowful to her, made Kern quite unhappy. She was moved by a great desire to soothe Mr. V.V., to conjure a smile from him....

"Lor, Mr. V.V.! What do you and 'me care for his carryin's on? We can get on heaps better without him than he can without Me! The Consolidated'll jump down my throat--"

"You are going back to the Works," spoke Mr. V.V., in his repressed voice.

"Oh!" replied Kern, trying not to look surprised. "Well, then, all right, sir, Mr. V.V. Just whatever--"

"I'll give him one chance to take you back himself. I'll assume, for his sake, that there's a misunderstanding.... If he refuses, so much the worse for him. I shall know where to go next."

"Oh!--You mean John Farley?"

It was a shrewd guess. John Farley, sometime of the sick, and ever a good friend of the Dabney House, was known to hold past-due "paper," of the hard-driving Heth superintendent.

But Mr. V.V., continuing to speak as if something pained him inside, only said, "I was not thinking of Farley...."

The young man stood silent, full of an indignation which he could not trust himself to voice. Yet already he was beginning to put down that tendency to a too harsh judgment which, as he himself admitted, was his besetting sin ... Perhaps there was some misunderstanding: this contemptible business hardly seemed thinkable, even of MacQueen. At the worst, it was MacQueen personally and nobody else. No argument was needed to show that the owners would not for a moment tolerate such methods in their Works. Merely let them know what sort of thing their superintendent was up to, that was all. O'Neill should see ... Mr. Heth, to be sure, he did not happen to know personally....

"Well, then. That's all settled," Kern was saying, eagerly, "and I '11 go back to MacQueen or not go back, just whichever you want me, and don't less think about him any more. Oh, Mr. V.V.--"

"He can consider himself lucky if he doesn't lose _his_ job for this day's work."

"Mr. V.V., _what d'you think?" _cried Kern; and having caused him to turn by this opening, she fixed him with grave eyes, and hurried on: "Well, there was a man here named Avery, and he was ridin' his automobile slow down a dark road and his lamps went out. And there was two men walkin' down the road, and he ran over one of them. So he turns back to see if the man was hurted, and the road bein' so dark he runs over him again. So he turns back again, scared he had killed him, and then the other man that had hopped into the ditch, he sings out to his friend, 'Get up, you damn fool, _he's comin' back!'"_

Having quite failed to follow Kern's cheer-up narrative, Mr. V.V.'s stare remained blank, engrossed; but presently he was caught, first by the silence, then by his little friend's wide and intensely expectant gaze, just beginning to fade into childlike disappointment. He promptly burst into a laugh. It began as a dutiful laugh, but Kern's expression soon gave it a touch of genuineness.

"Ha, ha!" said he. "That's a good one! Well, where on earth did you get that one?"

"Off Sadie Whirtle!" cried Kern; and springing up gleefully from the sofa, began to pirouette and kick about the bleak office.

The young man watched her, buttoning his overcoat, his specious merriment dying.... For all the high wages she earned, the Works was of course the last place on earth for her; but for the moment that did not happen to be the point.

"Was it not bein' a lady to say the word like he did?" said Kern, swaying about and waving her arms like wings. "I told Sadie Whirtle it wasn't netiquette, but Sadie she said it wasn't funny without you used the swear. And I did want to make you laugh.... She druther be funny than netiquette, Sadie said."

The young man picked up his bag again, his face intent. "I'm late with my calls," said he. "Tell your mother that I mayn't be back for dinner."

"Sadie she heard a lady say damn once right out, a customer in the store, in a velvet suit--"

"Now stop that foolish dancing, Corinne."

Kern stopped dancing. She still looked a little pale from her illness, which had cost her seven pounds. That morning she had donned her working-clothes expectantly, but she had changed since coming in, and that accounted for her favorite red dress. The dress was a strict copy of the slender mode; she looked very small, indeed, in it. She wore a brave red ribbon in her hair, a necklace of red beads, and a long gilt chain which glittered splendidly as she moved.

"What makes you look at me that way, Mr. V.V.?"

The young man gave a small start and sigh.

"You must take better care of yourself, Corinne," said he, from the depths of troubled thought. "I shall certainly do something better for you later on. That I promise."

"Why, I feel very, _very_ well, Mr. V.V., truly."

"You're much too clever and pretty to be wearing your life out at this sort of thing.... Much too dear a little girl...."

Kern turned away. Mr. V.V. had never said such a thing to her before, and he now made a mental note that he must be careful not to do it again. He had honestly intended only a matter-of-fact statement of simple and, on the whole, pleasant truth; but Kern, with her sensitiveness and strange delicacy, too clearly felt that he had taken a liberty. All her gaiety died; her cheek seemed to flush a little. She walked stiffly past Mr. V.V. to the door, never looking in his direction.

"I'll go soak the colliflower, sir," she murmured, and slipped away into the hall.

XIII

How Life was Gray and Everything was Horrid; how Carlisle went to Little Africa with Hen; how the Man spoke to her again, just the same, and what happened then; further, reporting a Confidential Talk with a Best Girl-Friend.

Hearing the whir of a slowing motor behind her, and her name called besides, Henrietta Cooney checked her practised pedestrian's stride and looked back over her shoulder. The Heth car, with Carlisle alone in it, rolled abreast of her at the curb.

"What on earth are _you_ doing, Hen," asked her cousin, but hardly as if the matter interested her much--"up here at this time!"

"Servant chasing!" cried Hen, gaily. "My favorite outdoor sport. Hortense's left us. I got out early on purpose. You're looking mighty well, Cally."

Cally made a weary little face, which seemed to say that such matters as looks were very far from being of interest to her. It happened to be the fact, indeed, that she had never felt more depressed and bereft in her life: witness her hailing Hen Cooney, whom she had never cared much for, and less than ever after the way Hen had shown her real nature about the Works. Time's chances had brought her to this, that she preferred Hen's society above the company of her own thoughts. Gray and empty had been Cally's days since a New Year's moment in the library....

"But you'll not find any servants up here, my dear!--unless you expect to throw bags over their heads and kidnap them?"

"I'd like to," laughed Hen, friendly elbows on the car door. "And then give them the bastinado every hour on the hour. Think of Hortense's doing us so when we've all been perfect mothers to her for a year. But I've come up here just to get an address, from Mrs. J.T. Carney, and now I'm off to Little Africa, pleasant but determined."

"Jackson Ward?"

"No," said Hen, producing and consulting a scrap of paper, "it's South Africa this time--106A Dunbar Street. You know--down along the Canal."

"Hop in," said Cally, listlessly. "I'll drive you down there." "Perish the thought!" ejaculated Hen, in some surprise. "You don't want to go exploring the slum districts, finding out how the other half lives. I'll like the walk--"

But Carlisle insisted, being out only because she was bored with being in, and Hen hopped in, not altogether reluctantly. By request she repeated the Ethiopian address to the chauffeur, himself of that tongue and nation; and off the cousins bowled.

"Bored? How's this, Cally? I hear on all sides that it's the gayest winter in ten years. You're not tired of parties, at your age?"

"Oh, I'm crazy about them," said Cally, indifferently, yet drawing comfort from the sound of her own voice. "But one can't have parties every hour of the day, you know. There are always chinks to be filled up, and that is where one's background comes in. My background has a violent attack of indigestion just now. Everything's horrid.--_Ohh_! Why _will_ a dog take chances like that?..."

"How's Uncle Thornton?" said Hen, holding her hat on with a hand that looked hard-worked. "I don't believe I've seen him since that day we all came to dinner--"

"Oh, he's well, I suppose, but he's out of spirits a good deal of the time, which I _will_ say is unusual for papa. I think he's probably worried about business or ... Who was that old man that stared at me so? He looked as if I ought to know him."

"Where?" said Hen, glancing back. "Oh!--there under the tree? Why, that's Colonel Dalhousie. You know--"

"Oh!" said Cally, immediately regretting having spoken. To relieve the baldness of her exclamation, she added: "I thought he was a rather younger man than that."

"He's broken dreadfully in the last few months--that's probably why you didn't recognize him," said Hen, cheeringly. "They say the poor old man's grieving himself to death."

Through Cally quivered an angry wonder why it was that only disagreeable things happened nowadays. Why, why, when everything else was just as abominable as possible, need that old man go prowling around the streets, stopping on corners to stare at her?...

She went on quickly with a tinge of light bitterness in her voice:

"I'm sure it must be business, for there's a hard-times atmosphere hanging over the house, all of a sudden, and mamma is constantly remarking that there's a limit to my extravagance, etc., etc. She and I happen to be on dreadfully formal terms just at present, which is another of the joys of home. And to cap the climax," she added, with a burst of confidence only half mocking, "I'm in an absolutely suitorless condition--not a blessed swain to my name! I was never so destitute and forlorn in my life!"

Hen, struck from the beginning with the unusual note in her brilliant cousin's manner, laughed. She perceived that Cally wished to talk about herself, and talk complainingly, and Hen didn't mind.

"First time I ever heard such a complaint in this quarter. Is J. Forsythe Avery dead without my knowledge?"

"J. Forsythe is in New York. Robert's in the sulks. James Bogue, 2d, is in bed--measles, if you please ... Do you ever have the horrible nobody-loves-you feeling? Rather odious, isn't it?"

"Ghastly," said Hen.

"I'll be awfully glad to get away next month," continued Cally....

Interested by the hiatus in Cally's list of missing swains, Hen desired that this conversation should go on. Like most people, the Cooneys had of course heard of, and gossiped about, the open breach between their cousin and Mr. Canning a month ago, promptly followed by the great young man's departure from town. Through the masculine half of the local world, it was generally assumed that Miss Heth had actually rejected Mr. Canning. It was a rare tribute to the girl's attractions that not a few women also believed this, even though Cally's best girl-friends, like Mattie Allen, were perfectly _sure_ nothing of the sort had happened....

Hen, a Cooney, had had a special reason for wondering if this interesting affair might not be "on" again. However, Cally, skipping the conversation along, was talking now of the visit she had in prospect to her friend, Mrs. Willing, Florence Stone that was, in New York. Florrie, she informed Hen, wanted her particularly for the Lenten weeks, promising that they would spend the sober penitential season in a hilarious round of theatres, restaurants, and shops. It appeared that this promising invitation had come only that morning, and Cally described it as a direct answer to prayer.

"Goodness, Cally! You talk as if you lived in a special kind of purgatory," said Hen. "I don't know anybody that has a better time than you."

"Is an everlasting round of gaieties, all exactly alike, your idea of a perfect time? What is the point or meaning of it all?" demanded Cally, the philosopher. "The whole trouble with me," she added, explanatorily, "is that I haven't budged from home in three months, and I'm simply bored deaf and dumb."

Hen might have replied that she hadn't budged for three years, but what was the use? She said instead: "When're you going to sail for Europe. May?"

"It remains to be seen whether we sail at all or not," answered Carlisle, with a sudden mocking little laugh. "Mamma talks several times a day of cancelling our passage and shipping me off to Aunt Helen's farm for the summer. She's been tremendously droll with me of late...."

Droll, of course, was only the girl's derisive euphemism. The truth was that mamma's attitude, since hearing of the extraordinary rupture,--which her daughter refused either to explain or amend instantly,--had been nothing short of violent. Jangling scenes recurred daily.... Perhaps, indeed, it was mamma's relentless pressure that had brought about the gradual shifting, amounting to a total revolution, in Cally's own attitude. More probably, though, it was only the inevitable resurgence of her own sane fundamental purposes, temporarily swept away by purblind passion.

It is one thing to kick out your symbol of happiness in a burst of senseless rage. It is quite another to learn to live day by day without it.... Why, indeed, should she not yield obedience to poor mamma--at the least greet Canning's return with some mark of forgiveness, a tiny olive-branch?...

Henrietta Cooney's voice spoke, singularly apropos:

"You don't seem to be the only one who's been bored lately, Cally--that ought to comfort you! Chas and I saw Mr. Canning yesterday, and he looked bluer than indigo. Mad, too!"

Surprise betrayed Carlisle into a naked display of interest. Turning with a little jump, she stared at Hen with a kind of breathless rigidity.

"You saw _Mr. Canning yesterday!_... Where?"

"Why, out on the old Plattsburg Turnpike," said Hen, certain now that the affair was not on again--"near the Three Winds Road. We happened to be taking a walk out there, and he dashed by on that beautiful big bay mare of Mr. Payne's, going like a runaway. He didn't look happy a bit ... You knew he was here, I suppose?"

By a very special effort, Carlisle had recaptured her poise: it was not her habit to confide her troubles to anybody, least of all to a Cooney.

"Oh, no!" she answered in a voice of careless frankness. "I don't know the first thing about his movements any more."

"Well, it seems he only came for over Sunday. A friend of Mr. Payne's told Chas he was here, on Saturday. He went off again on the noon train to-day."

"Oh!... Did he?"

"Looloo saw him at the station. She happened to be there, meeting a friend of hers."

Gone!--He had come, not seen her, and gone!... A wave of bitterness swept through Cally, impelling her to hit out at somebody.

"Of course. Isn't it _funny_ how your family always sees and hears everything?"

But Hen answered, entirely unmoved, in fact with an air of modesty: "Any family can do it who keep their eyes and ears open. For instance, good old Looloo heard where he checked his baggage to: Palm Beach, if it's of any interest to you."

"I don't believe it is, my dear. He'll be checking it back this way again very soon, I've no doubt. Are we going the right way for Dunbar Street?"

Hen shot at her a look of unconscious admiration. Her pretty cousin's indifferent air seemed to support the theory that she had actually rejected the prince of partis, which, in fact, was exactly what it was meant to do. Hen had never really thought that Cally had it in her. She threw her alert eye around to see where they were. The car had turned south at Twelfth Street, had crossed Centre, and was now rolling into a quarter of the town very different-looking, indeed, from Washington Street. Hen said they were all right for Dunbar Street and told Cally to cheer up. Much worse was coming, Hen said.

There was nothing personal in Hen's admonition, but the truth was that Cally, gazing fixedly at the passing sights, felt anything but cheerful at this moment. The Cooneys' tidings were staggering in their way.

What was the meaning of Mr. Canning's mysterious flying visit? That it had to do with her she did not question; and, tensely meditating, she presently found a hypothesis not unsatisfying after its kind. He had come with the hope that she would at last make some generous overture toward a reconciliation. More direct advances, after her three galling rebuffs of him, he naturally could not bring himself to make. Yet he had taken a long journey merely to put himself in her way--perhaps counting on a chance meeting, more probably expecting that she, hearing of his presence, would this time extend the sweet olive. The wormwood in it was that she would have been perfectly willing to extend the olive if she had only known....

The car, pushing through a mean and shabby neighborhood, offensive to refined eyes, ears, and nostrils, now turned into a narrow street brisk with the din of business, but by no means lovely to look upon. Recalling the Cooney presence, Cally suddenly stirred with the deadly self-protective instinct of her sex, and directed Hen to cease instantly all thinking about her and Mr. Canning. She did it, needless to say, scientifically, by saying with just the plausible degree of interest:

"I meant to ask you--what on _earth_ was the trouble with Hortense, Hen? I supposed she was a perfect _fixture_ with you, an institution!"

"What's the trouble with all the servants in this town?" cried Hen. "I tell you, Cally, I don't know what's going to become of us. Why ..."

She launched with zest upon the somewhat unoriginal thesis, and Cally relapsed into her own thoughts, which were full of rebellion at the bitter untowardness of her fate....

Much water had flowed under the bridge of sighs since the parting in the library. Passed long since, it seemed, was that uprush of burning humiliation; subdued was the betraying flare-up (mamma's favorite word nowadays)--vanished to thin air like a midsummer madness, delirium's delusion, hardly possible to understand, much less recapture, now. A day had hardly passed, after the second rejection of Mr. Canning at her door, before the thought of whistling him back again flashed luringly across Carlisle's mind. She repelled the thought, but it recurred, and she came to dally with it, ably assisted in that direction by mamma. What had he done to warrant such absurd melodramatics?... More and more her mind had fastened upon the genuine tenderness, the emotion, the man had shown in his last moment with her. In love with her without quite realizing it himself, he had in the moment of parting been swept away by his feelings, and had taken a not strictly authorized kiss or two. What Sir Galahad among men was proof against such a tripping in the presence of lovely and irresistible temptation?...

"Hortense gave you no notice at all?" she demanded out of a dream.

"Did you ever? Why, honestly, Cally ..."

He was to pause once again, to bid the Paynes farewell, on his final progress back to what he had once called lights and home. That would be in April, said Cousin Willie Kerr, when his six months' sentence ran out. The distant promise brought the girl no comfort now. Why, really, should she not take this new opportunity he had given her, and dispatch him a little note, saying in a friendly way that she had wanted to see him again? By day after to-morrow, he could be at her side....

It was a little note that mamma, though ignorant of the circumstances, had so specially recommended in the desolate weeks; had commanded, offered bribes for, cried for with real tears, blustered and threatened for with a purpling birthmark. In her own mind the girl had already worded many which met the situation with merely a front of sweet generosity, carrying no forfeiture of dignity, no real acknowledgment of surrender. What was the fibre of foolish hardness in her that resisted all mamma's importunities, all her own urgent wisdom?

"Five years ago," said Hen, "we paid eight dollars a month, and got really good ones. Now the greenest of them holds you up for twelve and fourteen. Hortense was simply bribed off...."

Cally roused, glancing about. "Papa says," she observed, absently, "it will all end in something like the French Revolution. Heavens! What a perfectly sickening street!"

"Isn't it?" said Hen, cheerfully. "Yet it's interesting too, Cally, for this is where the city makes all its money."

Money-making, indeed, Canal Street looked. Long processions of trucks rolled up and down it, giving motorists more time than they desired to look about. All around them, as the car moved slowly on, were warehouses, new and old cheek by jowl together; commission merchants, their produce spilled over the sidewalk; noisy freight yards, with spur-tracks running off to shipping-rooms of all descriptions; occasional empty ground used as dumps, littered with ashes and old tin cans; over all a thousand smells, each more undelectable than the last.

But _April_! You might as well say in another life. How could she ever get through the days till then?...

"I'm glad you're interested," she said aloud, sharply, thinking that this was exactly what came of giving a lift to the Cooneys. "I think it's simply disgusting.... Get us through this, William."

"It's familiar, at any rate. Let's see. Dunbar must be the next street over but one, isn't it?"

Cally, lifting a handkerchief to obliterate the adjacent odors of a gas-tank, said: "I haven't the smallest idea."

"Why, don't you like the rattle of business, Cally? Don't you like the bustle, the fine democratic air?--Why, _hello_! There's V.V.!"

Carlisle's head turned at once.

"He's signalling us," said Hen, waving back; and she nervily added: "Stop, William!"

Following Henrietta Cooney's look, Carlisle's eyes fell, sure enough, upon the tall figure of Dr. Vivian crossing the humming side-street straight toward them. Her glance caught him in the act of removing his derby, bowing in response to the cheeky salute of Hen....

"Ah, he's using a cane," added Hen, below her breath. "That means his foot is bad...."

"But he has no right to signal _me_," said Carlisle. "Drive on, William."

But she herself unconsciously spoke in an undertone, and the order appeared to be lost in the enveloping din. William, all but blockaded anyway, had come to a halt. Coincidentally sounded the voice of Hen, the pachyderm:

"Hello, V.V.! What're you doing way down here in the wilds? Not visiting the sick, without your little black bag?"

V. Vivian stood bareheaded at the side of Mr. Heth's (of the Works) shining car.

"How'do, Henrietta?--Oh, good afternoon, Miss Heth. No, I--I'm down here on other business this time...."

Carlisle, her eyes about on a level with the young man's interesting piscatorial necktie, had acknowledged his greeting by the smallest and frigidest inclination of her head. That done, feeling outraged by this whole proceeding, she at once looked ostentatiously in another direction.

The lame doctor, for his part, appeared a little embarrassed by the rencontre, or perhaps excited, one or both.

"I--it's a very fortunate coincidence, meeting you in this way," he began at once. "The fact was, I--ah--was just thinking of you at that moment, Miss Heth,--wishing very much to see you--"

Miss Heth turned her pretty head once more, this time with a sort of jerk. So the man pretended to have forgotten that she had ordered him not to address her again.

Now her eyes fully met those of Dalhousie's friend, and in that meeting she was conscious of an odd little shock, almost like a physical impact.... Why was it that this impossible man, with his ridiculous opinions, his wicked untruths, and his face so full of a misplaced hopefulness, kept coming like a destiny across and across her path? What was her silly weakness, that he never looked at her with those quite misrepresentative eyes without making her angry and unhappy?...

She felt herself, as it were, turning pale inside, but into her cheeks there sprang a cold color.

"You wished to see me?"

"Well, do put on your hat, V.V.," interjected Hen, matter of fact, but glancing round at Cally's voice. "You'll catch pneumonia...."

"Yes--thank you.... I'd like to enlist your help, if I could, Miss Heth. I've just come from the Works, you see," he hurried on with curious intensity--"where I went to try to right what seems to be a clear injustice. I wonder--do you remember the girl I happened to mention to you at my uncle's that night,--a buncher here at the Works?..."

His expression said that he was counting on her remembering. The girl in the car was looking him through and through. Hen Cooney disappeared from between them; the roar of traffic faded away.

"No, I don't remember," said Miss Heth, biting her lip a little.

"Oh!--the girl I wanted the _matrons_ for? Well, it's no matter," the tall young man said, with a belying look of youthful disappointment. But he went on with undiminished eagerness: "She's one of the best operatives in the Works, I assure you--a really valuable employee because she can get more work out of a machine than any two inexperienced girls. She's had over two years' practice, you see. This morning she reported again for work after nearly a month's illness in bed: she's had pleurisy. Well, MacQueen--the superintendent--declines to give her her place back."

"Why, what a shabby trick!" cried Hen....

She looked as if she desired to say much more, but she saw that V.V.'s eyes were fixed on Cally, whose father owned MacQueen, and forbore.

Cally's breast rose and fell. She saw what was coming now.... How did he dare--he who had so maligned her personally, who had so maliciously thrown bricks at papa and the Works--how did he dare to turn and beg favors from the objects of his slanders? This was the supreme impertinence. Now she would say to him what would destroy him from her ways forever....

V. Vivian was hurrying on, as if perceiving that he hadn't made the matter fully plain as yet: "It is quite a serious thing for her, because she can make more at the Works than anywhere else--she's a born buncher. And she and her mother are dependent on her earnings. It seems a--a great hardship that she should be thrown out this way, without any fault of her own...."

"Put-on-your-hat!" ordered Hen, _sotto voce_; and again repressed further remarks seething within her.

The slum doctor, having neglected Hen's injunction hitherto, now obeyed it, though with inattention to the processes. He continued speaking, blind to all discouragements.... Would no one stop the God's fool, rushing with eager eyes to his doom?...

"I don't, of course, like to trouble you. But don't you think you could stop a moment, and say just a word to MacQueen--or to your father if he is in?..."

Now was the moment to demolish the irrepressible fanatic, who seemed incapable of understanding that his betters wanted none of him. And strange, oh, strange!--Cally Heth sat silent.... As the man reached the climax of his madness, the girl's hard challenging gaze, as if by some miracle of his ministering angels, had suddenly wavered and broken. Her eyes flitted from his face, rested fixedly on a hideous sprawling pile on the corner ahead, an abode of trade exceptionally repellent to all the senses. However, she was unaware of the detestable object, so confused was she by the odd frustrating weakness that suddenly possessed her, staying her hand in the act of delivering the mace-blow. It might be the very superlativeness of the man's temerity that disarmed her, paralyzing the hot will. It might be merely that ludicrous trusting look in his eyes, which somehow seemed to put him in the non-combatant class, like some confiding child....

"I know, of course," he was concluding with unfaltering expectancy, "a word from you will make everything right at once."

And Carlisle, her glance returning toward him, but not to him, heard with disquiet and mortification her own voice saying, not indignantly at all:

"You will have to speak to my father about it if--if injustice has been done. I--I haven't time to go to the Works now--"

"Time!" cried Hen Cooney, at last assuming control of things. "Why, good heavens, Cally! It wouldn't take us any _time_! We're right there now!--and don't you think Uncle Thornton _ought_ to be told how that brute's behaved ..."

Hen intended only an argument; but it happened that her explosive statement sprang out like a switchman, finally shifting the train of the talk.

"Oh!" said Cally, staring bewildered at her cousin. "Why--where are the Works--from here, I mean ...?"

Hen's strange look, confirmed her own confused conviction that she was appearing at an annoying disadvantage all at once. And forebodings possessed her, as of one walking wide-eyed into unsuspected perils.

"You _are_ lost, Cally, indeed. Why, my dear, we're right on the corner of Seventeenth and Canal now--they're leaning right up against your nose. There!"

Following Hen's nod, Cally's gaze rested again on the somewhat displeasing pile on the corner, this time with a seeing eye. Her fascinated stare took in with one sweep a dirty ramshackle building of weather-worn gray brick, spilling over the sidewalk and staggering away (as it looked) down the littered side-street: rather a small building, obviously old, certainly not fragrant, quite sinister-looking somehow....

The girl felt as if the skies were falling. She perceived that there was some mistake. "Oh ... You mean that is part of them? But the--the main part, I suppose, is--"

"No, this is all there is of 'em, Cally!" said Hen, suddenly with a kind note in her voice. And she waved upward toward a wire screen atop the ancient building, where large black letters spelled out:

THE HETH CHEROOT WORKS

_"Is that the Works?"_ breathed the daughter of the Works, with a sort of stunned incredulity.

In her utter bewilderment, she was confused into glancing at Jack Dalhousie's friend, who stood silent upon the sidewalk, two yards away. Thus she surprised his translucent eyes fixed upon her with a look which she had seen there on two other remembered occasions. The eager confidence had, indeed, faded from his face, but not as she had designed that it should fade. The man had the grace to look away at once, seeming embarrassed: but in one glance she saw that he had read to the heart of what she felt, thus discovering the real birthplace of her Family. And his eyes had said to her, quite plainly, that of course he would not on any account ask her to stop now; and that, on the whole, God must pity her again for a poor little thing who did not even know where and how her own father made his money....

She could have cried for the angry mortification of this moment, but perhaps that confrontation steadied her as nothing else could have done. She said hurriedly, but with some degree of naturalness:

"Well--it certainly isn't pretty--Hen! But I don't suppose factories usually are. You know, I--haven't happened to be down here for a good many years...."

And then, catching the driver's eye, she nodded sharply to him to go on. In the cross-sweep of larger troubles, dismissed bunchers were naturally forgotten. The car started with a little jump.

"Why, aren't you going to _stop_?"

It was Hen Cooney who thus sounded the note of rather indignant surprise, not the man from the slums, who, understanding, stood tall and silent, lifting his old derby....

Cally, looking straight ahead, replied: "I can't stop now."

That left the whole matter indeterminate; nobody was committed to anything, one way or another. Hen Cooney earned Cally's undying resentment (at least for the remainder of the drive) by crying over her shoulder as the car rolled away:

"Of course Uncle Thornton'll give her her place back! Don't you worry, V.V.!..."

* * * * *

That night the subject of the Works was touched upon again, in the course of an extended talk between Carlisle and her friend Mattie Allen, a talk ranging intimately over various aspects of life and living. It took place in Carlisle's pretty bedroom, toward two o'clock A.M. In the earlier evening the girls had brilliantly attended the Thursday German (which was always held on Mondays), and now Mattie was spending the night: a ceremony which she dearly loved, especially the eleven o'clock breakfast in bed. They routed all hands out at eight at the Allens, regardless.

The two girls, Carlisle and Mattie, were the dearest friends in the world, being perfect natural foils, each made to appear at her best by the presence of the other. Many other bonds they had also, as the fact that, while each was charming and most attractive to men, they very rarely attracted the same men, thus obviating hostile jealousies. Speaking roughly, tall, athletic, handsome, normal young men loved Carlisle; while Mattie, though rarely appealing to these demigods, made instant killings with "clever" men, literary fellows, teachers of Greek, and promising young entomologists. Doubtless the comparatively favorable impression Mattie had made on Mr. Canning at the Beirne reception was due to the fact that he, though a demigod, had thought, at times, of writing a book....

"Mats," said Carlisle, apropos of nothing whatever, "have you ever heard people criticizing the Works--saying horrid things about conditions being unhealthy there, or anything of that sort?"

"Why, yes, dear, I have," said Mats at once, and sweetly. "Not very lately, though. I think there was an article in the paper about it, wasn't there, a month or two ago? Why?"

"What have you heard people say?" replied Carlisle.

"Well, I can't remember exactly, Cally, but it seems to me I heard them say the Government was going to have a new law about it, or something. Why?"

This last was a popular word with Mattie, whose mind in relation to her own sex was distinctly interrogatory. All evening, mostly by indirect methods, she had been examining Carlisle in regard to Mr. Canning, and his strange visit....

"Oh, nothing," said Carlisle, gently patting her face with a steaming cloth.

Mattie selected a hairbrush from her little spend-the-night kit.

"You know what perfect _nuts_ it is to people," said she, "to think they have anything the least bit disagreeable on people they know."

"Isn't it?" replied Carlisle, with a repressed note of strong irritation. "Everybody has plenty of time to attend to everybody's business but their own."

Mattie glanced at her, wondering interestedly what had happened to Cally. However, she made no answer to the philosophic sarcasm, being now engaged in giving her hair one hundred and twenty-five brisk strokes before retiring, and not wishing to lose the count.

Half an hour the girls had been in the flowing negligee stage, but they were still intensely busy with the Eleusinian mysteries.

After an interval Carlisle said: "I wonder how many of the people who criticize would put Turkish baths and--and dens in the Works if they had to do it out of their own pockets.... Why under the _sun_ should they?"

"Of course," said Mattie. "(Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.)--I think you're perfectly right, dear...."

"If people don't like the Works as they are, why should they raise heaven and earth begging for jobs there? I wish somebody'd explain that."

"Of course. (Twenty-five.)--And how could Mr. Heth spend thousands and thousands of dollars on such things without taking it _right out of your mouth_, don't you see?... Oh, _gosh_!"

"What?"

"Broke my best finger-nail--that's all! Just the tiniest rap on the chair. Where's the file, dear? Oh, Cally, remember, twenty-five.... How provoking!--I do think I've got the brittlest I ever saw ..."

Presently Carlisle, in a flowing silken robe, rose, went over to her dressing-table, seated herself and picked up a round cut-glass jar with a silver top. The jar contained cold cream, or something of that sort. Mattie, having filed down her nail, was now faithfully brushing again, in the forties. Her eyes followed Cally; rested upon her as she sat. These eyes, large, dark, and grave, with the sweetest, curlingest lashes, had been the turning-point in Mattie's life. She had early recognized their unique merits and values, and round them, with infinite pains, she had built up her "type." And now at twenty-three, she was sweet, artless, and full of adorable intellectual dependences, deliciously stupid (with the spectacled young men), and her favorite expression was "poor little Me."

Mattie, brushing, looked at Carlisle, and wondered if she possibly _had_ refused Mr. Canning, and, if so, why Mr. Canning had skipped back just to stay over Sunday and not go near her, and why Cally was so mysterious and secretive all of a sudden. She always told Cally every single thing about her affairs, reporting in detail what was "the most" each man said to her, and always bringing her their letters to read, even Mr. Dudley's, who wrote such perfectly beautiful ones. Cally had always done the same with her, till lately, but now she was a _perfect clam_. Not a word would she tell about Mr. Canning, and to-night J. Forsythe Avery had proposed at last (Cally said), but she barely mentioned the fact, as if it were of no interest, and declined positively to repeat his words, which was always the interesting (and also the convincing) part of it....

"What's the matter?" said Mattie, aloud and alertly.

Cally, sitting and rubbing cold cream (or whatever it was) had suddenly given a long sigh. At her friend's question, she turned half round, but did not cease the rubbing.

"Mats, don't you ever get sick and tired of all these things we do to ourselves to make us look pretty and attractive and--desirable?"

Mattie, looking rather shocked, said: "Why, what things do you mean?"

"Oh, these things!... Massage and manicure and primp!--hot baths and lotions and primp!--sleep and a little exercise to make pink cheeks and primp some more. Hours and hours every day just to coddling our little bodies! Isn't it all rather sickening, when you really stop to think?"

"I must say," answered Mattie, quite stiffly, "I can see nothing sickening about it. I think it's a woman's duty to look just as well as she can."

Carlisle rested her arm on her chair-back, and went on rubbing.

"Duty?--I wonder. Duty to whom, do you mean?"

"To everybody, to the world, to society."

"I was just trying to think," said Cally, "and it's quite fun. I believe I'll do it at least once a week after this.--What would we think of a man who spent four hours a day decorating himself, everlastingly working at himself to look pretty?"

Mattie opened her wide eyes yet wider. She was now plaiting her well-brushed hair, and looked very sweet and girlish.

"Why, that's a _very_ different thing, Cally! The same qualities aren't expected of men and women--or they couldn't complement each other! Women are _expected_ to be sweet and attractive, while--"

"Expected by whom?" quizzed Cally, and screwed the top down on her cold cream (if such, indeed, it was).

"By everybody," said Mattie, falling back upon her tried phrase, "by the world, by--"

"Why shouldn't it be expected of men to look nice, too, just as much? Why should we have to do the whole performance? Why shouldn't we give some of all this time to something useful, as men do?--cultivating our minds, for instance?"

"But don't you _see_, Cally?--that isn't expected of us! Men simply do _not_ care for clever women," cried Mattie, who had built up a considerable social success on that very principle.

"Why should we let _them_ decide for us what we're to be? Why?--Why? That's just what they do! We're human beings just as much as they are, aren't we?... Oh, I'm sick of men," cried Cally.

"_You're sick of men_!" echoed Mattie, aghast as at a blasphemy.

Cally nodded slowly, her lovely eyes on her friend's tremulous face.

"Oh, it's the men who make us put in all this time tricking up ourselves to look pretty. You know it, too, for you just gave yourself away.... Oh, Mats, wouldn't it be great to appeal to _somebody_ sometimes in some other way!"

Mattie, apparently on the verge of tears, murmured her complete inability to follow Cally's strange talk. Observing her, Carlisle gave a reassuring little laugh and rose abruptly. Not that it made any special difference, but she didn't care about setting her best friend's alert wits too busily to work.

"Dear old Mats!--Don't take me so dreadfully _seriously_. It's all what I read in a magazine article to-night before the German, waiting for Robert to come. He thought he was displeased with me, and came very late, on purpose. You don't seem to like it?"

"I _don't_ like to hear you talk so, Cally, even in fun," replied dear old Mats, rather stiffly. "You've been strange all evening, and you told me you didn't care whether you ever saw Mr. Canning again or not. It isn't a bit like you."

"It certainly isn't, as mamma frequently remarks," said Cally, her laugh dying. "Well, I'm going to be just like myself after this, never fear.... Gentlemen always welcome. We strive to please."

She put an arm over her friend's shoulder, and in this true-friendship attitude they strolled through the little entry and connecting bath to the spare-room at the back where Mattie always spent the night.

"I feel terribly sorry for poor Mr. Beirne," said Mattie, in a just voice. "You know he had a sinking-spell, and they were saying to-night he can't possibly get well."

"Yes, I know," said Carlisle, stifling a yawn. "By the way, I must leave cards there to-morrow. Remind me. Climb in, dear. I'll tuck you in."

"I haven't said my prayers," said Mattie, standing by the bed. "Cally, suppose he dies and leaves a lot of money to that cunning nephew of his! You know--Dr. Vivian--that I introduced to you that night at his house? They say Mr. Beirne's terribly fond of him."

Cally nodded in reply, her gaze entirely blank. It appeared that in this world there was escape neither from the nephew nor from the topic of him.

"But what do you suppose he'd _do_ with it," queried Mattie, who was a dear romantic thing--"living off down there in the Dabney House? Somebody told me he didn't care at _all_ for money, only think!"

"Perhaps he'd feel differently if he had any," said Cally. "Papa says coming into money's a sure cure for Socialism and everything of that sort."

"Why, don't you think he's terribly _sincere_?... Don't you think lame people usually are, somehow?"

"My dear child, I don't see why I should think about him at all. Besides, Mr. Beirne will leave his money to the Masons. Now for some beauty slumber--I'm quite ready for it, too! Sleep well, Mats dear."

They kissed, and parted for sweet dreams. At the door, Cally, pausing, said:

"Oh, Mats, go with me to Madame Smythe's to-morrow? I'm buying things for New York."

But Mats could not reply, being already at her devotions....

In her own room, Cally prayed briefly with preoccupied thoughts, and rising, removed her thin blue robe, switched out the lights, raised shades and windows. In the quiet street below, a cat trotted silently, swallowed up as she watched in an immense flickering shadow from the tall street light. The girl stood a moment, looking down, a strange wish in her heart.

She wished for a confidante, some one to tell her troubles to. Mamma, of course, was impossible in this connection; you never told things to mamma, and besides, they were barely on speaking terms most of the time now. Mattie was hardly less out of the question: a girl with many excellent merits and her best friend, but the last person you would ever dream of giving yourself away to. But then you really could not trust anybody as far as that. In all the world there was no one to whom she could go and freely pour out her unhappiness and her heart.

A self-contained and self-sufficient girl, she now felt lonesomely that it would be a great comfort to talk everything over with somebody. Things seemed only to get worse by being kept locked up so tight in her own bosom. Everything was changing so, just in a little while; you could not go by the old landmarks any more. Only a few weeks ago life had been more serene, more secure and halcyon than ever before. Now, as from the clouds, one hard stroke fell after another; old established certainties exploded with a bang all about. Nothing seemed to be fixed or to be relied upon any more, nothing seemed to be settled. How had she fallen only this afternoon, supposing herself high-born of great institutions, to find herself in the turning of an eyelash merely the creature of an ugly little rattletrap!... But no,--no! That was simply ridiculous. Business was like that. No one had ever really supposed that a factory could possibly be anything different....

Agitating such matters as these, Cally Heth got into bed and pulled up the covers. She repelled the thought of the Works, as she had done, all evening. Nevertheless the last thing she thought of as she dropped off to sleep was Dr. Vivian, as he stood and looked up at her from the dingy sidewalk. She wondered whether she would have agreed to speak to papa about that girl, if only the Works hadn't looked so _awful_....

XIV

In which Catty tells a Certain Person that she isn't Happy--very.

The question recurred next day. The strange ubiquity of the nephew persisted. When Carlisle called about noon to "inquire" after her respected neighbor, who had lain four weeks in mysterious coma, her ring was answered and the door opened by young Dr. Vivian. He had seen her coming, through the window.

"Oh!--good-morning, Miss Heth!" said he, in a manner indicating the experiment of pleased surprise, tempered with a certain embarrassment.... "What a glorious day outdoors, isn't it?--almost spring.... Won't you come in?"

Miss Heth replied, as she would have replied to the housemaid (who, indeed, could herself be spied just then, pausing, down the dimness of the hall):

"Good-morning. No, I stopped to ask how Mr. Beirne is to-day. We hope there is better news?"

The young man stepped at once out into the vestibule.

"Oh! That's kind of you," said he, his pleasure gaining strength. "I'm happy to say that there _is_,--the best news. He's going to get well."

"I'm so glad to hear it," replied Miss Heth....

If, in despite of herself, there was a trace of stiff self-consciousness in her voice and air, how was she to be blamed for that? There is a breaking-point for even the most "finished" manner, and the sight of this man to-day was like a rough hand on a new wound. A great wave of helplessness had broken over her, as the opening door revealed his face: how could you possibly avoid the unavoidable, how destroy the indestructible? And it seemed that, since yesterday, he had robbed her of her one reliable weapon....

The tall young man pushed back his light hair. He was smiling. The mild winter sun streamed down upon him, and his face looked worn, as if he wanted sleep.

"We had a consultation this morning--three doctors," he went on, in the friendliest way. "They're sure they've found out where the trouble is. A little operation, of no difficulty at all--I've done it myself, once in the hospital!--and he'll be walking the street in a fortnight."

"That is good news, indeed. We have been so--sorry about his illness."

"Thank you--it's a tremendous relief to me, of course. He seemed so very ill last night...."

Standing under his eye in the tiled vestibule, Carlisle produced, from her swinging gold case, not her card, but those of Mr. and Mrs. B. Thornton Heth, and extended them in a gloved hand.

"May I leave these?" she said, with the reemergence of "manner." "My mother and father will be delighted to learn that Mr. Beirne is soon to be well again."

"That's very kind. I know my uncle would be--_will_ be--much gratified by your interest and sympathy."

Who shall know the heart of a woman? The thing was done, the inquiry over. The most punctilious inquirer could have bowed now, and walked away down the steps. Cally imperceptibly hesitated.

She had four times met this man, and he had three times (at the lowest computation) driven her from his presence. That thought, unsettling in its way, had leapt at her somewhere in the night: she had sought to drape it, but it had persisted somewhat stark. And now had not he himself taught her, by that hateful apology which seemed to have settled nothing, that there were subtler requitals than by buffets upon the front?...

The pause was psychological purely, well covered by the card-giving. Words rose to Cally's tongue's tip, gracious words which would show in the neatest way how unjust were this man's opinions of her and her family. However, the adversary spoke first.

"I'm so glad to--to see you again, Miss Heth," he began, with a loss of ease, twirling the B. Thornton Heth cards between long thin fingers--"to have the opportunity to say.... That is--perhaps you'll let me say--you mustn't think the Works are so--so disappointing as perhaps they may seem, just at first sight. You know--"

Her flushing cheeks stopped him abruptly; and she had not usually found him easy to stop.

"But I didn't think they were disappointing at _all_! Not in the _least_!"

The young man's eyes fell.

"Oh!" he said, with noticeable embarrassment. "I--only thought that possibly--as you--you had not happened to be in the factory district for--for some time,--that possibly you might be just a little surprised that things weren't--well, prettier. You know, business--"

"But I wasn't surprised at all, I've said! I knew exactly what it was like, of course. Just exactly. And I consider the Works--_very pretty_ ... for a factory."

She gazed up at him indignantly from beneath a little mushroom hat lined with pink, challenging him to contradict her by look or word. But he swallowed her dare without a quiver.... Good heavens, what girl worth her salt would endure apologies on behalf of her own father, from one so much, much worse than a stranger to her? It may be that V. Vivian liked the lovely Hun the better for that lie.

"Well," he said, compounding the felony with a gallant gulp, "I--I'm glad you weren't disappointed--"

She could certainly have retired upon that with all the honors, but the fact was that the thought of doing so did not at the moment cross her mind. She found the conversation interesting to a somewhat perilous degree.

"I suppose _your_ idea is," she said, and it showed her courage that she could say it, "that a factory ought to be a--a sort of _marble palace_!"

"No. Oh, no. No--"

"But it _is_ your idea, is it not, that it's my father's duty to take his money and build a perfectly gorgeous _new_ factory, full of all sorts of comforts and luxuries for his work-girls? That _is_ your idea of his duty to the poor, is it not?..."

There it was, the true call: what ear could fail to catch it? Out they came running from the city again, the old scribes with new faces; pouring and tumbling into the wilderness to ask a lashing from the grim voice there.... Only, to-day, it must have been that he did not hear their clamors. Surely there was no abhorrence in these eager young eyes....

"Well--personally, I don't think of any of those things just as a--a duty to the poor--exactly."

"Oh! You mean it's his duty to himself, or something of that sort? That sounds like the catechism.... That _is_ what you meant, is it not?"

"Well, I only meant that--I think we might all be happier--if ..."

An uproar punctuated the strange sentence. Mr. Beirne's butler had chosen to-day to take in coal, it seemed; a great wagon discharged with violence at precisely this moment. Two shovelers fell to work, and an old negro who was washing the basement windows at the house next door, the Carmichaels', desisted from his labors and strolled out to watch. It was the most interesting thing happening on the block at the moment, and of course he wanted to see it.

Carlisle stared at Mr. Beirne's nephew, caught by his word.

"Oh!..." said she. "So you think my father would be much happier if he stripped himself and his family to provide Turkish baths and--and Turkish _rooms_ for his work-girls? I must say I don't understand that kind of happiness. But then I'm not a _Socialist_!"

She said Socialist as she might have said imp of darkness. However, the young man seemed unaware of her bitter taunt. He leaned the hand which did not hold the cards against a pilaster in the vestibule-side, and spoke with hurried eagerness:

"I don't mean that exactly, and I--I _really_ don't mean to apply anything to your father, of course. I only mean--to--to speak quite impersonally--that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along it's going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all--isn't it rather hard ever to get happiness that way? Perhaps we might find that the real way to be happy was just in the other direction. That was all I meant.... Don't you think, really," the queer man hurried on, as if fearing an interruption, "it stands to reason it's not possible to be happy through money? It's so _segregating_, it seems to me--it _must_ be that way. And isn't that really just what we all want it for?--to make a--a sort of little class to ourselves, to wall ourselves off from the rest--from what seems to be--life. It elevates in a sense, of course--but don't you think it often elevates to a--a sort of rocky little island?"

They seemed to be personal words, in despite of his exordium, and V. Vivian boggled a little over the last of them, doubtless perceiving that he was yielding fast to his old enemy (as indicated to O'Neill) and once more being too severe with these people, who after all had never had a chance....

Cally looked briefly away, up the sunny street. She raised a white-gloved hand and touched her gay hair, which showed that, though she hesitated, she was perfectly at ease. She had just been struck with that look suggestive of something like sadness upon the man's face, which she had noticed that night in the summer-house. She herself was inclined to connect this look with his religiosity, associating religion, as she did, exclusively with the sad things of life. Or did it come somehow from the contrast between his shabby exterior and that rather shining look of his, his hopefulness incurable?...

She replied, in her modulated and fashionable voice: "I don't agree with you at all. I'm afraid your ideas are too extraordinary"--she pronounced it extrord'n'ry, after Mr. Canning--"for me to follow. But before I go--"

"They do seem extraordinary, I know," broke from him, as if he could not bear to leave the subject--"but at least they're not original, you know.... I think that must be just the meaning of the parable of the rich young man.--Don't you, yourself?"

"The parable of the rich young man?"

She looked at him with dead blankness. Passers-by hopped over the coal-hole and glanced up at the pair standing engrossed upon the doorstep. Such as knew either of them concluded from their air that Mr. Beirne was worse again this morning.

V. Vivian's gaze faltered and fell.

"Just a--a little sort of story," he said, nervously--"you might call it a little sort of--allegory, illustrating--in a way--how money tends to--to cut a man off from his fellows.... This man, in the sort of--of story, was told to give away all he had, not so much to help the poor, so it seems to me, as to--"

"I see. And of course," she said, vexed anew--how did she seem _always_ to be put at a disadvantage by this man, she, who could put down a Canning, alas, only too easily and well?--"of course that's just what _you_ would do?"

"What I should do?"

"If _you_ had a lot of money, of course you would give it all away at once, for fear you might be cut off--segregated--rocky island--and so forth?"

To her surprise, he laughed in quite a natural way. "Uncle Armistead, who's usually right, says I'd hang on to every cent I could get, and turn away sorrowful.... Probably the only reason I talk this way is I haven't got any.... That is--except just a--a little income I have, to live on...."

No doubt he said this hypocritically, self-righteous beneath his meekness, but Cally was prompt to pounce on it as a damning confession. She flashed a brilliant smile upon him, saying, "Ah, yes!--it's so much easier to preach than to practice, isn't it?"

And quite pleased with that, she proceeded to that despoiling of him she had had in mind from the beginning:

"Before I go, I started to tell you just now, when you interrupted me, that I was in rather a hurry yesterday, and didn't have time to--to say to you what I meant to say, to answer your request--"

"Oh!" said he, rather long drawn-out; and she saw his smile fade. "Yes?"

"I meant to say to you," she went on, with the same "great lady" graciousness, "that I shall of course speak to my father about the girl you say was unjustly dismissed. It's a matter, naturally, with which you have nothing to do. But if an injustice has been done by one of his subordinates, my father would naturally wish to know of it, so that he may set it right."

The little speech came off smoothly enough, having been prepared (on the chance) last night. For the moment its effect seemed most gratifying. The young man turned away from her, plainly discomfited. There was a small callosity on the pilaster adjacent to his hand, and he scratched at it intently with a long forefinger. Standing so, he murmured, in the way he had of seeming to be talking to himself:

"I knew you would ... I _knew_!"

She disliked the reply, which seemed cowardly somehow, and said with dignity: "It's purely a business matter, and of course I make no promises about it at all. If there _has_ been any injustice, it was of course done without my father's knowledge. I have no _idea_ what he will do about it, but whatever he decides will of course be right."

The man turned back to her, hardly as if he had heard.

"The trouble is," he said, in an odd voice, harder than she had supposed him to possess, "I didn't trust you. I--"

"Really that's of no consequence. I'm not concerned in it at--"

"I was sure all the time you would--be willing to do it," he went on, in the same troubled way. "I was _sure_. And yet last night I went off and spoke to somebody else about it--a man who has influence with MacQueen--John Farley--a--a sort of saloonkeeper. Corinne is back at work this morning."

The girl struggled against an absurd sense of defeat. She wished now--oh, _how_ she wished!--that she had gone away immediately after giving him mamma's and papa's cards....

"Oh!" she said, quite flatly.... "Well--in that case--there is no more to be said."

But there he seemed to differ with her. "I'd give a good deal," he said slowly, "if I'd only waited.... Could you let me say how sorry I am--"

"Please don't apologize to me! I've told you before that I--I _detest_ apologies...."

"I was not apologizing to you exactly," said V. Vivian, with a kind of little falter.

"I--haven't anything to do with it, I've said! It's all purely a business matter--purely!" And because, being a woman, she had been interested in the personal side of all this from the beginning, she could not forbear adding, with indignation: "I can't _imagine_ why you ever thought of coming to me, in the first place."

"Why I ever thought of it?" he repeated, looking down at her as much as to ask whom on earth should he come to then.

"If you had a complaint to make, why didn't you go direct to my father?"

"Ah, but I don't know your father, you see."

"Oh!... And you consider that you do know me?"

The man's right hand, which rested upon the pilaster, seemed to shake a little.

"Well," he said, hesitatingly, "we've been through some trouble together...."

Then was heard the loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did not. Cally Heth's white glove rested on Mr. Beirne's polished balustrade, and her piquant lashes fell.

She desired to go away now, but she could not go, on any such remark as that. Staying, she desired to contradict what the alien had said, but she could not do that either. The complete truth of his remark had come upon her, indeed, with a sudden shock. This man _did_ know her. They _had_ been through trouble together. Only, it seemed, you never really got through trouble in this world: it always bobbed up again, waiting for you, whichever way you turned....

And what did this lame stranger have to do with her, that, of all people on earth, his eyes alone had twice seen into her heart?...

She looked suddenly up at him from under the engaging little hat, and said with a smile that was meant to be quite easy and derisive, but hardly managed to be that:

"Supposing that you do know me, as you say, and that I came to you to prescribe for me--as a sort of happiness doctor.... Would you say that to give away everything I had--or papa had--would be the one way for me to be--happy?"

"Happy?..."

He curled and recurled the corners of the Heth cards, which did not improve their appearance. He gazed down at the work of his hands, and there seemed to be no color in his face.

"To be happy.... Oh, no, I shouldn't think that you--that any one--could be happy just through an act, like that."

"I could hardly give away more than everything all of us had, could I?"

"Well, but don't you think of happiness as a frame of mind, a--a sort of habit of the spirit? Don't you think it comes usually as a--a by-product of other things?"

"Oh, but I'm asking you, you see.... What sort of things do you mean?"

He hesitated perceptibly, seeming to take her light derisive remarks with a strange seriousness.

"Well, I think a--a good rule is to ... to cultivate the sympathies all the time, and keep doing something useful."

Carlisle continued to look at his downcast face, with the translucent eyes, and as she looked, the strangest thought shimmered through her, with a turning of the heart new in her experience. She thought: "This man is a good friend...."

And then she said aloud, suddenly: "I am not happy--very."

She could not well have regarded that as a Parthian shot, a demolishing rebuke. Nevertheless, she turned upon it, precipitately, and went away down the steps.

* * * * *

These events took place, in the course of ten minutes upon a doorstep, on the 31st of January. On the 27th of February, Carlisle departed, from the face of her mother's displeasure and all the horridness of home, for her Lenten visit to the Willings. Through the interval the dreariness of life continued; Canning was reported in Cuba; she had abandoned all thought of a little note. The nephew she saw no more; but it chanced that she came to hear his name on many lips. For on the cold morning of the birthday of the Father of his Country, old Armistead Beirne, whom three doctors had pronounced all but a well man, was found dead in his bed: and a few days later, by the probation of his will, it became known that of his fortune of some two hundred thousand dollars, he had left one-fifth to his eccentric nephew in the Dabney House.

XV

In which she goes to New York, and is very Happy indeed.

Mrs. Willing was twenty-four, handsome, expensive, lively, and intensely fond of what she thought was pleasure. Willing was thirty-two, and had a close-clipped mustache: there were ten thousand men in New York whom you might have mistaken for him at twenty paces. He was assistant something on a nineteenth story downtown, and his scale of living continually crowded his income to the wall. The Willings--there were, of course, but two of them--had the kind of home which farmers' daughters so envy the heroines of "society" novels. They lived in a showy apartment hotel in the West Fifties, kept a motor-car, and went out for dinner. In fact "out" was the favorite word in the establishment: the Willings did everything but sleep "out."

"I can't bear to stick at home," said Mrs. Willing to Carlisle. "I've always _loved_ to go places."

And places they went from one end of Carlisle's visit to the other. The shops in the morning, downtown on a rush to lunch with Willing, back to Broadway for a matinee, back home at the double-quick to dress for dinner, to the theatre after dinner, to supper after the theatre. There was always hurry; there was never quite time to reach any of the places at the hour agreed.

"That's the fun!" said Florrie Willing. "Rush, rush, rush from morning to night. That's little old New York in a nutshell."

Carlisle had expected to be thoroughly diverted by the rattle, bang, and glitter in which the Willings lived, but in this she was only partially gratified. Pure restlessness, it seemed, had entered her blood: she was no sooner fairly settled in the Wrexham than she began to wish herself back home again. The vague thought pursued her, even at the places, that she was missing something; that she had stepped aside from, not into, the real current of her life. Dazzling indeed were some of the dining-places to which the experienced Willings took their guest, but somehow none of them seemed so really interesting, after all, as home. What was happening away off there on Washington Street? Suppose Mr. Canning should return ahead of time for his farewell visit--return and find her not there?...

"You're changed somehow, Cally," cried Florrie Willing, on the third or fourth day--"I can't just put my little patty on it, but I can see it all the same."

They had just rushed up from breakfast, which the Willings took in the apartment café, and were now dressing furiously to go shopping. Cally, surprised with her mouth full of hatpins, said of course she had; she was getting frightfully old.

"You never used to rest a cheek on a pensive hand, and stare five minutes at a time into eternity. Out with it!" said Florrie. "You're disappointed in love."

"That's it, too. I loved a tall pretty soldier, and he rode away."

"_We'll_ never ride away, at this rate. Get a _move_ on, Cally! We've slews and slews of places to go to."

Cally, who considered that she already had a move on, did her best to get on another one.

Young Mrs. Willing added: "Whatever became of the gay young thing with the eyelashes you flirted so outrageously with, the time we were up at Island Inn? What was his name--oh--Mr. Dalhousie?"

Carlisle winced a little in spite of herself.... Banquo could not have been more impossible to forget than this.

"Oh--why, he and I had the worst kind of smash-up--and he went away somewhere. I never like to think of him any more.... Let's fly!"

Fly they did, that morning and many others. It was all very different from life at home. Born and bred in a town where social life is large, constant, and gay, Carlisle could not help being struck by the fact that the Willings, roughly speaking, had no friends. One other young couple in the same hotel, the Jennisons, appeared to be about the limit of their intimate circle: a phenomenon, no doubt at least partly explained by the fact that the Willings moved every year, or sometimes twice a year, "to get a change." Thus, in the huge rabbit-warren, they were constantly cutting themselves off from their past.

"I can't endure to poke about in the same little spot year after year," said Florrie Willing. "If I don't have something new, I simply froth at the mouth and die."

However, Mr. Willing of course had his connections downtown, and knowing his duty in the premises, he would frequently "bring up" men in the evening, brisk, lively, ambitious young fellows like himself. One of the men so brought up fell abruptly and deeply in love with Carlisle, which helped considerably to pass the time away.

"You'd better hold on to Pierce," said Florrie, talking seriously as a married woman: "He's one of the coming men--dead certain to make a pile of money some day."

Cally said she'd dearly love to hold on to Pierce, but to herself she smiled, thinking if Florrie only knew. By this time she had been a fortnight in New York, and had decided to leave at the end of another week. Whatever else the visit was or was not, it had more than justified itself by providing her with just the perspective she needed, to see things once again in their true proportions. Distance seemed wonderfully to soften away all the horridnesses. Nothing had really happened. On the contrary, against this stimulating background it was reassuringly plain that everything was agreeably settled at last, or very soon to be so settled. More and more, as April drew steadily nearer, Mr. Canning towered shiningly in the foreground of her thought.

The days passed quickly enough. She and Florrie spent many absorbing mornings in the shops, Carlisle for the most part "just looking," under the coldly disapproving eyes of the shop-ladies. But her intentions were serious at bottom, in view of three hundred dollars which papa had privately given her, at the last moment, companied by a defiant wink. (The wink indicated collusion against mamma, whose design it had been to cut her daughter off penniless for the trip.) After a great deal of looking, for she was a thrifty buyer, Cally expended one hundred and twenty-five dollars for a perfectly lovely two-colored dress, bewitchingly draped, and seventy-five dollars for a little silk suit. Both were dirt cheap, Florrie agreed. She looked four times at a dear of a hat going begging for seventy dollars, but with only three hundred you have to draw the line somewhere, so Cally simply purchased a plain gray motor-coat lined with gray corduroy, which she really needed, at sixty dollars. She also sought a gift for papa, in recognition of his liberality, and finally selected a silver penknife as just the thing. The knife, luckily enough, could be got for only $2.50.

The young broker who had fallen in love with Carlisle came up four times with Willing, called five times in between, and became host at two of the "out" evenings for the party of four. Carlisle forbore to give him any encouragement, though she rather liked his eyes, and the way his mouth slanted up at the right corner.

"I'm wild about you," said he, on her last evening,--his name, if it is of the smallest interest, was Pierce Watkins, Jr.,--"I'll shoot myself on your doorstep to-morrow if it'll give you even a moment of pleasure."

Carlisle assured him that she desired no suicidal attentions.

"You're the loveliest thing I ever looked at," said he, huskily. "God bless you for that, anyway. And no matter what else happens to me, I'll love you till I die."

"Don't look so glum, Mr. Watkins dear," said Cally.

They did not go to any matinee on the last afternoon, the reason being that it was Monday and there weren't any, except the vaudevilles, which were voted tiresome. Florrie and Carlisle lunched quietly at "home"; had a rubber of bridge afterwards in the apartment of Edith Jennison (who produced for the necessary fourth an acquaintance she had made last week in the tea-room of the Waldorf-Astoria); and rushed from the table for hats, veils, and a drive on the Avenue.

Carlisle was to leave at ten o'clock. Her trunks were packed; her "reservations" lay in the heavy gold bag swinging from her side. Home, somehow, beckoned to her as it had never done before. Besides, New York, with its swarming population (mostly with palms up) and its ceaseless quadruple lines of motor-cars, began to oppress her.

"It's too full of people," she laughed to Mrs. Willing as they shot down in the lift. "It's too big. Some day it will swell up and burst."

"Why, that's the fun of it, rusticus! How I love the roar!"

"I like it, too," said Carlisle. "But I do think it's nice to live in a city where you can _some_times cross Main Street without asking four policemen, and then probably having your leg picked off, after all."

They dashed across the onyx lobby for the main entrance, as fast as they could go, Mrs. Willing remarking that they were almost too late to catch the crowds as it was. From the small blue-velvet parlor, across the corridor from the clerk's desk, a tall man rose at the sight of them, and came straight forward. For a moment Carlisle's heart stopped beating as she saw that it was Hugo Canning.

He advanced with his eyes upon her, brought her to a halt before him. If the imps of memory must have their little toll at this remeeting, the flicker passed through her too quickly for her to take note of it. It woke no palest ghost of rebellion, to walk now. The girl's heart, having missed a beat, ran away in a wild flutter....

"Did my cards reach you?" said the remembered voice, without preface. "They just went up, I believe. But I see you mean to go out."

He looked a little pale under the lobby's brilliant lights, but never had he seemed so handsome and impressive. Carlisle looked up and looked down, and the sight of him there was an exaltation and heavenly fulfilment and a garland upon her brow.

"We must have passed them as we came down," said she. "How do you do? I had no idea you were in this part of the world."

He said that he was just off the train. She presented him to Mrs. Willing, who hardly repressed a start as she heard and identified his name.

"Will you come with us for a little drive?" said Carlisle. "We were just starting out to take the air. Or ..."

Florrie Willing looked intensely eager. Canning hesitated. The feminine intuitions, of which we have heard so much, naturally divined the cause of his hesitation, and Florrie rushed into the breach.

"You're excused from our engagement, Cally!" said she, with archness, and some nobility, too. "I know Mr. Canning doesn't care to parade the Avenue in our last year's model. You shall have the city to yourselves. Why not go up to the apartment?"

Carlisle glanced at Canning, who said: "You are very nice and kind, Mrs. Willing." Mrs. Willing looked at him as much as to say, "I can be five times as nice as that, if you only knew...."

When she had rushed off, Canning said: "Do you feel like a little walk?"

"Oh, how nice!" said Carlisle.

"Let's stroll up to the Plaza and have tea."

They went out, turned east and came into the Avenue, where, the afternoon being fine, one million people were methodically stepping on each other's heels. However, these were people without existence, even when they jostled into one.

The moment they were out of earshot of the listening clerk, Canning said, looking straight in front of him:

"Haven't you missed me at all, Carlisle?"

"Oh, yes! I seem to have done hardly anything else."

"I've been learning your name, you see," said Canning, after five steps in silence. "You won't mind?... Miss Heth would be a sham, after thinking nothing but Carlisle all these weeks."

She said that she didn't mind. His presence here beside her seemed to fill every reach and need of her being: here was what her soul had cried for, through all the empty days. It did not seem that she could ever mind anything any more....

"I'm very lucky to see you," she went on, quite naturally, "for I'm going back home to-night. Your six months' sentence isn't quite up yet, is it? Is it business that brings you?"

"What do you call business? Of course I've come," said he, "only to see you."

He went on, after a glorious pause: "And this is the second time--or is it the fourth or fifth? Did you happen to hear of me at Eva Payne's in January?"

"Oh, yes! Only not till four hours after you were gone."

"You'd hardly guess, though, how I've been torn between my--wish, and what it pleases me to call my pride.... I was in Florida and going on to Cuba for February, at least, by special request of Heber. I thought I should like to see you again before I got so far away. Only when I came in sight of your door once more, I couldn't bring myself to knock...."

One interesting coincidence about the reasoning of beautiful ladies is that it is sometimes right. Continuing as they swung up the crowded street, Canning said:

"It seemed to me that ... However, that's no matter now. Unfortunately I've the devil's own temper. To be packed off so, and then to surrender without a condition--I needed more weeks of silent self-communion for that. I've had them now, under pretty skies where the moon shines bright o' nights. I believe the breezes have blown my humors away. I'm happy to be here with you, Carlisle."

"I like it, too.... How on earth did you ever find me?"

"Kerr's been writing me notes from time to time, you know. In one of them he mentioned that you were away from home. I wired him yesterday from Tampa for your address."

"Dear Willie!" said Carlisle. "Do you know I'm mad to be at home again?"

They came to the shining hotel, and passed into the tea-room, which was now rapidly filling up. The doorman greeted Mr. Canning by name. An obsequious majordomo wafted him and his lady, with smiles, to the little table of his choice. Many eyes were drawn to the young pair. He was a man to be noticed in any company, but in presence and in air she was his not unworthy mate. He himself became aware, even then, perhaps more than ever then, that this provincial girl stood transplanting to a metropolitan setting with unimpaired distinction....

"And tea-cakes, ma'am?" implored the loving waiter.

"Muffins," said Canning, and abolished him by a movement of his little finger.

Carlisle would have preferred the tea-cakes, but she loved Hugo's lordly airs.

He dropped his gloves into a chair, and there descended upon him a winning embarrassment.

"Tell me now, for my sins and my penitence," he said in a low voice, his strong fingers clasping a spoon, "that you have blotted away what is past."

She said that she had blotted it all away.

He went on, with considerable loss of ease: "I suppose the accursed dilettante habit has got into my blood. I needed these unhappy days and nights, for my soul's good--"

"Oh, please!" said Carlisle, her eyes falling from his grave face. "Let's not talk of it any more."

He stopped, as if glad to leave the subject; but after a silence he added with entire continuity:

"Your spirit's very fine.... It's what I've always admired most in women, and found least often."

The loving waiter set tea and muffins. Peace unfolded white wings over the little table. A divine orchestra played a dreamy waltz that had reference to a beautiful lady. Carlisle poured, and remembered from Willie's apartment that Canning liked one lump and neither cream nor lemon. He seemed absurdly pleased by the small fact. The topic of the Past having been finally disposed of, the man's ordinary manner seemed abruptly to leave him. His gaze became oddly unsettled, but he perpetually returned it to Carlisle's face. He appeared enormously interested in everything that she said and did, yet at the same time erratically distrait and engrossed. He became more and more grave, but simultaneously he gave evidences of a considerable nervous excitement within....

If Carlisle noticed these eccentricities at all, she could have had no difficulty in diagnosing them, having observed them in the demeanor of young men before now. The case was otherwise with Canning, to whom his own unsteadinesses were a continuing amazement. Heart-whole he had reached his thirtieth year, and his present enterprise had furnished him with the surprise of his life. He was, indeed, a man who had lately looked upon a miracle. He had watched three humiliating rebuffs turn under his eye, as it were, to so many powerful lodestones. He himself hardly understood it, but it was a truth that no degree of cunning on the part of this girl could have so captured his imagination as her spirited independence of him (in mamma's vocabulary, her flare-up). A man who held himself naturally high, he had been irresistibly magnetized by her repulses of him. Rebuffed, he had sworn to go near her no more, and had turned again, an astonishment to himself, and tamely rung her bell....

Canning looked and looked at Carlisle across the little table, and it was as if more miracles went on within him. Not inexperienced with the snarers, he had learned wariness; and now, by some white magic, wariness seemed not worth bothering for. If marriage was to come in question, his dispassionate judgment could name women clearly more suitable; but now dispassionateness was a professor's mean thumb-rule, too far below to consider. Of a sudden, as he watched her loveliness, all his instincts clamored that here and now was his worthy bride: one, too, still perilously not broken to his bit. But ... Was it, after all, possible? Was it conceivable that this unknown small-capitalist's daughter, rated so carelessly only the other day, was the destined partner of his high estate?...

"I can't bear to think of your going to-night," he exclaimed suddenly, with almost boyish eagerness. "You know this town is home to me. I can't explain how perfect it seems to be here with you."

She mentioned demurely her hope of his return to the Payne Fort in a month or so: a remark which he seemed to find quite unworthy of notice.

"Stay over till to-morrow, Carlisle! Let's do that! And we'll take the day train down together."

"Goodness! With my tickets all bought? And my trunks packed since morning?"

Canning glanced hurriedly at his watch. "I can arrange about the tickets in three minutes. As for the trunks, Mrs. Willing's maid will be only too glad to unpack them for you. Do--do stay."

She laughed at his eagerness, though at it her heart seemed to swell a little.

"And if they've already gone to the station?"

"I can put my hand on ten men who will drive like the devil to bring them back."

"And if my mother confidently expects me for breakfast to-morrow?"

"I will write the telegram to her myself." He added: "Ah, you can't refuse me!"

Cally said: "I'm afraid you are one of the terrible masterful men that we read about, Mr. Canning. But--perhaps that's why I shall be glad to stay."

He thanked her with some unsteadiness, and said: "Where shall we dine?... And we could be excused from dressing, couldn't we? I can't bear to lose sight of you, even for an hour."

Of course he had his way there, too. In adjoining booths they did their telephoning, he to somebody or other about the reservations, she to leave a message for Florrie Willing. Later they dined in a glittering refectory, just opened, but already of great renown....

* * * * *

It was an unforgettable meal. So long as she lived, this evening remained one of the clearest pictures in Carlisle's gallery of memorabilia. Before the dinner was half over, Canning's immediate intentions became apparent to her. Doubts and hesitancies, if he had had any, appeared to recede abruptly from his horizon. With the serving of dessert, the words were spoken. Canning asked Carlisle to be his wife. He did it after an endearingly confused preamble, which involved his family and his natural pride in upholding and continuing the traditions of his house. Critically speaking, his remarks might have been considered too long and too much concerned with the Cannings; but of the genuineness of his love, Carlisle could not entertain a doubt. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had fallen out. She accepted Hugo with her eyes while an affectionate servitor offered her some toasted biscuit. She accepted the biscuit, too.

It was later agreed that the betrothal should not be announced for the present, except to the parents of the contracting parties. Canning had argued strongly for a day in June, but Carlisle at length carried her point that the interval was quite too short. It was now the 20th of March, The final decision, reached on the train next day, was that Canning should join Mrs. and Miss Heth abroad, in June or July, and the formal announcement of the coming alliance should be made then, from London or Paris. The wedding itself would take place early in October.

XVI

Of Happiness continuing, and what all the World loves; revealing, however, that not Every Girl can do what the French People once did.

The row of maiden's testimonials had received their crowning complement. The beginning at the Beach had touched its shining end. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had magically fallen out.

When Mrs. Heth heard the tidings (which she did within three minutes of Carlisle's arrival at home) the good lady hardly restrained the tears of jubilee. Having all but abandoned hope, she was swept off her feet by the overwhelming revulsion of feeling, and her attitude--for of course mamma always produced an attitude about everything upon the spot--was not merely ecstatic, but tender and magnanimously humble. For it was clear now that the daughter had outpointed the mother at the Great Game; Cally had justified her flare-up; and Mrs. Heth, with eyes nobly moist, begged forgiveness for all the hibernal harshnesses.

"You must make allowances for the natural anxieties of a loving mother's heart," said she, in the first transports.... "You've done me so proud, dear little daughter. _Proud_!... How Society will open its eyes!..."

"So he is coming to dinner with us!" she added a moment later, exulting with her eyes. "He will speak to your father then.... It's not too late to add a course or two. And we must have out the gold coffee-set...."

Canning dined in state at the House that night, with coffee from the gold set. Next evening, there were similar ceremonies. Accompanying Carlisle homeward on the day following their re-meeting, Canning had meant to return at once to New York; for his long furlough had now run out, and he had felt a man's call of duty upon him. Moreover, it was already arranged that he should come again for a real betrothal visit, sometime before the first of May. Yet he lingered on for four days now, a man magnetized beyond his own control. Radiant days were these.

In view of Carlisle's desire that her news should not tamely leak out, depriving the Announcement of its due _éclat_, some little discretion was of course necessary at this period: else people would talk and say afterwards that they knew it all along. She saw that she must still make engagements which did not include her betrothed; she must meet the archnesses of her little world with blank looks above the music in her heart, with many evasions, and even, perhaps, a harmless fib or two. Nevertheless, the lovers secured many hours all to themselves. Shut from public view in Mr. Heth's study, and more especially in long motor rides down unfrequented by-lanes they were deep in the absorptions of exploring each other, of revealing themselves each to each. And to Carlisle these hours, marked upon their faces with the first fresh wonder of her conquest, were dazzling beyond description.

Spring was coming early this year, slipping in on light bright feet. And in the House of Heth there was felt a vernal exuberance, indeed: permeating papa even, extending to the very servants. Mr. Heth had received the news of the great event with profound satisfaction, asserting unequivocally that Canning was the finest young man he had ever seen. And yet, unlike mamma, his joy was tempered with a certain genuine emotion at the prospect of so soon losing the apple of his eye.

"You know the old rhyme, Cally," said he, pinching her little ear--"'Your son's your son all his life, but your daughter's your daughter _till_ she becomes a wife.'... Don't let it be that way, my dear. You're all the son your old father's got...."

As to mamma, her feet remained in the clouds, but her head grew increasingly practical. She had been rather opposed to postponing the announcement, being ever one for the bird in the hand; but she had yielded with good grace, and within the hour was efficiently planning the "biggest" wedding, and the costliest wedding-reception, ever given in that town. By the second day she was giving intelligent thought to the trousseau--every stitch should be bought in Paris, except a few of the plainer things, in New York--and had finally decided that the refreshments at the reception should be "by Sherry." People should remember that reception so long as they all did live.

"All the Canning connection shall come," she cried,--"rely on me to get them here,--and all the most fashionable and exclusive people in the State. Every last one of them," said she, "except Mary Page."

After an interval, during which she sat with a glitter in her eye, she added explosively:

"_I'll_ show her whether I'm probable!"

The remark, it seemed, had rankled even in the moment of supreme victory....

Spring, too, it became, the quintessence of spring, in the young maiden's heart. Nature but symbolized the brilliant new life henceforward to be her own. And the more she came to discern her lover against his background of wealth, place, and power, the more she saw how brilliant that life was to be, the more she thrilled with the magnitude of her own accomplishment. Of himself in their new relation, Canning talked much in these days, and with an unaffected earnestness: of the high nature of the career they would make together; of his own honors and large responsibilities to come; in chief of his family, whose name it would be their pride to uphold through the years ahead. And the girl's heart warmed as she listened. What was all the storied dignity of the Cannings now but so much sweet myrrh and frankincense upon her own girlish altar?...

He was her maiden's ideal. He was her prince from a story-book, come true. If any flaw were conceivable in so complete a fulfilment, it might have been imagined only in this very fact of Hugo's all-perfectness. Marrying upward, in the nature of the case, involved a large material one-sidedness: that was the object and the glory of it all. Yet now, in her romantic situation, there woke new emotions in Cally Heth, and she dimly perceived that her lifelong ambition carried, through its very advantages, a subtle disadvantage to the heart. Unsuspected tendernesses seemed to stir within her, and she was aware of the vague wish to bestow upon her lover, to make him a full gift for a gift. However, it was clear that Canning had everything. For the priceless boons he was to confer upon her, she saw that she had nothing to give him in return, except herself.

With this return, Canning, for his part, seemed amply content. When the hour came when, for his manhood, he must report himself again to that office in New York which had not known his face since October, he took the parting hard. He was to return again before April was out, for a fortnight's stay preceding his betrothed's departure for Europe; yet he seemed hardly able to tear himself away....

"I hope we shall have a long life together," said he, a bright gleam in his handsome eyes, "but it's certain, my own dear, that we'll never be engaged but once...."

Moved herself by the farewells, she teasingly reminded him of his one-time impatience to fly back to lights and home. But Canning, straining her to his heart, replied that home was where the heart is, and was admitted to have the best of the argument.

* * * * *

Carlisle's world had been knocked far out of its ordered orbit. Hugo Canning, possessed by her, was so towering a fact that it threw the whole horizon into a new perspective. Between this shining state and the winter of discontent, there was no imaginable connection. Cause and effect must turn a new page, life's continuity start afresh.

So it seemed, in love's first bloom. And yet, circumstances being as they were, it was hardly possible that Carlisle should at one stroke completely cut herself off from the past, as Florrie Willing constantly did, as the French people once did, by means of their well-known Revolution.

In Hugo's absence (full as the days were with questions of the trousseau, rendered doubly exciting by mamma's princely attitude toward expense), Carlisle began to recognize once more the landmarks of her former environment. Doubtless a certain period of emotional reaction was inevitable, and with it the reassociation of ideas began. Canning was away a solid month. One day soon after his return,--it was on a lovely afternoon in early May, as they were motoring homeward after four hours' delightful _tête-à-tête_ in Canning's own car,--Carlisle said to him:

"Oh, Hugo, what do you think I did while you were away? Subscribed a hundred dollars to a Settlement House! My own money, too,--not papa's at all!"

Hugo, whose intensity of interest in his betrothed seemed only to have increased during the days of absence, cried out at her munificence.

"So, you've money, in those terms--well!" said he. "Aren't you mortally afraid of being gobbled up by a fortune-hunter some fine day?"

"A _great_ many people have warned me about that--mentioning you specially, by the way. But I've always told them that you loved me for my fair face alone."

Canning made a lover's remark, a thoroughly satisfactory one.

"But don't you see," he added, "this business of your having money changes everything. I must double my working hours, I suppose! I'm too proud a man to be dependent on my wealthy wife for support."

"I'm glad to know you may be prosperous, too, some day, Hugo," said she; and, after a little more frivolous talk: "Did I mention that I'm soliciting subscriptions from visiting men for that Settlement I spoke of?"

"Great heavens!" cried Canning, amused. "Why, don't you think a Hundred Dollars is more than sufficient--for one little family?"

"They wouldn't say so," said Carlisle, laughing and coloring a little, "for they're asking for twenty-five thousand dollars and have raised about two so far. What could be more pitiful than that?"

Canning, who was driving his car to-day, as he occasionally liked to do, then asked, why was a Settlement? And as well as she could Carlisle retailed her rather sketchy information: how "they" planned to buy the deserted Dabney House, make it the headquarters for all the organized charities of the city, and use the rest of the great pile for working-men's clubs, night classes, lodgings, gymnasiums and so forth. Thanks to the influence of Rev. Mr. Dayne, Mrs. Heth had been induced to lend her name as a member of the Settlement Association's organization committee. But it was from her cousin Henrietta Cooney that Carlisle had got most of her facts, at a recent coming-to-supper while Hugo was away.

Canning, listening, was glancing about him. Having made an adventurous run to-day by way of the old Spring Tavern,--he had plotted it out himself, with maps and blue-books,--they had reëntered the city by the back door as it were, and now spun over unaccustomed streets.

"I didn't know you went in for charity, my dear."

"Oh, a cousin of mine is drumming up funds for this, you see...."

Not clearly understanding it herself, how could she explain the impulse which had led her to offer Hen, without being dunned at all, her royal subscription? Perhaps she had a vague feeling that this would prove, to the complete satisfaction of the public, that she and her family were far from being shameless homicides, dead to all benevolent works. It appeared that mamma had already subscribed fifteen dollars to the Settlement, on personal solicitation of Mr. Dayne, but of course you could not prove anything much for fifteen dollars.

Hugo, having turned to look at Carlisle, lost interest in Settlements. His gaze became fixed, and it said, plainer than ardent print, that, if he had many possessions, here was far the best and dearest of them....

"Where's that ripping little hat you wore yesterday? You know--a brown one, sort of a toque, I suppose--all old rose inside?"

"Why, Hugo!... Don't you like this hat _extremely_?"

"Rather! Only, if there is a choice, I do think I'd vote for the toque.... You've gone and spoiled me by giving away how you can look when you try."

Carlisle laughed merrily. She was glad to have her lover so observant of what she wore, even though he did not know nearly so much about clothes as he imagined.

"It's not a toque at all," said she, "but I'll wear it for you to-morrow, provided you promise me now to run away from that tiresome secretary and come to lunch."

"Done! At one-thirty o'clock."

"That's the exact luncheon hour, as it happens, but I notice that many of the best fiancés make it a practice to report for duty at least half an hour before the gong. It _looks_ so much better."

"Running and eating's no better than eating and running, you allege. There's some small merit in the contention.... What of those sterling fiancés who punch the time-clock a full hour before the whistle?"

"Oh, dear me, Hugo, are there any like that?"

"There's but one now in captivity, I believe. I--Hello!... Missed him, by Jove!"

"What was it? A cat?"

"Didn't you see? Our old hoodoo--that camp-meeting chap!..."

"Oh!"

"I wonder what ill wind he's blowing this time.... Poetic justice if I'd knocked him into the middle of next week."

Carlisle had involuntarily looked back, struck with a sense of coincidence, and also with the odd feeling of having received a douche of cold water. They were, it seemed, rolling along through old South Street, and behind her, sure enough, she saw the looming shape of the ancient hotel, which the Settlement Association could have for twenty-five thousand dollars cash. Of the "camp-meeting chap," however, she saw nothing: presumably, having evaded justice, he had already disappeared into his lair. Nevertheless she was effectually reminded that this man was still in the world.

"Is this where the fellow lives?" said Canning, also glancing back down the dingy street. "I thought somebody said he'd come into money from his lamented uncle."

She confirmed the conjecture, and Hugo then observed:

"Well, I'll give him a month to discover that it's his duty to God to remove to a more fashionable neighborhood."

"Oh! Do you think so?"

"Have you ever known one of these smooth religious fellows who wasn't keen after the fleshpots when his chance came?"

Carlisle laughed and said she hadn't, having indeed known few religious fellows of any kind in her young life. But she was struck with this new proof of Hugo's essential congeniality with her. His penetrating comment, born, it seemed, of that curious antipathy which she had noticed before, fell in astonishingly with trends of her own.

Many weeks had passed since Carlisle had decided to oust this religious fellow definitely from her thoughts, as belonging so clearly to that past upon which she had now turned a victorious back. And in these expulsive processes, she had found herself greatly assisted by the young man's confession of hypocrisy, as she regarded it, on this very subject of giving away money. Perhaps this had seemed a frail club once; she herself had hardly put much strength in it in the beginning; but she had been resolute, and time had strengthened her convincingly, according to her need. For if the man was a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones within, then clearly his opinions of people and their families were not of the slightest importance to anybody, so what was the good of anybody's thinking of them?...

Not to let the conversation lag, she had remarked, with no pause at all:

"It's strange our nearly running over him, just then and there. That old shack is the Dabney House, and you know it's he who got up the Settlement idea."

"No, I didn't know it," said Canning, slowing down to take a corner which led on to civilization. "Still," he added, "I shan't let that stay my generosity. I resolved three blocks back to subscribe five hundred--just to throw you in the shade--and I will not be deterred."

Having been duly applauded for his prodigality, he inquired: "How much, by the way, is the good doctor donating out of his forty thousand?"

"Not a cent!" said Carlisle, who had questioned Hen on this very point.

It was thus, indeed, that circumstances had given demolishing weight to her club. "If I had money I'd probably hang on to every cent," the man had said, that winter morning on his uncle's doorstep; and now he had money, a lot of it, and hanging on he undoubtedly was. Hen herself had confessed it, with a certain defiance, trying to create the impression that the man was merely reserving his funds for some other good purpose....

The triumphant ring in Carlisle's voice might have struck Canning as odd, if he had happened to notice it. Still more obscure, however, were the inner processes which led him to say:

"Does he make any charge for the thought?... Well, it's a fine thought, all the same; a fine work. On reconsideration I raise my subscription to a thousand. Hang the expense!..."

There was another gay burst of felicitation, after which Carlisle became somewhat silent. Canning, bowling proficiently up Washington Street, spoke of his honored maternal grandmother, the great lady Mrs. Theodore Spencer, and her famous Brookline home. Beside him, Carlisle, listening with one ear only, considered the strangeness of life. Transfigured within, she had seemed to look out upon a new universe, yet was not this somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then, were clubs? When were things _ever_ settled, if she could be conscious of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?...

"Who was that?" said Canning, suspending conversation to bow, with Carlisle, to a passing female pedestrian.

"Oh," she laughed, a little vexedly, roused from her meditations--"just one of my poor relations."

"Ah?" said he, a trifle surprised.

A far cry, indeed, from the celebrated dowager, friend of diplomats and presidents, to Miss Cooney of Saltman's bookstore, in a three-year-old skirt. And how like Hen, instead of quietly looking the other way, to yell out some Cooneyesque greeting and wave that perfectly absurd umbrella....

To Hen it was, a day or two later, that Carlisle mailed the two Settlement checks, hers for a hundred and Hugo's for ten times that amount. She licked the stamp with intense satisfaction. However, the rewards of her generosity seemed somewhat flat. Hen, indeed, called her up immediately upon receipt of her communication, and contents noted, with excited thanksgiving. However, that was all: the checks were turned over to Mr. Dayne, and there the matted ended. Carlisle was oppressed with a sense of anti-climax. She even thought of sending another and larger check straight to Dr. Vivian.

Canning, it developed rather to Carlisle's surprise, took his business quite seriously. His indolences of the sick-leave period were now sloughed from him. He had returned this time, not merely with his favorite car and mechanic for the afternoon excursions, but accompanied by mysterious "papers" and a man stenographer; and, occupying rooms in the New Arlington Hotel, gave his mornings and even some of his evenings religiously to work.

"Why, Hugo, are you a _lawyer?_" cried Carlisle, when he first explained these matters to her.

"I am, and a pretty keen one," said he.

"And do you know how to reorganize _banks?_"

"I can reorganize 'em like the devil," said Hugo sincerely; for if a man does not want a woman to boast a little before now and then, he does not want her at all....

His papers and his telegrams, his periods of engrossment in business and telephone-calls from his secretary, seemed to invest him with a certain new dignity. A subtle change in his manner was now perceptible. It was as if he had moulted some of the gay plumage of the wooing-season, and unconsciously begun to gather something of the authority of the coming head of a great house. Like many men who have long enjoyed but eluded the wiles of lovely woman, Canning clearly contemplated the married estate with profound gravity. In his absence he had communicated his good news to both his parents, though one was in Boston and the other, his father, in Washington: testifying, in short, before a Congressional Investigation Committee. He was not especially detailed as to what they had said, beyond their general expressions of pleasure; but it was clear that he regarded it as of the first importance that they should be pleased.

Matters now, indeed, began to assume a distinctly serious and responsible complexion. The days of purely idyllic romance seemed to slip behind; the engagement more and more took shape as the gateway to an alliance of institutional consequence, entailing far-reaching reactions in various directions. Mamma's remarks made it plain that, with Cally's establishment as Mrs. Hugo Canning, her own career of brilliant aspiration had reached its final goal. Even papa's future seemed to be affected to its roots. Already he spoke with satisfaction of taking a smaller house next year; ultimately of "retiring" to an undefined "little place in the country," toward which in recent years his talk had slanted somewhat wistfully....

Mrs. Heth and Carlisle were to go to New York on the 20th of May, do a few days' preliminary shopping there, and sail on the 26th. Canning's visit lasted till near the middle of the month, running over his allotted two weeks. And deepening intimacy only brought into stronger relief his great advantages of position, antecedents, and experience; only showed Carlisle the more clearly how distinguished, cultivated, and superior a man she had won. With her pride, there came now, it seemed, a certain new humility. She was aware that never in the days of the thundering feet had she been so desirous of pleasing Hugo as now: when he was no shining symbol or distant parti, but the exceedingly personal and living man who was so soon to call her to the purple. She caught herself at times, with some amused surprise, in the deliberate processes--editing her vocabulary, manner, and wardrobe, for example, in the light of the preferences she intuitionally read in his eye. So, as the husbandly dignity descended upon him, she found herself possessed by something of the wifely duty....

Whenever was this ticklish business of the dovetailing of two lives accomplished without some small mutual effort? No more could be said than that Carlisle felt, in rare and weak moments, a certain sense of strain. An immaterial subtlety this, properly out of the range of mamma's concrete observations. But papa's heart was tender: did he possibly suspect that his darling might feel herself just a little overshadowed at times?

He called Cally into the study one evening before dinner, and with a mysterious air handed over to her a bulky packet of very legal-looking papers.

"Why, papa! What is it?"

"Stock!" answered papa, with a chuckle. "Mostly Fourth National. There's a little more than fifty thousand dollars there in your hand, Cally."

"But--why, papa!... You don't mean it for _me!_"

"A little weddin' present from your old father. I meant to give it to you next fall, and then I thought, why wait? Had it all put in your name to-day."

"Oh--_papa!_..."

She threw her arms around his neck, suddenly and oddly touched; not so much by the gift, for she would have plenty of money soon, as by this evidence of her father's affectionate thought.

"Your daughter's your daughter till she becomes a wife...." remarked Mr. Heth. "It won't be that way, will it, Cally, eh?"

"Never in the world.... Oh, papa, how sweet--how _good_--you are to me!..."

"You've got a fine man," said papa, presently, patting her cheek. "But my judgment is it's always just as well for a girl to have a little money of her own. Feels independent. You'll have more when I'm gone, of course. That'll give you a little better'n three thousand a year. Non-taxable, too."

She reported her new wealth to Hugo, quite proudly, within two hours. For he had proved willing this evening to purloin night hours from his grave duties as attorney-at-law, and by telephone had easily cajoled Carlisle into breaking an engagement she had made for other society. In the nicest sort of way, Canning agreed that her father had made her a handsome dowry. He added, holding her hand tight, that she was to let him do something for her, too, on their wedding day. Of course she must have her own money; all she could spend.

"I can spend lots, my dear. You'll find me a frightfully expensive young person.... There are cigarettes in the drawer, Hugo. I bought the kind you like, this time...."

She got one for him, struck the match herself. He watched her, loafing lordly; very handsome and dear he looked in his beautiful evening clothes.

And thence, in the lamplit privacy of the little study,--Mr. Heth having fared forth to a Convention "banquet,"--the talk ranged wide. Late in the evening, it returned again to Carlisle, as the possessor of large independent funds, a topic of pleasurable possibilities from her standpoint.

She said idly: "Do you believe it makes you happy to give away money, Hugo? That's a rule I heard somewhere."

"Unquestionably one of the most refined ways known of tickling one's little vanity.... How full of good deeds you are these days. You're thinking of the poor again, I'm right?"

"I must have been. There's nobody else who'd take money from you, is there?"

"Oh, isn't there? I must introduce you to high finance some day."

"Well," said Carlisle, "I meant just to give it away--to anybody--just to show how free and superior you are, or something.... Silly, isn't it? What's your happiness rule, Hugo?"

He replied with the readiness of a man who has been over this path long ago:

"To have the capacity to want things very much, and the ability to get them."

And he squeezed the little hand he held, as if to say that he had both wanted much and gotten much.

Carlisle was much struck with this rule, which she now saw to have been her own and mamma's all their lives long. After duly complimenting Hugo upon it, she said:

"Here's another one, a man told me once: 'Cultivate your sympathies all the time, and do something useful.'"

"That's orthodox! It was a young curate with a lisp who told you, I'll wager."

"Very warm!" she laughed, struck again by his astuteness. "It was your hoodoo--Dr. Vivian! And, oh, now that I think of it, he gave me that other pointer, too,--about giving away money."

Hugo replied: "The man seems to be dripping with wise old saws, in a thoroughly inexpensive sort of way.... Well, we'll show him something about giving away money some day."

He was silent a moment, and Carlisle then remembered her thought of another large subscription to the Settlement, which she, for her part, could easily make now with fifty thousand dollars all her own. But Canning obliterated all such reflections by turning and taking her abruptly in his arms.

"_This_ is what I want to make me happy. Darling--darling!..."

They sat on the shabby old leather lounge which papa had held fast to, by winter and by summer, for thirty years. Here they had sat down soon after eight o'clock, and now the soft-toned chimes in the hall had just sounded eleven-thirty. In the first days of their engagement, Carlisle had observed that Hugo was "very demonstrative." And now, at the end of their loverly evening together, he became suddenly and strangely moved, professing, in a voice unlike his own, his inability to live longer without her. Then, ignoring all their elaborate plannings, he abruptly begged her to marry him in June, as he had first asked her....

"Why, Hugo!" she said, surprised and a little uncomfortable. "That's so much dear foolishness--and not a stitch of clothes made yet! October's just around the corner.... Do sit up, Hugo dear. There's papa, I think."

Hugo sat up. Reason reasserted its sway. But later, Carlisle remembered this moment with a dim sense of trouble, not entirely new.... She wondered with a certain disquiet whether all this was some everlasting difference between men and women, or whether she, Carlisle, was by nature a cold and undemonstrative sort of person? Indeed, there did seem to be a falling short in her somehow; for if not with herself and the expressions of her love, with what was she to return Hugo's royal gifts?...

There were three more days; and then young lovers must say farewell. In little more than a week they would meet again in New York; but still this seemed a real parting to both. It was the 13th of May, the day which marked the end of three weeks of cloudless skies. The rain long predicted by the weather sharps had come in the night, and the dreary downpour continued throughout the day. Each of the young pair seemed somehow conscious that the first chapter in their joint story had reached an end. Better days they might certainly have, but never again days just like these....

"Keep well, dear heart," begged Canning at the last, "and take care of all your loveliness for my sake."

Proud of her beauty he ever was, and especially now when she was so soon to meet his mother in New York. And at the final parting, he said, visibly moved:

"Understand me, Carlisle, you are mine through all eternity. Whatever happens to you or me, this is a love that shall not die."

Saying which, having now lingered to the last possible moment, he dashed from her to his waiting taxicab--his own car having already gone by express--with just five minutes to catch his train.

From the drawing-room window, Carlisle waved her hand to him; kissed it, too, since nobody was looking. And then the car leapt forward and shot away out of sight down the glistening street. Hugo was gone, and Carlisle was alone.

She stood at the window, looking out blankly into the leaden wetness. It was just after five, and the rain poured. A curious depression settled quickly upon her, which was hardly fully accounted for as "missing Hugo already."... Why? Who upon earth had less cause for depression than she? No girl lived with more all-embracing reasons for being superlatively happy. What, then, was the lack in her?--or was this some lack in the terms of life itself? Was it the mysterious law of the world that nobody, no matter what she had or did, should ever long keep the jewel happiness unspotted by a doubt?

XVII

Cally crosses the Great Gulf; and it isn't quite Clear how she will ever cross back again.

Baffling questions these, even to young philosophers. Dismissing them as foolish, Cally Heth turned from the rain-swept window, designing to rest awhile in her own room, before dressing for a little dinner at Evey McVey's. Forsaken as she felt, she was yet not unconscious of a certain remote desirability in being alone; that is, in having a little time to herself now. It occurred to her that perhaps she and Hugo had been together rather too constantly in these weeks, going forward just a little too fast....

In the hall she encountered her mother, descending the stairs in mackintosh, hat, and veil. Carlisle looked surprised, but mamma's look under the veil was roguishly dolorous, in reference to the recent farewell.

"Why, mamma, where are you going in all the rain?"

Mrs. Heth replied: "What, no tears!... I'm off to the old Dabney House, my dear--the first time in twenty years--"

"Oh!... The Settlement!"

"I promised Mr. Dayne I would go," said the capable little lady, eyeing her daughter expectantly--"it's the organization meeting and election of officers. The man has got together some excellent people for his committee. And, by the way, Cally--"

"But they haven't raised all the money already!"

At this Mrs. Heth looked still more knowing. "Confess, Cally--didn't Hugo do it? Didn't he make another big subscription after his thousand?"

Cally, arrested at the foot of the steps, stared at her mother. "Why--not that I know of. What do you mean?"

Now her mother looked somewhat disappointed, but said, snapping a glove button: "It would be like him to do it, and say not a word to anybody. Why, there's a foolish story Mrs. Wayne told me this morning that the whole thing had fallen through, when Mrs. Berkeley Page came forward anonymously with a gift of twenty-five thousand--simply buying the building outright, in fact. I don't, of course, believe a word of it. She's exactly the kind to let her right hand know what her left was doing. Still, I did think perhaps Hugo might possibly have done something of the sort. He was so interested--he spoke of the Settlement to me only yesterday...."

The girl gazed at her mother, and a sudden light broke into her eyes. Across her memory there flashed Canning's cryptic remark, only the other night: "We'll show him something about giving away money some day."... This, then, was what he had meant: perhaps he had already done it that night. She knew that Hugo had curiously disliked Dr. Vivian at sight, and that, by the bond between her and him, he had somehow entered into her own feminine feeling that to give handsomely to the fellow's own charity (to which he himself gave nothing at all) was to show him up completely in the interest of public morals. The gift of such a sum as twenty-five thousand dollars simply exploded him off the horizon....

Her heart glowing toward her understanding lover, she clapped her small hands and cried: "He did!--I remember something he said about it now. Oh, I _know_ he did!"

"I felt morally certain of it," said mamma, calmly, peering through the plate glass of the door. "Don't tell me Mary Page would do a thing like that. Ah, here is the car at last...."

Carlisle said with sudden eagerness: "Do wait a minute for me, mamma! I believe I'll go to the meeting, too."

Naturally some discussion followed this whimsical request. The upshot was that Mrs. Heth, being late already, promised to send the car back.

Cally, gloom banished, ran up the stairs, her mother's voice following behind like a trade-wind.

"It's to be in the office of that Dr. Vivian--you know?... one flight up. No difficulty in finding ... Sure to put on rubbers...."

The last words to be distinctly heard were: "Look for me right up at the front."

In her own room Carlisle flew about quite blithely, making ready for the unexpected excursion with odd anticipations beyond mamma's guessing. She felt grateful to Hugo, attached to him by a new tie; for he, however clearly he had understood it himself, had beautifully put her in just that position toward the religious fellow which she had so long desired to occupy: the position, in short, of overwhelming moral superiority. How easy now, choosing her own moment, to say what would dispel forever the man's odd little power of causing her to worry....

The streets were slippery, the journey was from pole to pole of the town and yet five minutes sufficed for it, bringing Settlementers to their destination. So easily does forty horse-power traverse the mile between Houses of Heth and Houses of Dabney. Cally Heth rolled up to the door of the abandoned hotel. Large and dismal it looked in the slanting rain. Archaic, too, so the modern of the moderns thought, glancing upward over the face of the shabby pile as the car halted, and William, who was ever attentive to his young mistress, sprang out with the umbrellas. It was an odd place for anybody to live, certainly; an even odder place to draw in storm the world of fashion foregathering to its bosom. Yet this indubitably was the spot. There was the little procession of motor-cars, lined against the broken sidewalk in the wet, to prove it. The girl's upward eye fell, too, upon a name, inscribed in white paint upon a window directly above the decayed grand entrance:

DR. VIVIAN

Carlisle became conscious of a certain excitement. She hoped very much that they hadn't read out the names of subscribers yet.

She was late, so there was nobody to show her in. From the sidewalk she stepped under a queer little portico, which seemed to waft one back to a previous century. Here, at the vestibule step, she was obliged to move carefully to avoid treading on two dirty little denizens of the neighborhood, who knew no better than to block the way of the quality. They were little Jew girls,--little Goldnagels, in short,--and while one of them sat and played at jackstones with a flat-looking rubber ball, the other and smaller lay prone upon her stomach, weeping with passionate abandon.

Her agonized wails indicated the end of the world, and worse. Carlisle said kindly:

"What's the matter, little girl?"

The lamenting one, who was about four years old, rolled around and regarded the lady with a contorted face. Her wails died to a whimper: but then, curiosity satisfied and no solace offering, she burst forth as with an access of mysterious pain.

"Did she hurt herself?" said Carlisle, third-personally, to the elder girl, who had suspended her game to stare wide-eyed. "What on earth is the matter?"

The reply was tragically simple:

"_A Lady stepped on her Junebug_."

Sure enough, full on the vestibule floor lay the murdered slumbug, who had too hardily ventured to cross a wealthy benevolent's path. The string was yet tied to the now futile hind-leg. Carlisle, lingering, repressed her desire to laugh.

"Oh!... Well, don't you think you could catch her a new one, perhaps?"

"Bopper he mout ketch her a new one mebbe to-morrow, mom.... _Hiesh_, Rebecca!"

Moved by some impulse in her own buoyant mood, Carlisle touched the littlest girl on the shoulder with a well-gloved finger.

"Here--Rebecca, poor child!... You can buy yourself something better than Junebugs."

The proprietor of the deceased bug, having raised her damp dark face, ceased crying instantly. Over the astounding windfall the chubby fingers closed with a gesture suggesting generations of acquisitiveness.

"Is it hers to keep?" spoke her aged sister, in a scared voice. "That there's a _dollar_, mom."

"Hers to keep ..." replied the goddess, smiling.

But her speech stopped there, shorn of a donator's gracious frills, and the smile became somewhat fixed upon the lovely lip....

There had appeared a man's face at the glass of the old doors, and the lady, straightening benignantly to sweep on to her triumph upstairs, had run suddenly upon his fixed gaze. Nothing, of course, could have been more natural than this man's appearance there: who upon earth more suitable for door-keeper to the distinguished visitors than he, who had given his office to the Settlement to-day, in lieu of more expensive gifts? Yet by some flashing trick of Carlisle's imagination, or of his air of immobility, seen darkly through the glass, it was almost as if he might have, been waiting there for her alone....

But the meeting of eyes was over as soon as it began. With so prompt a courtesy did the Dabney House physician swing open the door that it was as if he had been opening it all along, as if she hadn't caught him looking at her....

"How do you do, Miss Heth?... Such a dreadful day!--you were brave to venture out."

"How d'you do?" said Carlisle, in the voice of "manner," a rising voice, modulated, distant and superior. And over her shoulder, she addressed the little Jew girls, with an air of more than perfect ease:

"Well, then, good-bye! Be sure to catch her the new one to-morrow...."

She had seen that the strange young man was smiling. And by that she knew that he remembered their last meeting, and wanted to trade upon her queer weakness at that time, pretending that he and she were pleasant acquaintances together. Presently she should inform him better as to that. But why, oh, why, that small flinching at the sight of him, the very man she had fared into the downpour to explode, not pausing even to mourn her lover's going?...

"I'm a search-party of one," said Dr. Vivian, throwing wider the door, "for Mr. Pond. I wondered if he could have got lost, somewhere down here--he's never turned up yet."

"Mr. Pond?"

"The director of the Settlement, you know, when it opens for business in the fall. He happened to be in Washington, and was good enough to run down to-day to make us a little address."

"Oh."

Carlisle found herself, beyond the door, in a quaint high-ceiled court, enfolded with peristyles in two long rows, and paved with discolored tiles loose under the foot. At the farther end of the court there ran away a broad corridor into the dusk, and here also, full fifty feet distant, rose the grand stairway with ornate sweeping balustrade ending in a tall carved newel-post. Obsolete and ruined and queer the whole placed looked, indeed....

"Luckily," added Dr. Vivian, "I'm in good time to serve as a guide."

But Miss Heth was already walking past him with an expensive rustle, moving straight toward the stairway. For this, needless to say, was not the moment to speak that pointed word or two which should unmask the man; there would be an unavoidable vulgarity about it here, in this solitude. And even if she should get no further opportunity upstairs--well, after all, the situation spoke for itself; nay, thundered. Had not Hugo--come to think of it--struck the note of the subtler victory, he who had given magnificently and said nothing? _Noblesse oblige_, as the Gauls say....

"Oh, no, that's not necessary," she replied, walking on. "There are the stairs...."

The young man fell in behind her.

"The old house is really quite bewildering, upstairs. It happened that my office was the only place available. Perhaps you will let me show you--"

"Oh, I don't think I need trouble you, thank you."

"It is no trouble," said V. Vivian.

Good sentences these, and well pronounced. With them, conversation seemed to languish. The processional pair moved across the shadowy court in entire silence. The benevolent lady led, never so securely entrenched in the victorious order, the beloved of prodigal Hugo Canning, to whom no harm should befall. After her proceeded the slum doctor: the hard marble betrayed the inequality of his footsteps. A minute more and they would be upstairs, swallowed and dispersed in the publicity of the meeting. Floor and ceiling above them brought down the sounds of a company near at hand, the scraping of a chair-leg, the muffled echo of voices. Carlisle's foot trod upon the bottom step of the broad stairway.

"I wonder if you would give me five minutes after the meeting, Miss Heth?" said the young man's voice behind her. "There's a--a matter I've wanted very much to speak to you about."

Cally's heart seemed to jump a little.

"What is it that you want to speak to me about?" she asked coolly, not turning. And, to her own surprise, she brought her other foot up on the stair.

"Well, it concerns the Works," said Vivian.

And he added at once, hastily: "Oh, nothing that you need object to at all, I hope. Not at all...."

She had stopped short at the fighting-word, and turned, pink-cheeked. Certes, there was a point at which _noblesse oblige_ becomes mere flabby spinelessness.

And upstairs Mrs. Heth, complacent right up at the front, craned round her neck, and thought that Cally was very long in coming....

"Yes? What about the Works?" said Cally, her breath quickening.

"Oh, I don't mean to detain you now, of course--"

"But now that you have detained me?" she pursued, with no great polish of courtesy.

The young man raised a hand and pushed back his hair, which was short but wavy. It was observed that he wore, doubtless in memory of his uncle, a mourning tie of grosgrain silk, replacing the piquant aquarium scene.

"I could hardly explain it all in just a few sentences," said he, affecting reluctance, "and I--certainly don't want to give you a wrong impression.... To begin quite at the end, I've been wondering if I--I might be allowed to make one or two small improvements there, at the Works, I mean,--in fact, out of a--a sort of fund I have."

Carlisle stared at him spellbound. She stood on the bottom step of the old grand stairway, one gloved hand on the balustrade; and, as she so stood, her eyes just came on a level with those of the tall doctor. His hare-brained audacity almost took her breath away.

"Oh," said she. "Out of a fund you have."

And she thought wildly of accepting his offer at once, compelling him to name a definite sum, just for the fun of seeing how he would wriggle out of it afterwards.

"I'm tremendously interested in the Works, you know," the man rushed on, quite as if he found encouragement in her reply, "because I have so many friends who work there. It's to gratify my peace of mind, just to know that they have--everything they need. As I say, I happen to--to have a sort of fund--a little public fund, you might say--for--for purposes of the kind. And the idea of outside coöperation in such a matter is a perfectly sound one, as you doubtless know, a--a sound, advanced socialistic idea. It's simply the community acknowledging some responsibility where it already claims the right to regulate ..."

At this point her stare seemed to penetrate him with a doubt, and he said, with the air of having skipped hastily and turned back:

"I mustn't detain you now to give the full argument, of course, but I assure you the idea is sound and--mutually beneficial, as I believe. Unfortunately," he added, with a certain embarrassment, "I don't know your father."

"Tell me," said Carlisle, feeling an excitement mounting within her, "how is it that you are always thinking up these plans for doing good to other people?"

Before Dr. Vivian could meet this poser, the front door opened with a bang, and a youngish man in a wet yellow raincoat came striding rapidly across the court toward them. He was a powerfully built man with a blue-tinged chin, and wore the air of a person of authority.

"Meeting not begun yet?" he demanded, without salutation, apparently addressing Carlisle. "Thought I was late."

"Ah, Mr. Pond--glad to see you," said Vivian, stepping forward a little to meet the newcomer. "They've just begun--you'll find an ovation waiting for you."

"In your office? Aren't you going up, to lead the applause?"

The doctor bowed gravely. "In my office. I'll join you directly."

"I see," said the man, nodding, having never checked his stride.

But all that he had seemed to see with his keen black eyes was the lovely girl posed on the last step of the ornamental stairway. He almost brushed against her as he strode by.

The Pond person's footsteps diminished up the long stairs. A moment later a volley of hand-clapping, sounding very near, indicated his arrival in the meeting-room. But his interruption and his irritating stare had accomplished no mollifying purpose down in the court. But one end, indeed, could justify the proud Miss Heth in lingering in a public hall with the slanderer of herself and her family.

"Doesn't it occur to you," she said, hardly waiting for the intruder to get out of earshot, "that so much preaching about other people's business seems rather--odd, coming from you?"

Dr. Vivian now affected to look troubled.

"There was just that difficulty," said he, slowly, "that you might think I was preaching. I'm not, this time, really--"

"Don't you know perfectly well you only said that in a--a horrid way to try to make me feel uncomfortable?"

She paused for a reply; her excitement was growing. Her figure was enveloped in a slim raincoat of fine gray; she wore a yellow straw hat of an intriguing shape, and over it a white veil closely drawn to keep the wet wind from her face. Now and then, as her eyes moved, a descending black-and-gold eyelash became entangled with this veil; that occurrence, in fact, took place at this precise moment, creating an emergency situation of some consequence. It was a matter of considerable public interest to see how it would all work out. However, the girl merely raised an indifferent hand, and plucked the veil out a little. The man V.V. looked hurriedly away.

He was saying: "I assure you I meant nothing of the kind. However, doubtless it's natural that you should think so--"

"It seems _very_ natural to me--especially here in the new Settlement building!... What about the _parable of the rich young man now_?"

He stood looking at her without a reply; one of his quaint looks, it was.

However, Carlisle knew positively that he did not want to improve the Works out of any fund he pretended to have, and was resolved to show him no mercy now. She had really meant to spare him, and he, mistaking magnanimity for weakness, had said what he had said. On his head be it: his deceptive trusting look should not save him now.

"Why don't you say something?" she demanded.

The young man gave an embarrassed laugh.

"Well, to tell the honest truth, I don't seem to think of anything to say--"

"Oh!... So the Settlement suggests _nothing_ to you--as to picking the beam from your own eye?"

"Not at this moment, I think. In fact, I don't seem to grasp at all--"

"_Oh!_" said Cally, with a little gasp.

And then, stung on by his reckless hardihood, she struck to kill:

"How can you _look_ at me, and pretend that you're so anxious to help other people's businesses, when you know you wouldn't even give to your own Settlement--_not a cent_!"

The two stood facing each other, hardly a yard apart, their eyes dead-level. V.V., as Henrietta Cooney called him, continued to look at her, and though he was far from a florid young man, it seemed now as if he must have been so, so much color did he have to lose. And Cally discovered that the man had somehow managed to keep, over all these brilliant weeks, that mysterious trick he had of making her feel unfair, and even rather horrid and common, when she knew perfectly well she wasn't. For the look on his unreliable face was that of one stabbed from behind in a company where he had trusted, and his eyes seemed to be saying to her quite distinctly: "Don't you worry about _me!_ Just give me a minute or two, and _I'll_ be all right...."

But all that his actual voice said, in rather a remote way, was:

"What a terrific hypocrite you must think me!... I hadn't realized ..."

It was precisely the point that Carlisle Heth had been trying to establish, for a long, long time. Yet now, in the moment of triumph, her gaze suddenly wavered from his; and she heard herself, to her own secret confusion, saying hurriedly and weakly:

"At least, I understood--some one _told_ me--you hadn't.... Of course you--you _might_ have given something, and--this person not have known...."

But Jack Dalhousie's friend only answered, in the same detached way:

"It's unpardonable, my detaining you this way. I'd no idea ... May I show you the way up--"

"No--_no!_ Please wait!..."

He waited, silent. Carlisle, having paused long enough to take firm hold of her consciousness of vast superiorities, resumed more strongly:

"Perhaps I ought to explain why I--thought that. I was told that the whole thing had fallen through, when a--a wealthy subscriber stepped in and secretly gave a very large amount--had bought the building for you. So I--I naturally thought--"

"It was absolutely natural. In fact, it's quite true.... Shall we go to the meeting now?"

But no, something in her required that he must state in plain words the fact that would justify her accusation, alleged by his eyes to be so unjust: namely, that it was (practically) a member of her family who had done this splendid thing for him. Yet she went rather further than she had intended when she said, glancing away over the queer dusky court:

"I will tell you. Some one gave us to understand--not he himself, of course,--that it was a friend of ours who had done this ... Mr. Hugo Canning."

He made no answer.

An uncontrollable desire carried the girl yet further. She said, in a weakening voice:

"_Was it?_"

In saying this, she brought her eyes back fully to her victim. And if ever guilt was written large upon a human countenance, it was upon the face of V. Vivian at that moment. Brightly flushed he was, with an embarrassment painful to witness. And yet, so strange is the way of life, the joy of victory once again seemed to slip from the clutch of Cally Heth. What house of cards was this she had pulled down upon herself?...

"Really, you must appreciate," the man was saying, in a light, dry voice, "I shouldn't feel at liberty to betray a secret of that sort, even if I knew. I'm sorry, but--"

But the girl's sickening sensations of falling through space broke out in faltering speech:

"_Oh!_... Do you _mean_ ..." She halted, to steady herself, and took a fresh start, no better than the first: "Do you mean--that--"

"I mean only, Miss Heth, that I haven't the slightest idea what this is all about. I thought," he said, in a voice of increasing hardness, "that we were talking of the Works. If, at another time, you can give me a few minutes--"

"Was it YOU?" said Carlisle, breaking through his defenses ... "Do you mean--it was YOU, all along?..."

"I mean nothing of any sort. Does it occur to you that these questions are quite unfair?--that they put me in a ..."

She demanded in a small voice: "_Did you buy this house for the Settlement?_"

Shot down with the pointblank question, the tall young man, whose coat was so extremely polished at the elbows, died game, saying with sudden gentleness:

"No, it was my Uncle Armistead."

And then there was no sound but the steady beat of the rain upon sidewalk and roofs ...

Upstairs, just a floor and a ceiling away, Mrs. Heth, craning her neck for the last time, perceived that Cally had decided not to come to the meeting; also that it was just as well, viewing the inclement weather. Downstairs, almost directly beneath her, Cally stood front to front with the family enemy, her face quite white.

"Of course you understand," the enemy was saying, hurriedly and yet firmly too, "he gave me the money expecting it to be used for the public good. I've considered that I merely had it in trust, as a fund for--for these purposes, as I've explained. And this--well, you may easily imagine that it was the most perfect form of self-indulgence.... I've gotten so fond of this old place ... But I can't imagine how we came to be talking of it, and I beg that you'll forget the whole matter. I--my uncle would have been very much annoyed to--to have it known or talked about...."

Not in that singular experience in the Cooney parlor, not even in the memorable New Year's moment in her own library, had Carlisle been swept with such a desire to dissociate herself from her own person, to sneak away from herself, to drop through the floor. Nevertheless, some dignity in her, standing fast, struck out for salvage; and out of the uprush of humiliating sensation, she heard her voice, colorless and flat:

"I'm sorry I said that. You make me ... quite ashamed...."

The flush deepened abruptly on the tall doctor's cheek.

"_Don't_ say that! Don't you suppose I understand how absolutely natural it was?... Everybody'd have thought just the same, in your place...."

Carlisle had turned away from his translucent eye, finding it unbearable; she descended from the stair, took an irresolute step or two over the ruined floor of the once stately court. And then she halted, having really nowhere to go, staring fixedly toward the distant doors....

Mamma's nearness could not help her now. Hugo's fortifying love was no buffer against this extraordinary moment. All alone Cally stood with the contemned religious fellow who had unhorsed and disarmed her once again, and now there would be no more weapons. And there was a worse thing here than her mean looking for hypocrisy, and the discovery, instead, of a mad generosity, a princely folly. Bad enough all that seemed; very bad indeed: but Cally's painful moment seemed to cut deeper yet.

After all the struggling, had it come to this? Was the author of the Beach opinion of her a man whom she must greatly admire?...

Behind her stood the stairway, which led on up to mamma and the embracing security of the victorious order. Behind her also stood the man, the royal giver of the granary where finer-feathered birds now made merry among the spoils. With what speech should Cally Heth, mocked and jeered by her feeble "I'm sorry," turn now and pass him?...

She heard the sound of his unequal footstep, and then his voice behind her, stirred with a sudden feeling:

"Why, it's not a thing to be sorry about--how could you possibly have thought otherwise?... Don't you suppose I realize what cause I've given you to--to distrust and dislike me? You'd be more than human if you could forgive and forget--what I said to you one night. How could you, when it was so unforgivable? And since then--"

"_Don't!_" Carlisle said, in a muffled sort of voice. And then, clearly and distinctly: "Don't!... I can't quite stand that!"

She turned on the old floor, with the sound of her own strengthening voice, and came again face to face with the man, V.V. There had seemed to come to her a light. And back into her smooth young cheek trickled that color so loved by her betrothed, who had not bought the Settlement House after all....

She was a brilliantly successful girl, the chosen wife of the most shiningly eligible of men; and he was a lame slum doctor in a worn-out suit, beneath her notice as a man altogether. And yet, as Hugo stood above her in all those material aspects which had always summed up her whole demand of life, so this man stood above her in some more subtle and mysterious way. And it had always been so: by bright swift flickers of intuition she had seemed suddenly to see that now. All the restlessness and discontent which the thought and sight of him had power to awake in her from the beginning came from just this; and she had never been able to put him down, no matter how she had chafed and denounced, because the final fact had always been that he, in his queer way, stood above her ...

And now, in this unsteadied moment, with all hope of bringing him down beaten finally to death, there had seemed to rise and beckon a finer way of bridging this gap between them. All that was best in the girl suddenly rose, demanding for once to be allowed to meet the shabby alien on his own reckless level.

"Look here," said Cally, with a kind of tremulous eagerness, "I want to tell you something...."

Yes, surely it was all a matter between herself and him: she could meet his eyes now with no sense that did not add to her curious inner exaltation. Had not these eyes said to her from the beginning that they would give her no peace till she came to this?...

"You were right to say what you did that night. A puff of wind blew the boat over after he got out. Mr. Dalhousie never knew I was upset."

The words dropped unafraid into a perfect silence. The girl's manner was as simple, as undramatic, as possible. Yet, considering who these two were, considering the intentions with which she had entered his Dabney House not ten minutes before, no more startling words could have been devised by the wit of man.

"He never knew," repeated Vivian, in a voice suddenly mechanical.

No doubt it was by his good fortune alone that he had avoided any alarming change of expression, as he listened to the announcement which seemed to shake and stagger his visible world. The girl was soaring upon her unimagined moment of spiritual adventure. But V. Vivian stood like a man turned to stone, gazing blind into a void....

Presently, out of the general chaos the young man's dazed mind stirred; leapt to life. Thought shook him through like waves of pain. It came upon him first, with crushing force, that this sweet-voiced girl with a face like all the angels had after all coldly lied, murderously lied, and maintained her lie through many months. Hard upon that, blotting it out, there swept the juster knowledge that, no matter what she had done, truth had triumphed at last; what was good in her had overcome her poor weakness. Lastly, he thought of Jack Dalhousie who, from the clouds, had received his release from prison. Yes, old Dal could come home now....

"He never knew," said V.V., in his curious voice. "I'm so glad ... This clears him ... I never understood how he could have ... I'm so glad to--have it settled...."

If he was so glad, his face libelled him past forgiveness. But Cally Heth still soared, too high in the unplumbed blue to note, even now, what house was this she had destroyed.

"I really didn't realize at all at the time," she said, with the same simplicity. "It all happened so quickly, and it was so bewildering, and I didn't have time to think. The story about him just seemed to spring up of itself, and then it grew and grew all the time. I've worried a great deal about it, all along...."

A kind of passion came into the man's face, and he said:

"Thank God, there's still time to make it all right."

Then his look brought her down a little.... "To make it all right?"

Vivian gazed down. He thought of what lay ahead for her now; and his heart seemed to turn within him.... However, sympathy was not desired of him: his lot was but to strengthen the hands of the brave.

"Miss Heth--indeed, I could envy you all the happiness you are going to give. Think--just think what it means ... I know you must be eager--to begin, to--"

"To begin?" she echoed again, feeling somehow that their privacy was being invaded. "Why--what do you mean?... I don't understand."

"I jump ahead too fast, of course. But--you must be so anxious ... to have it all off your mind, and not think of it any more. I know you must be impatient to get word to Dal at the first possible moment--it means so much to him. More than meat and drink.... And then there's his poor old father ..."

Cally stared at him, speechless. There was no exaltation now; no more soaring. Rooted in her tracks she stood, yet seemed to herself to shrink and recoil from him, in her sudden self-horror. What, oh what, had she done?

And by chance at this very moment--doubtless through some Settlementer's opening a door for air--there came floating down to her the distinct voice of her mother, the strong voice of authority and no nonsense, the voice of Wealth and Permanence, of the victorious knowledge that God thinks twice before he condemns a person of quality.... "_In accepting the Chairmanship of the Finance Committee, I desire to say_ ..."

Cally raised a gloved little hand to her veiled lips. Plainer than speech her frightened eyes said: _Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?_

"You--you've misunderstood. No ... no! I didn't mean that at all."

"Oh!... Do you mean--you don't wish to see Colonel Dalhousie--personally? Of course not!... It wouldn't be necessary in the least. Perhaps you would let me.... And as to a telegram to Dal--"

"_No_--_no!_... You mustn't go to see him. You mustn't send a telegram. I can't allow that--you've misunderstood entirely. _You mustn't tell anybody_...."

They stared at each other with the same colorless faces, and again the rain became audible. In the man's too-confiding eyes, hope died hard.

"Not tell anybody? Why, I don't see ... There's no other way of making it right, I'm afraid.... And you have told me--"

"But I didn't tell you to tell anybody else. I didn't. I only meant to tell _you_, don't you see?..."

This subtlety was past the vision of the donator of the Dabney House. North, south, east, or west, he could see nothing but a seraph-faced girl whose misery it was to feel the penitential pangs, yet not be able quite to rise to the fulness of reparation. That she had reached for that fulness was to him the one thing certain in all the world. What want of delicacy in him had caused her to falter and look backward?...

Into the lucid gray of his eyes had come that look which more than once before Carlisle Heth had found intolerable. Little she recked for it now. Was not this the heart of her present dilemma, that she had already followed his ocular incitements too fatally far? By what religious prestidigitation he had trapped her secret from her must remain a thick mystery now. Nothing mattered but that he, having deceitfully seemed to agree that it was all a matter between herself and him, should not now turn and betray her.... _Tell now?_ The sudden vista of scandal horrified her. How would she ever face mamma again? How would Hugo, whose bride and pride she was, regard her then?...

"Don't you see?" she said, with gathering tensity--"I--I meant it as _a confidence to you_. You mustn't dream of telling anybody else...."

"But neither you nor I own the truth. This belongs to Dalhousie...."

"Oh, it doesn't!--it doesn't! How can you! You misunderstand!--What I said to you gave you a totally wrong impression. He was entirely to blame for my upsetting. _Entirely!_ He behaved abominably--and I--"

"_Tell now!" _cried the man, with his strange stern passion. "Once it's done, you'll always be glad. Don't you know you _must_, now! Don't you see you can't be happy, till you let the truth be known?..."

There came from above the unmistakable movement of chairs, the sound of many feet. It appeared that the Settlement meeting was breaking up. The man's entreaties bounded back dead.

"I couldn't!--Don't you understand? There's nothing to tell. It was not my fault. The story was distorted, distorted, and distorted! I regretted that as much as any one. But I could do nothing, nothing to stop it. And don't you understand I couldn't possibly tell this broadcast _now_, when it's been done with for _months!_ What would people think of me? Don't you--"

"What will you have to think of yourself if you don't tell?"

But the hard shot missed fire, the reason being that what she thought of herself did not matter in the least just now. She was mamma's daughter, Hugo Canning's betrothed, fighting for her own: and now that movement upstairs warned her that she had no moment to lose.

Carlisle seized the slum doctor's arm with a resolute little hand. Her voice, though panicky, was as inexorable as mamma's own.

"Promise me," said she, "that you will never repeat to anybody what I told you in confidence."

The face of the young man, which was usually so harmless-looking, had suddenly become quite stern. He looked as if he might ask God to pity her again, given a very little more. When he spoke, he spoke brusquely:

"What you ask is a conspiracy of silence. I cannot make such a promise. I cannot."

"Oh, how _can_ you be so hard! You've never meant anything but trouble to me since the first minute I saw you! It isn't fair, don't you see it isn't? This has happened so suddenly--I _must_ have time to think. Promise that you won't say anything--at least till you hear from me again...."

Silence. And then V. Vivian said, in a suddenly hopeless voice:

"I will agree to say nothing without first seeing you...."

Cally Heth dropped his arm instantly, turned from him. She fled, not up the grand stairway, but over the court for the doors, with the protecting arms of the House of Heth beyond. And none of her other routs from the family enemy had been quite like this one.

XVIII

Night-Thoughts on the Hardness of Religious Fellows, compelling you to be Hard, too; Happier Things again, such as Hugo, Europe, Trousseaux, etc.; concluding with a Letter from Texas and a Little Vulgarian in a Red Hat.

The tireless William retraced the wet streets to the Dabney House in ample time for Mrs. Heth, but the Chairman of the Finance Committee, being in agreeable converse with fellow philanthropists, came home in Mrs. Byrd's car instead, after all. Accordingly she did not say to William, "Miss Carlisle decided not to come, Banks?"--which she liked to call William for the English sound of it--and Banks, or William, did not look respectfully surprised and say, "Yas'm, she came ..."

Arriving at home, the good little lady presently ascended to the third floor, where she entered her daughter's room without knocking, according to her wont. However, Carlisle had been ready for her for some time.

"You stayed," was mamma's arch conjecture, "to write a ream to Hugo, dear fellow, I suppose?..."

"No, I went!" said Cally, now in the last stages of an evening toilette. "Only when I got there, and peeped in, it all looked so dreary and hopeless that my heart failed me, and I turned right around and came back! Was it--"

"You did! How long were you there? There's a little too much powder on your nose, my dear--there! Did you come upstairs?"

"Oh, no! I just slipped in for a moment or two and glanced about that queer old court downstairs. Quaint and interesting, isn't it? How was the meeting?"

"Most interesting and gratifying," said mamma, sinking into a rose-lined chair. "We begin a noble work. You may go now, Flora. I am made a governor, as well as chairman of the most important committee...."

She monologized for some time, in a rich vein of reminiscence and autobiography, revealing among other things that she had rather broadly hinted, to Mrs. Byrd and others, who was the anonymous donor of the Settlement House; a certain wealthy New Yorker, to wit. However, it was clear that she saw nothing amiss, nor did she say anything more germane to her daughter's inner drama than, in the moment of parting:

"Rub your cheeks a little with the soft cloth. You look quite pale."

Carlisle rubbed faithfully, aware of a lump of lead where her heart should have been. Later she went downstairs, and then on for dinner at the McVeys'. Most grateful she was for this mental distraction; to-night she would have played three-hand bridge with papa and Mattie Allen with enthusiasm.

Evey's dinner, of course, was far ahead of three-hand. The McVeys were very rich, far richer than the Heths (theirs had been the marriage of McVey's Drygoods and Notions, Wholesale Only, and Herkimer's Fresh Provisions), and were considered "not quite" by some people, though Evey certainly went everywhere and was very refined. Accordingly, the evening's viands were of the best and the table talk at least good enough for all practical purposes. Carlisle, who was almost feverishly animated, lingered till the last possible moment: Evey actually asked her to spend the night, and she actually came very near doing it. Escorted home in a maritime hackney-coach by young Mr. Robert Tellford (whose heart had been lacerated by rumors that persistently reached him), Canning's betrothed permitted Robert to linger in the library, positively detained him in the library, till eleven-thirty o'clock: courtesies which would have run like wine to the young Tellford head but for the lady's erratic and increasing distraitness....

The bibulous metaphor is here reversible. It possessed mutuality, so to say. Cally herself would drown trouble to-night with intoxicating draughts of human society. But there came a time when this resource was denied her; when the human bars closed, as it were; in short, when all the society in reach must sorrowfully put on his tall hat and go. And then there came the nocturnal stillness of the house, and then the solitariness of the bedchamber, and after that the dark.

Now the question that had rumbled all evening cloud-like in the background of her consciousness, swam and took shape in the midnight shadows, dangling before the eye of her mind in gigantic and minatory capitals:

WOULD HE TELL?

To this stark inquiry all the girl's problem came down. Gone like a fever-mist was the emotional flare-up (as mamma would have said) which had tricked her into blurting out a secret scarcely even formulated before in her own inmost soul. That mysterious moment remained merely as an astonishment. It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her; she had simply been swept away by some unfathomable madness. And at present Nature's first law was working in her with obliterating force. _Would the man tell?_ Here in the sane and ordered surroundings, with mamma sleeping and satisfied one floor below, and a long, long letter to be written to her knight among men the first thing to-morrow, there was nothing in the world that mattered but that. If Vivian would not tell, then, indeed, all was well with her. If he did tell ...

He had said that he would not tell without first seeing her. But of course there was nothing under heaven to prevent his seeing her, or sending word to her, at any time, by day or by night. And then what?

Carlisle lay upon her back, rather small and frightened in the tall bed, struggling to pluck away the veil from the face of the menacing future. What would "telling" mean, exactly?...

There was a hopeful view. The whole thing was so confused, just as he himself had admitted, more than once. It might all be put on the ground of a mistake, a little misunderstanding, recently discovered. You could tell, and not go into all the mixed-up details. Jack Dalhousie would then gratefully return from Texas (where he was really getting on much better than he had ever done at home--Dr. Vivian had practically said so); his father would quietly take him back; and it would be generally understood that Jack was not a coward now, and was greatly improved morally by the disciplinary exile, and everything would be all right. But of course the difficulty here was that somebody (like Colonel Dalhousie, for instance) might think to ask why the discovery of the little misunderstanding came now, instead of six months ago. You could hardly reply to such an one that you had just discovered the mistake as the result of a flare-up, caused by a slum doctor's giving twenty-five thousand dollars to buy an old hotel. Who would understand that, when you didn't yourself?...

Carlisle, indeed, being a practical girl, did not linger long on the optimistic prospect. For to-night at least, "telling" seemed a matter too dreadful to contemplate. Colonel Dalhousie was an irascible and solitary widower with one son whom he had once been proud of; and this son, having been strangely compelled to take a lady's word as to his own conduct, had been disgraced by that word, cast out with his father's curse upon his forehead. Was it likely that these two would take the discovery of a little misunderstanding now with a charming quiet courtesy?--that, shouting the discovery abroad to save their faces, they would have due regard for careful qualifications and for striking the right note? The reply was the negative: it was not at all likely.

Cally knew the world's rough judgments, where all is black or all is white, and ifs and buts go overboard as spoiling the strong color scheme. And well she knew the way of horrid gossip; none better. That she, Carlisle Heth, had deliberately lied merely to save her name from public association with young Dalhousie's, and by this lie had ruined a boy who in his way had loved her well: such would be the story which the angry Colonel (perhaps coming to shoot papa besides) would throw to the four winds, to be rolled in the mouth of gossip forevermore. O what a tasty morsel was here, my countrymen!...

Staring fearfully into the dusk, Carlisle pictured herself as hearing such a story about Evey or Mattie: she perceived at once, with sickening sensations, how intensely she would be interested in it. Yes; once started, it would sweep through drawing-rooms and clubs like fire. With what glee would the world's coarse tongue make its reprisals upon brilliant success! Town-talk the lovely Miss Heth would be, spotted all over with that horrid tattle from which she (and Hugo) had ever so shuddered and shrunk....

And against this threatened avalanche, entailing who knew what consequences, she had but the frail shield of the sense of honor--well, then, say, the sense of chivalry--of a man far beneath her world, whom she had frequently told herself that she disliked and despised.

A pale yellow ray of the moon, journeying upward over the coverlet, fell across her face. She rose, pattered on slim bare feet over the chequered floor, lowered the shade. Inside and out, all the world was still. Cally dropped down on her chaise-longue by the window, very wide awake.... And, gradually, since she was practical, she formed a plan of action: a plan so simple that she wondered she had not thought of it at once....

A long time she had spent in trying to think how she might compel, cajole, or bribe the man at the Dabney House to pledge her his eternal silence. But she had not been able to think of any promising way: each time, she brought up confronting with painful fascination the conviction that religious fellows were hard. And out of this conviction there grew, in time, her own resolve. Well, then, she would be hard, too. She would avoid seeing or having any communication with Dr. Vivian, and if he dared to repeat _anything_, she would simply laugh it all aside. She would deny that she ever said any such preposterous thing in her life. She would _have_ to do that; her duty to others demanded it.... And what could he do then? It would merely be his word against hers, Miss Heth's. He would be left in a most unpleasant position....

In this position V. Vivian remained while Carlisle slept. However, the new day, as it pleasantly proved, brought no need for such severe measures. Many rings at doorbell and telephone Cally's strained ears heard between getting up and bedtime, but the hard ring of Nemesis was never among them. All day silence brooded unbroken in the direction of the Dabney House. And when another morning wore to evening, and no heart brake, and yet another and another, there descended again upon the girl the peaceful sense of re-won security....

In these days the House of Heth was in a continual bustle. On Tuesday next--a week to a day from the Settlement meeting--the ladies were to depart for New York, Hugo, and Europe, the Trousseau and the Announcement, to return no more till mid-September. On the same day the titular master of the house was to go off for a five days' fishing junket, thence flying to New York for the "seeing off," and soon thereafter starting out for a three weeks' business trip to the Far West. Along with the various domestic problems raised by this programme, there were all the routine duties of the season to be attended to. Cold-weather things must still be salted down with camphor balls and packed away; costly pictures provided with muslin wrappers; drawing-room furniture with linen slip-covers; rooms cleaned and locked up, doors and windows screened and awninged. Mrs. Heth went dashing from one bit of generalship to another, and telephoned ten thousand times a day. Nevertheless she kept eyes in her head, and accordingly she observed to Mr. Heth one starlit night, as they sat _a deux_ on the little front balcony where flowering window-boxes so refinedly concealed one from the public view:

"I never saw a girl so absolutely naive about showing her feelings. She began to droop the minute he left the house, and hasn't been her natural self since.... Irritable!--till you can't say good morning without her snapping your head off."

"Maybe, it's the weather," suggested Mr. Heth, who wore a white flannel suit and fanned himself with a dried palm-leaf. "And I reckon, too, she's feeling sorry to leave her old father for such a long time. Four months--hio!"

"Cally's not the girl to get black rings under her eyes for things like that."

She added presently: "It's a pure love-match, which is naturally a gratification to me, who brought the whole thing about. 'Thank God, Cally, you've got a mother,' I said to her only the other day. But I do say there's such a thing as carrying love just a little too far."

Cally, meantime, while affecting no interest in summer clothes for chairs, kept as closely occupied with her own affairs, social activities and preparations for the brilliant absence, as mamma did with hers. Much time went, too, to her correspondence with Canning, who wrote her daily fat delightful letters, all breathing ardent anticipation of her approaching visit in his own city. And back to Canning, she wrote even fatter letters every morning in mamma's sitting-room, dear letters (he thought them) in which she told him every single thing except what she was really thinking about....

And why shouldn't she tell Hugo that also? Once or twice she really came very near doing it. For as her mind had become released from her first acute apprehensions, it had seemed to insist on turning inward a little; and there grew within her a sense of unhappiness, of loneliness, a feeling of her poor little self against the world. She longed for some one to explain it all to, to justify herself before; and who more appropriate in this connection than her lover? That Hugo might have been shocked, and perhaps disgusted, to have the misunderstanding discovered to him by way of the Dalhousies' megaphone was, indeed, likely; but to have her quietly tell it to him, as it really happened, with the proper stress on circumstances and gossip, would be quite another matter. She felt almost certain that he would agree with her; it once that it would be a great mistake to rake up all this now, when it had all blown over and Dalhousie was doing so splendidly down in Texas....

However, Cally procrastinated. And then, Sunday morning in church, as she sat pensively wishing for a confidant, it came upon her somewhat startlingly that she already had one: Dr. Vivian was her confidant. Did he not know more about her than anybody else in the world?...

The simple thought seemed to cure her instantly of her wish. She had tried having a confidant and it had brought her to this; henceforward let her keep her own counsel. (So she mused, walking homeward in the brilliant sunshine and light airs with J. Forsythe Avery, who had just conquered his pique over his rejection last January.) That her one confidant's honorable silence expressed his trust that she herself would "tell" was possibly true; but that, in this no-quarter conflict between them, was merely so much the worse for him. She would not think of him at all. She had run away from him every time she had seen him; now she had but to do it once more, and all would be as if it had never been....

At the Sabbath dinner-table, which was to-day uninvaded by guests, the Heths' talk was animated. The imminent separation brought a certain softness into the family atmosphere; papa basked in it. He had spent his Sunday morning playing sixteen holes of golf at the Country Club, and would have easily made the full round but for slicing three new balls into the pond on the annoying seventeenth drive. This had provoked him into smashing his driver, as he had a score of only eighty-eight at that point, which was well below his personal bogey. Even mamma affected interest in her spouse's explanations of how it all happened.

"Of course the caddy simply slipped the balls in his pockets the minute your back was turned--they're all thieves, the little ragamuffins," said she. "And, by the way, I haven't telephoned the bank about the silver."

Encouraged by his ladies' consideration, Mr. Heth proposed a little afternoon jaunt with Cally.

"It's too pretty a day to stay in," said he. "Let's take the car, eh, and run down and look at that new cantilever bridge at Apsworth?"

"Oh, papa!" said Cally, regretfully. "I promised Mr. Avery I'd take a walk with him. He looked so fat and forlorn I didn't have the heart to refuse. I'm so sorry."

Mr. Heth started to quote something about your daughter's being your daughter, but when Cally added, "You know I'd lots rather go with you, papa," he changed his mind, and went off to his nap instead.

Mamma similarly departed. Cally, not feeling nappy, sat in the library and wrote to her lover the last letter but one she would write before seeing him in New York. Her eager pen flew: but so did the minutes also, or did the impetuous Avery anticipate the moment of his engagement? His tender ring broke unexpectedly across her betrothal thoughts, and Cally returned to earth with a start ... Good _heavens!_ Four o'clock already!--and she with twenty minutes' getting ready to do!

She caught up the pages of the unfinished letter, and skipped for the stairs. In the hall there was unbroken quiet, with no sound of a servant coming. Cally paused, listening, and then remembered that it was Sunday afternoon, when even the best Africans are so very likely to have "just stepped out." Why wait? The girl went and opened the door herself, a smile of greeting in her eye, a lively apology for her obvious unreadiness upon her lip.

However, it was not, after all, the amorous Mr. Avery who confronted her. The vestibule held only an ill-dressed young girl, in a gaudy red hat, the sort of looking person who should at most have rung the basement bell, if that: and she herself seemed to realize this by the guilty little start and tremble she gave when the stately door swung open upon her. The young mistress of the house eyed her doubtfully.

"Good afternoon."

"G-good evenin', ma'am!..."

As she seemed at a loss how to proceed, Carlisle said: "Yes? What is it?"

The young person raised a bare hand and brushed it, with a strange gesture, before her eyes.

"Dr. Vivian he told me to give you this note, ma'am."

She added, as if suddenly moved to destroy a possible impression of Dr. Vivian as a slave-driver, flinging orders this way and that:

"He'd of brung it himself, on'y I was going walkin' myself, ma'am, and asked him to leave me take it."

If the fall was from the height of the securest moment Carlisle had known since her self-betrayal, the more stunning was the impact. Her heart appeared to abdicate its duties, with one kick; all her being drew together in a knot within her. It had come, after all. To run away was well, but she had not run soon enough....

She received the note mechanically, saying: "Very well."

"Would you wish me to wait for a nanser, ma'am? Doctor he didn't say ..."

In heaven or earth, what answer would she find to this?

"No, you needn't wait."

"Do you feel faint, ma'am?"

"Faint?... No, why should I?"

The young person, convicted of impertinence and silliness besides, turned red, but would not remove her gaze from the lady's face.

"The--the heat we been havin', ma'am. I don't know--it's so sickenin', kind of. I--I fainted last week, twice, ma'am."

Something nameless in the little creature's wide-eyed gaze, timid and yet thrilled, arrested Carlisle in the act of shutting the door upon her. Was it possible that this singular messenger of Fate had knowledge of the message she brought?

"Why do you stare at me so?"

The girl replied with simplicity:

"I can't help it, ma'am, you look so sweet."

Carlisle leaned against the polished edge of the glass and oak door. The same chill little hand clenched the unfinished pages to Hugo, and Vivian's only too fatally finished note. She perceived who this girl must be, and even in this moment her thought was riveted by the wild suspicion that her secret had already been betrayed.

"You live at the Dabney House, I suppose?--you're a buncher at the Works?... How did you know me--that this note was for me?"

Here was a puzzler, indeed. By what instinct had little Kern known, the instant the door began to open, that this, and no other, was Mr. V.V.'s beautiful lady?...

"How could you be anybody else, ma'am?... You couldn't."

"I believe I have heard Dr. Vivian speak of you. Possibly," she said, with stony bitterness, "you have heard of me in the same way?"

The girl seemed to shrink a little at her tone. "Oh, ma'am--no! To _me_! No, ma'am! He _wouldn't_ ..."

"But he is a great friend of yours?"

Kern raised a hand to her heart, understanding only too much that was not so. It was a glorious moment for her, and a terrible one.

"No, ma'am," said she, shaking her head a number of times. "I'm only his charity sick."

She added, as if to make the repudiation complete: "Mr. V.V.'s friends are ladies, ma'am."

"Mr. V.V.?"

Confronted by her damning slip, the young person turned scarlet, but she stood her ground with a little gasp.

"A nickname, ma'am, that _all_ his sick call him by...."

A fair enough rally, no doubt, but on the whole it accomplished nothing. Just in the middle of it, the lady had shut the door in the small vulgarian's face.

Carlisle clutched the two letters to her breast. The door having been shut, she was alone in the world. She went up two flights in the Sunday afternoon stillness, and locked herself in her room. Mamma should not enter here on her gliding heels.

So this, after all, was what he meant by "seeing." Having decoyed her with false hopes for five days, he struck from ambush, giving her no chance to speak for herself. Well, she would be hard, too. She would make no answer, and when he spoke, she would deny ...

That the worst had now come to the worst, she had not entertained a doubt. Accordingly the emotional revulsion was strong when, breaking open the envelope with cold fingers, Carlisle found that the letter within was in a different handwriting from the superscription. It was not from Dr. Vivian at all.

However, her instant uprush of relief was somewhat mitigated when she saw--as she did in the first glance, for this hand had been not unfamiliar to her once--that the letter Vivian enclosed to her was from Jack Dalhousie.

Standing rigid by the window, she read with parted lips:

WEYMOUTH, May 14th.

DEAR V.V.:

I'd have answered your letter earlier only I haven't had any heart for writing letters. Fate has knocked me out again. God knows I've tried, and cut out the drink, and worked hard, and suffered agonies of the damned, but it doesn't do any good. The world isn't big enough for people like me to hide in, and the only thing I can't understand is why people like me are ever born. What's the use of it all, V.V., I can't see to save my life. The trouble all came from a fellow named Bellows, from home, a machinery salesman with T.B. Wicke Sons, you may know him, who dropped off the train here a week ago Saturday.

He saw me on the street one day, and then he went and told everybody that I was in Texas because I'd been drummed from home. Said I went out rowing with a girl and upset her and then swam off for my skin and she was nearly drowned. I've made some good friends here--or had made them, I'd better say--and one of them rode out to our place and said I ought to know what Bellows was saying, so I could thrash him before he skipped town. Oh, what could I say.

Then I saw Miss Taylor just now, she's the girl from the East I mentioned in the winter, and she asked me had I heard what they were saying. I wanted to lie to her, and she'd have believed me if I had, but you couldn't lie to her, and so I said straight out I was crazy drunk at the time and didn't know what I was doing, but I guessed most of it was true. She cares a lot about those things, and I think she'd been crying. God help me. So now everything's changed here; it reminds me of home the way people look at me. Miss Taylor was the worst, she's been so fine to me. She said come to see her in two or three days, when she'd had time to think, and if she casts me off, I can't stand it here any longer, and I don't see how I can begin all over again, just when life was seeming as if it might be worth while again.

So now, you see, V.V., why I wasn't prompter answering your letter. I've tried to keep my courage up like you advised, but it's too much for one man to carry. May you never know the awful feeling that you're an outcast, not wanted anywhere, is the wish of

Your unhappy friend, DAL.

P.S. How's father, do you ever see him these days? Don't let him know any of this.

The girl looked through the rose-flowered curtains down into the sunny street....

Dalhousie had long since become but a shadow and a name to Cally; she had willed it so, and so it had been. Now, in his own poor scrawl, the ghost of a lover too roughly discarded rose and walked again. And beneath the cheap writing and the unrestrained self-pity, she seemed to plumb for the first time the depths of the boy's present misery. The old story, having struck him down once, had hunted him out and struck him down again. Where now would he hide?...

The too reminiscent letter had come with the inopportunity of destiny. A little more pressure and she was done for.

But this was mere mad folly. To shake it off at once, Cally began to walk about her bedchamber. Nothing had really happened that had not been true all along. She wished more than ever that it had all been started differently, but it was too late to consider that now. She must think of herself, and of Hugo and mamma. Dalhousie's friend had done his worst, and she could still withstand it. Once in New York, once in Europe, and all would be as it had been before....

Nevertheless, she was presently weak enough to open the letter again. Now her eye fell upon two lines written in the margin at the top of the first page, which she had missed before. They were in the writing of the envelope, and read:

You can reach me at any time, day or night, through Meeghan's Grocery--Jefferson 4127.

The words sprang up at her, and she stared back at them fascinated. The man at the Dabney House was certain that she would tell now. He thought the resolution might come on her suddenly, as in the night. Nominally, he left it to her; yet at the same time he contrived to make her feel caught in a trap, with no alternative, with this sense of enormous pressure upon her. She remembered the man's strange, stern words to her: "You can't be happy now, till you let the truth be known."

All at once it seemed almost as if there were some one in the room with her. She looked around hastily: but of course there was no one. She became very much frightened....

There came a knock on the door, and a voice:

"Genaman in the parlor to see you, Miss Cyahlile. Mist' Avery."

"I can't come down."

"Ma'am?"

"Say I'm not well and am lying down."

In the hall below, the parlormaid Annie encountered Mrs. Heth, waked from her nap by the two rings at the bell. Mrs. Heth ascended to Carlisle's room and rattled the knob.

"Cally?... Why, your door's locked!"

The door opened, and Carlisle confronted her mother with a white tremulous face.

"What's the matter?" said Mrs. Heth, gliding in with an expression of maternal solicitude. "Annie said you weren't well and were lying down."

"I'm not well ... Mamma, let's go to New York to-morrow."

"Go _to-morrow!_... Why, _what's_ the matter?"

"Nothing. Only I--I'm so tired of being at home."

Then her strained stiffness broke abruptly, and she flung her arms around her mother's neck with an hysterical abandon by no means characteristic.

"Oh, I can't stand it here another day. _I_ can't! Please, please, mamma! It must be not having Hugo. I can't explain--it's just the way I feel. I'm so miserable here, I could die. _Please_, mamma!..."

Mrs. Heth, detecting with alarm the incipiences of a dangerous flare-up, said with startling gentleness:

"There, there, dear! Mamma will arrange it as you wish."

XIX

How it is One Thing to run away from yourself, and another to escape; how Cally orders the Best Cocktails, and gazes at her Mother asleep; also of Jefferson 4127, and why Mamma left the Table in a hurry at the Café des Ambassadeurs.

Mamma arranged it, by Amazonian effort. New York, the colossal, received the runaway with an anonymous roar, asking no questions. Here, in the late afternoon of the first day, safe forever in a well-furnished room on a seventeenth floor, Cally Heth made her answer to Dalhousie's letter. She formally cremated the scrawl in a pink saucer which had previously been doing nothing more useful in the world than holding up a toothbrush mug.

The cremation was a rite in its way, yet required only the saucer and two matches. The letter, when well torn, flamed nicely, only a few scraps holding out against immediate combustion. There was one little fragment on top, observable from the beginning; it read:

or night fferson 4127

These topmost bits refused to respond to poking with the burnt match, and finally demanded a new match all to themselves. Within two minutes all were reduced to fine ashes, which the priestess of the rite duly took to the window, and scattered down into the "court." Then she washed her hands, put the saucer back under the mug, and raised another window to let out the smell.

This business completed, Carlisle glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes past six, or nearly time to begin to dress. The moment was an interlude in a day which had been full of exciting activity, keyed with the joy of journey's end and lovers' meeting. An evening in similar titillating vein waited just ahead. At this moment, Canning, bidden _an revoir_ some ten minutes ago, was doubtless dressing at his club, seven blocks away. Mrs. Heth, left to her own resources all afternoon, had fallen asleep in her chair, and still slept. Even the maid Flora was absent, having been given the afternoon off, after unpacking two trunks, to "git to see" her uncle, a personage of authority who served his country well by sorting letters in the New York Post-Office.

Alone in the hotel bedroom, Carlisle looked in the mirror of the mahoganized "dresser," occupied in taking off her veil and hat, and thought that Flora ought to be coming back now. Then she sniffed a little and was aware of a memorial smell from the rite. After that her mind appeared to float away for a time, and when she caught up with it again, it was thinking:

Nothing so much could really have happened, if I _had_ told.

It was an academic thought for a mind which must have known very well that everything was settled now. Carlisle, assuming charge herself, promptly turned it out. Having put her hat on the bed, she began to busy herself with preparations for the evening. Flora lingering at her avuncular pleasures, she herself went to the closet and took down a dress. A capable girl she was, who could easily get out her own clothes when absolutely necessary.

Canning was dining the two ladies at the resplendent establishment of his choice, at seven-thirty o'clock; he was due to return in an hour now. All day he had been in attendance, and all day he had been the very prince of lovers. Having lunched with Mrs. Heth and Carlisle at their hotel, he and his betrothed had spent the whole afternoon together jogging about the May-time park in a hansom-cab,--such was her whim,--with late tea at the Inn of renown upon the Drive: and through all, such talk as sped the hours on wings. How fascinating he was, she seemed to have forgotten, in these days of absence and worry. And how strong and all-conquering!--a man of such natural lordliness of mien that cabmen and policemen, proud men and strangers as they were, spoke to him with something akin to respect.

Yes, Hugo was, indeed, a rock and tower of strength. With him behind her, she had the world at her feet.... Heavens! What could gossip possibly do to Mrs. Hugo Canning?

Outside was the roar of conglomerate humanity. Up here in this strange bedroom, indifferent host to a thousand transient souls, it was quiet and even a little lonely. Once more Carlisle caught her mind at its retrospective misbehavior, and once more turned the key on it. Having laid out her dress on the bed, she stood and looked down into the cheerless light-well a minute, and then decided to wake up her mother. But she stopped on the way and turned back. Why wake up mamma half an hour too soon, just to hear the sound of one's own voice?

She took off her watch, and raised her hands to begin unfastening her waist. But she became engrossed in staring back at her reflection in the mirror, and presently her hands dropped.

Face and form, background and destiny, she was possessed of blessings many and obvious: all crowned now, sealed and stamped, with the love of Hugo Canning, which, he had pledged himself, was a love which should not die. What girl so entirely successful as she? Convincingly the excellent glass gave back the presentment of loveliness endowed with all the gifts of Fortune.

And yet she had run away: there was no evading that. An insignificant boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as another person, had bolted in a panic. And she had bolted too fast, it seemed, to consider even that, with that cry, there had come a new element into the situation, disturbing to the old argument. The full reach and meaning of Jack Dalhousie's letter seemed to be coming upon her now for the first time, just when she had ritually cremated it. Out of the pink saucer had mysteriously blown the knowledge that the author of that poor composition could no more be pictured as doing splendidly down in Texas....

For a third time her over-mind spied upon and detected the nether's treason; and this time Cally, turning abruptly from the mirror, was troubled. Having run away, could she not at least enjoy a runaway's peace? Why backward glances now? She had escaped Dalhousie. She had escaped Dalhousie's friend. She stood in this room the safest person in the world. No one on earth could betray her except herself.

The watch ticked loud, steadily drawing Hugo, and mamma and Flora. Up through the windows came the twilight and the rumble of the vast heedless city. Carlisle snapped on the lights. And then all at once, without warning, there closed down upon her an enormous depression, a sense as of standing on the brink of irretrievable disaster. Or it was as if she had run away, indeed, but had not escaped. Or as if, in cutting herself off from the past, she had cut away something important, which something here gave notice that it would not be peacefully abandoned. And mixed with this there was again that sense of large pressure upon her, so tangible that it was almost like a person in the room with her, sharing, dominating her councils....

She was far from understanding these feelings, but she did understand that she felt suddenly sickish and quite faint; and she thought practically of mamma's little flask of brandy in her bag somewhere, if only she could find it. Then speculations on this point vanished with the recollection that she stood in the modern Arabian Nights, all the resources of the world at her beck.

Cally stepped to the telephone and called down in a small but authoritative voice:

"Send me up a cocktail at once, please. Room 1704."

"Yes, mum," replied the experienced voice far below. "What kind would you wish?"

"Oh ... the best," said she, less authoritatively; and then, rang off hurriedly, thinking how funny it was that she couldn't produce the name of a cocktail when needed, since papa shook one up for himself nearly every evening, and Hugo always ordered them when they dined together, and laughed at the little faces she made....

The cocktail came, on rubber heels, and she sipped it, walking about the room and not thinking at all about dressing. A spoonful or so of the yellow concoction, and the sickish feeling vanished, and she felt instead rather devilish and fast, like the blondined villainess in a play. She was a daring woman of the new school, a Woman with a Past, who rang up hotel bars and ordered the best cocktails sent up at once....

Possibly the cocktail had this moral reaction, that she no longer sought to discipline her mind. She sipped the drink gingerly, and her thought fluttered backward and forward, full of contradictions and repetitions, as thought is in life, but now free.... Suppose, after all, that her past was not escaped? It wasn't such an easy thing to do, it seemed. Dalhousie thought he had escaped his, but it had run him down at last, way off in Texas. Suppose Dr. Vivian now decided (in view of her being a fugitive) that it was his duty to lay the matter before Colonel Dalhousie, and the tempestuous Colonel took the next train....

There was a knock at the door, causing her to start violently, and spill some of the cocktail. However, it was not Colonel Dalhousie, but only the maid Flora, who entered with that air of eager hurry so characteristic of an habitually tardy race. It appeared that the infernal powers had conspired against her promptitude in the shape of a blockade, not to mention losting her way through the malicious misdirection of a white man selling little men that danced on a string....

Having learned further that the postal uncle was poly las' month but tollable now, Flora's young mistress said:

"We must dress in a hurry now, Flora. It's quarter to seven."

And then she went on through to the sitting-room of the suite, to wake her mother, thinking: "I can't go on this way the rest of my life, jumping out of my skin every time there's a knock.... What on earth have I been so afraid of?..."

Mrs. Heth slept on in her deep-bosomed chair, undisturbed by the click of switch or burst of light into her enveloping dusk. She had a magazine, face downward, in her lap; also a one-pound box of mixed chocolates, open. Her head had fallen upon her chair-back; a position which brought the strange dark little mustache into prominence, and also threw into relief the unexpected heaviness of the jaw and neck. The face of an indomitable creature, certainly, of one of those fittest to survive; but not exactly a spiritual face, perhaps, hardly a face finely sensitive to immaterial values....

To gaze at a person who is unaware of being watched may be worse than eavesdropping. Arrested in the act of waking her mother, Carlisle stood for some moments looking down at her. What was there lacking in mamma that you couldn't ever talk things over with her? Upon the unconscious face it was plainly inscribed that this lady would stand against telling to the last ditch. Somehow the knowledge brought the daughter no comfort....

And now that she stopped to consider in calm security, what, really, if she did send Vivian a little note just before she sailed, authorizing him to tell? What had she, of all people, to fear from the clacking tattle of a few old cats? Suppose, to-morrow, she calmly said to Hugo and mamma, "I've felt all along that I did him an injustice, and now that I know he's so unhappy, I want to set it straight." What, really, could they say that would be so bad? If there was a price for telling, it appeared now that there was a price also for not telling.

Minutes passed ...

And then at the shake, Mrs. Heth stirred, turned, rolled a little, and opened her eyes with a start and a blink.

"I must have dropped asleep," said she.

"No!" said Cally; and she gave a sudden gay burst of laughter.

"I don't see anything so funny in that," said Mrs. Heth, yawning and sitting up. "What time is it?"

"I think it's a perfect scream, and it's nearly seven, and Hugo will be here at quarter past, punctually. _Now_ will you fly?"

"You might have waked me a little earlier. Good gracious!... How long have you been in? Anything happen while I napped?"

"Not a single, solitary, blessed thing.... There you are!--Easy does it!"

"I'll be dressed long before you are now," was the maternal retort, accompanied by a long stretch.

And, though unchallenged, she was as good as her word. Highly efficient at the toilet as elsewhere, she required small assistance from Flora, whom she dispatched to tidy up the sitting-room instead. The good little lady was armed cap-a-pie by seven-fifteen, at which time a glance into Carlisle's room revealed much backwardness there, not concealed by the appearances of haste. Hugo would have to wait, that was clear; and just as it was clear, up Mr. Canning's name came skipping from the office.

In the tidied-up sitting-room Mrs. Heth entertained her distinguished son-to-be, during the little delay. She always enjoyed a good talk with Hugo. He was her pledge of a well-spent life, her Order of Merit, her V.C. and Star and Garter, rolled together in a single godlike figure. She beamed upon him, tugging at white gloves half a size too small. Canning tapped a well-shod foot with his walking-stick, and wished for his love.

The wish grew by what it fed on, and the banquet ran long. Half an hour passed before the door from Mrs. Heth's bedroom opened and Carlisle appeared. However, she looked worth waiting for. She shimmered a moment from the threshold, and the two in the sitting-room thought together that they had never seen her so radiantly lovely.

"I made her!" thought Mrs. Heth.

"Mine!" thought Canning.

And Cally thought, her eyes upon her lover: "_Me afraid!_..."

"My dear Cally! Really, I can say nothing for you but better late than never," said mamma.

"Salutations!" said Hugo, rising. "And by Jove! What a perfectly stunning dress!"

"Oh, do you like it?" said Carlisle, trailing forward, her eyes shining. "Then you won't scold, will you, if my watch _was_ a trifle slow! And I should have been ready hours ago, even at that, but for Flora's over-staying at her uncle's. Tell Mr. Canning, Flora, wasn't it all your fault?"

And Flora, having followed her young mistress in with the carriage-cloak, giggled into her hand as at a royal jest and said yas'm, it certny was....

In holiday vein the trio departed from the suite, dropped sixteen stories in the lift, and presently came by taxicab to the Café des Ambassadeurs, where had taken place the memorable dinner for two, just two months ago to a night....

Here all was glittering and gay. The Ambassadeurs, pending the arrival of something newer, was on the pinnacle of expensive popularity. At this hour everything was in fullest swing, and the impressive looking major-domo was shaking his head without hope to arriving applicants who had not ordered a table beforehand, as Hugo had done by messenger.

The Heth ladies turned into the cloak-room to remove their wraps. The air of vivacity pervading the place, or possibly it was her daughter's staccato liveliness, entered the blood of Mrs. Heth: she was imperious with the ladies' maid who assisted with the unwrapping. Carlisle, strolling about as she unbuttoned her gloves, came to the elaborate screen which sheltered the doorway and glanced out. Directly opposite, over the brilliant corridor, her gaze fell upon the glass and yellow-wood of a long-distance telephone booth.

Then she caught sight of Hugo, and smiled at him, and at the same moment mamma's voice said at her elbow:

"There's Hugo, waiting.... Are you ready?"

"And waiting, too," said Carlisle.

They emerged from the ladies' bower into the stir of the antechamber. Met halfway by their escort, they proceeded toward the dining-room. Advance was a little slow; there was some confusion here and even crowding, replete diners blocking the way of those just going in. Just at the door, a party of five or six managed to come between Carlisle and Canning, who was dutifully looking out for his future mother-in-law; the girl became momentarily separated from her protectors. Or perhaps it was partly Cally's own fault, precipitated by the sight of a page standing near, who certainly seemed to have been stationed there by the hand of Providence....

Having stared fascinated at this page for half a second, Carlisle brought him to her side by a nod. The lad was fifteen and had seen lovely ladies in his time, but raising his eyes to this one, he acknowledged that she was a Queen.

"Call long distance for me, boy.... I'll write the number."

The boy produced pad and pencil, and she scribbled rapidly, a smile hovering over the sweet mouth whose slight irregularity charmed the eye beyond flawlessness.

Why, indeed, wait longer, running and sticking one's head in the sand, when here was the telephone, immediate and conclusive, when she felt now so brave and sure, and could tell mamma and Hugo this very night without a tremor? All was simple now, and highly adventurous besides. And then there was Jack Dalhousie to whom even a day or two, now that she stopped to think of it, would probably make a good deal of difference....

Turning again with bright cheeks, Cally encountered strange faces; and then, in a second or two, the familiar ones of her mother and Canning, both looking back for her....

"There you are!" she laughed, coming up with them again. "What an exciting jam!"

They proceeded into the dining-place and to their table, a somewhat ceremonial progress headed by three spiketails. Even in that display of beauty, wealth, consequence, and their lifelike imitations, these three, or perhaps we should say these two, drew much attention. Carlisle was conscious of lorgnettes; once she caught the whisper of the name so soon to be her own. Late as they were, the room was still crowded: the well-bred but wandering eye saw no vacant seat anywhere. There was music in the air, and the clash of cutlery, the vocal hum, and the faint tinkle of glasses. There were flushing faces and eyes that sparkled like the wine, and of it, many fragrances commingled, of flowers, chefs' _chefs-d'oeuvre_, of Pinaud and Roget. Through all, too, was to be felt the hard inquisitive stare of New York, each man wondering who and whence his neighbor was, speculating under his smile as to which man of them made, on the whole, the best appearance, seemed most plentiful of his money....

Pink-shaded candles stood on the little table; also La France roses of Canning's purchasing; also glasses, three more of them brought as they took their seats.

"Do you spurn your cocktail, Carlisle?" asked Canning, and when she convivially indicated that she didn't, he added, man to man: "How!"

"How," said Cally.

She touched it to her lips, giving back his smile over the rim of her glass, and feeling gay, indeed. Two cocktails before one dinner--well!

"What kind of one is this, Hugo?" she demanded, quite knowingly.

Canning named it.

"Well, then," said she, "it was a Bronx I had before."

She did not say before what, and nobody asked. About them, as they sat in the lively hum, circled servitors without end. One fellow had brought their bit of caviare; another bore away the traces of it; another had no share of them but to fetch crisp rolls. Little omnibuses in white suits moved about, gathering up papers or napkins dropped by careless diners; bigger omnibuses in dinner jackets exported trays of dishes which the lordly artists of the serving force were above touching. Other varlets merely stood about and cooed....

Dinner, having begun with the cocktails, swept on with a rattle of talk. There was debate about the theatre afterwards. The girl's eyes turned often toward the door.

"What do you think of it all, Carlisle?"

"Sweet, Hugo!... So simple and artless and homey!"

"Exactly," said Canning; and obtained permission for a cigarette. "But yet interesting as a vaudeville show, don't you think? What so amusing as to see human vanity displaying itself not merely without reserve but with a terrific blowing of horns?"

"Well put, Hugo!" said Mrs. Heth, who held that any kind of generalization constituted good talk. She added: "Who are all these people? How would one place them?"

Canning could indicate a celebrity or two. He had bowed several times, finding acquaintances, it seemed, even in this glittering farrago. But his eyes returned to his bride-to-be, from whom he removed his gaze with reluctance to-night. She wore a dress of yellow crêpe-de-chine, with a draped arrangement of blue chiffon, which followed faithfully the long lines of her figure; and a hat of blue straw with an uncurled yellow plume. It was a beautiful dress, though mamma considered it just a thought too low, even with a handkerchief put in.

And Cally looked back at her lover and thought: Who so honored and honorable as he? He'll only be sorry that I've waited so long....

"Only," she said, aloud, "they do keep the room rather hot for the provinces, where some air is preferred. More good things to eat, Hugo? It's a collation...."

"A poor one, I'm afraid. You've touched nothing."

He dispatched an army of men to adjust electric fans, turn patent ventilators, and even to do so crude a thing as open a window.

"It is all most delicious, Hugo," reassured Mrs. Heth. "I hadn't noticed that the room was warm, either."

"My cheeks are burning. Touch my hand, Hugo. You see it's on fire."

All three looked up as a boy in buttons stood at Carlisle's elbow, and said:

"Got your party on the wire, mum."

"Party on the wire? What's this?" said mamma.

Carlisle laid her napkin on the table. Surprise confronted her, written large on the faces of her mother and her lover; but it did not arrest her.

"I'm wanted at the telephone. Do you mind, Hugo? I won't he gone a minute."

"_But_--you mustn't go _now_, my dear!" said Mrs. Heth, astonished. "Let the boy take the number. Why--who on earth could it be, calling you _here?_--"

"I'd rather go now, mamma, if Hugo'll forgive me--"

"It's from Flora!" said Mrs. Heth, positively. "No one else knew. A telegram's come, saying your father is sick--"

Carlisle laughed and rose dazzingly, burning without but colder than Alpine snow within.

"Not in the least, mamma dear! You see I put in this call myself. I'll explain all about it in a minute...."

Explain! Why she would walk back to this table from the telephone, laughing, and saying: "Now, praise me, Hugo and mamma, for I've just been doing a deed of mercy! Do you remember that day at the Beach?..." Was it the fear of this that she had let plague her all these days?...

"To be answered _here_--at dinner--in this public place? Why, my dear Cally, I really...."

But Hugo, the understanding, though personally opposed to interruptions during dinner, knew the folly of arguing with the whims of the unreasoners. He had risen with Carlisle, and now said: "I'll show you the way."

Cally gave him a look of exquisite gratitude, but answered: "_Please_ don't trouble, Hugo! The boy will--"

"No trouble. Let's be off before the tolls eat you out of house and home."

"Oh, no! Please don't! Couldn't I have my way about such a little matter, Hugo dear?"

In this glaring publicity, the dialogue began to take on something of the nature of a "scene." Canning yielded with perfect grace.

"Of course you can, if you really prefer it. Well, then!... Hurry back."

"In two minutes," said she, with certainty; and smiled brightly into mamma's censorious concern.

On the heels of the proud page, Cally threaded her way among the glittering tables for the telephone and Jefferson 4127, unaware for once that she was the cynosure of many eyes. She was buoyed within, thrilled with a sense of strange adventure, baffling to analysis, but somehow comparable to that soaring moment last week. She was captain of her soul. That she was now standing by her flare-up, deliberately reattaching herself to a past which she had moved heaven and earth to cut away from her, did not occur to her, in just that way. But she was conscious of a curious inner sense of freedom, and somehow of fulfilment. And now she saw that she must have been secretly thinking of doing this for some time, nibbling fearfully at the idea....

She was alone in a glass booth, with a telephone before her, receiver off its hook. She sat down, put the receiver to her ear, and said:

"Hello?"

There reached her only a faint great buzzing, the humming of distant wires, fleeting snatches of talk a long way off, striking out of nowhere back into nothing.... And now she was the Lady Bountiful, stepping aside a moment from her brilliant entourage to scatter boons to the poor and needy. Jack Dalhousie would know to-morrow morning, at the latest, by the telegram from his friend Mr. V.V.,--as that little creature called him,--and whatever vexation he might be inclined to feel towards her at first, his joy and his father's would soon dispose of that. And of course he would hurry straight off with his news to that girl from the East he had fallen in love with--what a hand he was for affairs, poor old Jack!--and....

Out of the confused murmuring, a soft voice spoke clearly:

"Hello, New York. I got your party. What's the matter?"

A nasal voice gave answer, apparently at Carlisle's elbow:

"Well, be ca'm, little one. You people got the rush-bug worsen some full-size cities aintyer? Butt out and gimme a chanst. Hello! W'ere arey'r, Bassadoors!"

"Here I am," said Bassadoors.

"Miss Heth?"

"I am Miss Heth."

"Minute 'm...."

In the glass beside her Cally caught a reflection of her head and bare shoulders, and her eyes were shining, the long and slightly tri-corner eyes so piquantly fringed. A minute--that was all it would take. A minute more and she would thread her way back through the glitter to Hugo and mamma, and Hugo at least would say well-done....

"Well, whatsermatter? There y' are!"

The soft voice said: "All right, Dr. Vivian. Ready now!... Hello! All right...."

"Hello," said Cally.

Then all sounds faded away, and out of a sudden great desert of silence, she heard a man's voice, clear though it came all the way from Meeghan's Grocery, across the street from the old Dabney House, back home.

"Hello?"

_Mr. V.V.!_

And the moment she heard that voice, Carlisle was aware that her feeling toward the owner of it had mysteriously changed somewhere in the last week, that he stood in her mind now almost as a friend. Had he not been, by the strangeness of fate, her one confidant in the world, who now could never think of her again as a poor little thing?...

"Dr. Vivian?... Can you guess who it is? Or did the operator give me away?"

"Yes.... I don't hear you very well.... Where are you?"

"I'm in New York, if you please, to sail for Europe next week! We left home last night.... Is that better?"

"Yes.... That's much better."

Mr. V.V.'s voice, over the long miles of wire, sounded strained and hard; but the girl noticed nothing, being full of novel thrills.

"Perhaps you can guess why I've called you up.... Though, you know, it was to be a secret unless you saw me again, and _I_ really don't count a letter as seeing!..."

"I didn't see you," came back the unfamiliar voice. "I am to blame."

"Ah, but the letter was just as good," said Carlisle, and laughed excitedly into the transmitter. And then, having never admitted any particular sense of guilt, having felt almost no "conviction of sin" as religious fellows would term it, she went on without the smallest embarrassment: "You see, I flew into a panic for some reason, and didn't mean for you ever to see me again. I ran away! And then I couldn't get his letter out of mind--I'd never taken it in that he was so miserable, really!--and I was quite ashamed of being such a coward. And so," she said, the upward-lifting lip pressing the instrument in her eagerness, "I've called up now to say I want--"

His voice broke in, not with the burst of praise and thanksgiving she had looked for, but only to say abruptly and anti-climacterically:

"I can't hear you. Will you say that again?"

However, but few words were needed, after all, to ring this climax. Carlisle said, slowly and distinctly:

"I say I want you to tell Mr. Dalhousie now--and his father, too. To-night, if you wish."

Then there was a desolating silence, out of which she heard something far off like a man groaning.

"Hello!" she called sharply. "Are you there?"

"Where are you, Miss Heth?" was Dr. Vivian's reply; and his voice was like the voice of the man who had groaned....

"Are you in your room at the hotel? Is your mother with you there?"

Singular words these, from the receiver of confidences and high favors. There fell upon Cally a nameless fear.

"N-no--I'm alone--Why, what--"

"Could I speak to your mother a moment--first? I have some bad news. It would be better--"

"No--tell me! My mother's at dinner. I--what are you talking about?..."

Had he betrayed her already, then? Was the town now ringing with her name? Had Colonel Dalhousie ...

Quite distinctly, though he evidently was not addressing her, she heard the man's hard voice say: "This cannot be borne."

And then in a different voice, there came these words over the miles from Meeghan's Grocery:

"Miss Heth;--I didn't see you when I should have--and now we are just too late. I can't reach Dal now."

"You--don't mean?..."

"He is dead."

_"Dead!"_

And it was this girl's shame, the fruit of her long fear, that her first feeling was one of base relief. So works Nature's first law. Dal was dead; all was settled; there was nothing to tell now. And then, as by the turning of a corner, she came front to front with a sudden horror, and there unrolled before her a moment of blackness....

"You must not blame yourself too hard," came the distant voice, dropping out of space like the sentences of destiny. "It's ... cruel, the way it's happened. But you'll always know you had the courage and the will to set him free, when you might--"

Carlisle's hand clenched the edge of the little table where she sat.

"Tell me," said her voice, pitifully faint. "Did he ... I--must know--Did he ...?"

There was a roaring in her ears, but through it the words came clear as flame:

"He went out of his mind. I know that. That could not be foreseen. Not waiting ... he took his own life. It was this afternoon. A telegram came--from some friend of his...."

All further words, if more there were, bounded off from the sudden iron stillness within her. Mechanically she raised the receiver to the hook, for was not her talk with Meeghan's quite finished? Jack Dalhousie had killed himself. Sackcloth and ashes would not get a telegram to him now.... And then, some flying remembrance of the bearer of the tidings struck through her numbness, and she caught down the receiver again and said indistinctly:

"I can't talk any more now.... I'll be all right...."

Then all thought stopped, and her head went forward upon her hands. The yellow plume nodded bravely....

Outside the door of the booth was the brilliant corridor, and beyond a glimpse of the dining-room, pretty with shaded lights, gay with music and talk, and eyes that stared unabashed. Somewhere in there were Mrs. Heth and Canning, dining well.

The page stood near, the call-slip offered upon his tray. He, who admired her, was aware of a subtle distortion in this lady's winning loveliness.

"Take it, please," said she, "to the lady at the table where you found me. And say I shall not come back to dinner."

Then Carlisle found herself in the cloak-room, which happened to be empty except for the smiling maid. She had hardly entered and repelled the woman's overtures, when she heard the hurried step of her mother, brought quickly by the buttons' strange words.

"Cally! Are you ill? What on earth's happened?"

Cally sat stiffly in a chair against the wall, her face colorless. Different, this, from the telling she had contemplated, not five minutes ago. What had happened, indeed?

She said in a small flat voice: "I heard some bad news--over the telephone. A man--has died. He killed himself, this afternoon--"

Commanding even in that moment, Mrs. Heth turned upon the hovering maid and said: "A glass of water."

When the woman had passed out of earshot, she turned again, and put her two strong hands on Cally's shoulders.

"What man? Who was this you called up long-distance?"

"Mr. Dalhousie," said Cally's small voice. "I called up a friend of his...." She looked up fixedly at her mother and said: "Mamma, he did it because of me."

The name of ill omen staggered the mother a little. Her voice was half harsh, half frightened:

"Because of you! You are ill, my poor child. The shock has upset you. You are out of your head. The boy's mind was unhinged by drink. Every one said so. He had broken his father's heart with--"

"But he did this because of me. Because of what I let everybody think of him.... Mamma, I--I must go back home. I'm sorry to upset everything so...."

The maid stood by with her tray and glass, but no hand reached for the offering.

"Back to the hotel? Of course!--you are ill, my poor dear! You need rest...."

"I mean back home. You see I can't be here now ... when this has happened. I must go now, to-night. I remember the train goes at nine-fifty-five."

Mrs. Heth, wheeling upon the maid with livid perturbation, cried:

"Get my wraps."

XX

In which Jack Dalhousie wears a New Dignity, and the Lame Stranger comes to the House of Heth.

Dalhousie had been worthless while he lived. Now he had achieved the last supreme importance. The inconsiderable of yesterday wore a mute and mighty power. So he reached over the spaces, and broke the brilliant dinner-party at the Café des Ambassadeurs. So Mrs. Heth and Carlisle Heth disputed, by this new great dignity that was his, and talked in the hotel bedroom, and hurriedly changed evening attire for travelling suits. And so Hugo Canning, abruptly widowed at a railway station, was left to toss wakefully that night, ridden by deepening anxieties....

For Cally had carried her extraordinary point; now that Jack Dalhousie was henceforward indifferent to all these matters.

She had said, with the deadly flatness of the mood which her mother so dreaded, that she wanted to go home to-night, and there had been no reasoning with her. Go home for what? Mrs. Heth had asked it twenty times, battling desperately against the menacing madness, now with argument and threat, now with tears and wheedlings. And Cally, proceeding dry-eyed with her dressing and bag-packing, had proved unable to produce a single solid reason.

Still, it became clear that lock and key would not keep her. The options ensuing were whether her mother should go with her, or Hugo should go, or Cally be allowed to go alone. Small choice here, indeed.

Of that evening the events following the hurried departure from the Ambassadeurs were always blurred in Carlisle's memory. To Mrs. Heth each detail remained crystal-clear as long as she lived. Upon her shoulders, as usual, fell the burden of managing everything so that the least harm should befall. Defeated, and consequently hatted and cloaked, she emerged from the bedroom at quarter-past nine o'clock, commissioned by her daughter to tell Canning everything. But what was everything, and what the mere gibberish of nervous insanity, to pass forever from the horizon with a good night's sleep? Mrs. Heth, seated before her living Order of Merit in the sitting-room, interpreted her commission with a mother's wise discretion.

Canning, at this point, knew only that Carlisle was unnerved by news of the death of a friend. In the drive from the restaurant he had been cautioned to ask no questions, hysterics being intimated otherwise. Now Mrs. Heth gave him certain selected particulars: of a man who had been in love with Carlisle some years ago, though she had always discouraged him; of a misunderstanding that had arisen between them, which he, the man, had never got over; and now of his sudden decease, which came as a shock to the poor girl, awakening painful memories, and giving rise to a purely momentary sense of morbid responsibility.

"But why," said Canning, more and more mystified as he listened, "should she want to go back home?"

"I regard it," answered Mrs. Heth, "as a tribute to the dead."

"Why, she doesn't know what she's doing!... You must simply forbid her going."

"Forbid her!" groaned the little general, like one flicked upon a new wound.

And, before proceeding further, she was actually artful and strong enough to make the young man arrange--provisionally, she said,--about reservations, a matter which valuably consumed time.

If the good lady had now believed that all was lost, she would have instantly invoked Canning's authority, telling him everything. But as yet she would not risk that, clinging hard to the hope that Cally's sanity might come again with the sun of a new day. To-night she was for the greatest suppression possible, one eye perpetually on the little travelling-clock. However, the telephoning at last over, more details could not be avoided. It perforce transpired that the dead man was the villain of that unfortunate episode at the Beach, which Hugo possibly recalled,--he did,--and finally that it was worry over his disgrace, aided by unremitting potations, that had brought him to his death....

The faint frown on Hugo's brow deepened, became more troubled. He paced the floor.

"And still," said he, "I fail to see why Carlisle must go home to-night. What does she expect to do when she gets there?"

What, indeed? Mrs. Heth mentioned again the tribute to the dead. The girl, in her shocked state, considered it unfeeling for her to remain here enjoying herself with Hugo, as if nothing had happened. Foolish?--who saw it better than she, Mrs. Heth? But that was Cally, sweet and good at heart always, yet liable to emotional fits in upset moments when opposition only made her ill. Let her have her morbid way to-night, and she would return in twenty-four hours, her own sweet natural self....

Canning liked it less and less. Was not this clearly a moment when the strong mind of a man should assert itself over foolish feminine hysteria?

"How did she happen to get this news just now?" he asked, abruptly. "Who was it she called up, about what?"

He had lost sight of this point in the general flurry of sensation. It struck him now just too late to bring results. At the moment, the door from the bedrooms opened--exactly as it had two hours earlier, only with what a difference!--and Carlisle appeared on, the threshold, very pale and subdued, but to her lover's eye never more moving.

"I'm so sorry to bring you into all this trouble, Hugo," she said, in a strained little voice.... "And when we were having such a happy time...."

All thought of putting down his foot faded at once from Canning's mind, obliterated in a wave that went through him, half passion, half pure tenderness. Indifferent to Mrs. Heth, he advanced and took the girl in his arms, speaking in a manly way the sympathy with her distress which rushed up in him at that moment. And then he said words that went with Carlisle as a comfort all through the night.

"Your trouble is my own, Carlisle. I'm with you in everything now, happiness or unhappiness. Whatever happens, you know my heart and strength are yours through all time."

Carlisle, too deeply moved to speak, thanked her lover with a look. The moment's silence was broken by Mrs. Heth, resolutely blowing her nose. And then all opportunity for talk was lost in the rush for the train.

* * * * *

To herself she seemed to lie endlessly between sleeping and waking: and the rhythmic noises of the train sounded a continual cadence, Dalhousie's unquiet requiem. But she must have fallen sound asleep without knowing it; for her eyes opened suddenly with a start, and she was aware of the clanging of bells, the waxing and waning of men's voices, the hiss of steam and the flaring of yellow lights. Looking out under the blind, she saw that they had come to a city, which must be Philadelphia. Two hours nearer home....

Now her wakefulness had a sharper quality; Cally lay wide-eyed, in a dazed chill wonder. Once in the night she pushed up the curtain, raised herself on an elbow in the stateroom berth; and her splendid gay hair, loosened with much tossing, streamed downward over her shoulders. Outside was a world of moonlit peace. The flying trees had tops of silver; meadows danced by in splotches of light and shade; once they sped over a lovely river. Strange to think, that if she had but said on that far-away day, "He frightened me so, I didn't want to call him hack,"--just those words, how few and simple,--she would not be hurrying home now, with everything ahead so dark, so terrifying. And, though she seemed to try a long time, she could not think now why she had not said these words, could not weigh those slight fanciful tremors against this vast icy void....

She fell asleep; woke again to more clanging and hissing; slept and dreamed badly; and suddenly sat up in the berth, confusedly, to find it broad day, and the sun streaming through the little crevice beneath the curtain. Her mother was standing braced in the aisle of the little room, dressing systematically.

"We've passed Penton. You'd better get up," said the brisk familiar tones.

And she eyed her daughter narrowly as she asked if she had slept.

Home again. This time yesterday, who would have dreamed this possible?...

And then, after just enough time to dress, they began to pass landmarks, and presently to slacken speed; and then they were stepping down from the train, out into the hotch-potch gathering on the sunny station platform.

Both women were heavily veiled. Mrs. Heth's furtive glances discovered no one who was likely to hail them, demanding what in the world these things meant. A ramshackle hack invited and received them. And, jogging over streets crowded with a life-time's associations, the Heths presently came to their own house, whose face they had not thought to see again these four months....

Mr. Heth was away, fishing, in a spot dear to his heart, but remote from railroad or telegraph. The House of Heth looked like a deserted house; its blinds were drawn from fourth story to basement. However, there was old Moses, bowing and running down the steps to open the carriage door and assist with the hand-luggage. He greeted the ladies with courtliness, and inquired mout anybody be sick. Answered vaguely on this point, he announced that he had breakfast ready-waiting on the table; this, though Mr. Canning's telegraph never retched him till nea'bout eight o'clock. His tone indicated a pride of accomplishment not, he hoped, unjustified.

Having removed the more superficial stains of travel, the two women sat at table in the half-dismantled dining-room. It was a meal not easily to be forgotten, made the more fantastic by Mrs. Heth's determined attempts to act as if nothing in particular had happened. From her remarks to the ancient family retainer it appeared that she and Miss Carlisle had returned home to attend to a business matter of no great consequence, overlooked in the rush of departure. And she demanded, quite as if that were the very business referred to, whether the plumber had come to stop the drip in the white-room bathroom.

The butler's reply took a not unfamiliar direction. The plumber, and his helper, had come and 'xperimented round: but they had not yet stopped the drip....

Mrs. Heth ate heartily, with a desperate matter-of-factness. It was half-past nine o'clock. Nothing had happened yet, at any rate. Beside her, Carlisle had more difficulty with her breakfast, hampered by her continuing mind's-eye picture of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back on a floor somewhere. Might it be that, as this horror made telling so much harder, it also altered the whole necessity? There were plenty of arguments of mamma's to that effect....

"Mr. Heth got off all right, Moses?" demanded that resolute lady. "Take some more tea, Cally. You must really try to eat something, my child--"

"I have eaten--a great deal," said Cally. And pushing back her chair then, she added: "I think I--I'll try to rest a little while, mamma. I feel--tired after the trip."

"Do!" said mamma, further encouraged. "Sleep a little if you can, my dear. It's just what you need...."

But Cally did not sleep. It had seemed to her that she must be alone for a time, to try to think out what was to happen; but now she saw that she had no need to think. Of the complex nervous and emotional reaction which had brought her flying home, she had, indeed, seemed to understand nothing except that it was irresistible; her mind was like a dark cloud, refusing to yield up its meanings. Nevertheless, there seemed to be no doubt as to what she must do now....

Mrs. Heth, having remained downstairs half an hour longer, ascended quietly, the beginnings of great gratitude in her heart. They were feelings born but to die. Just at the head of the stairs she encountered Cally, emerging like an apparition from the door of the family sitting-room. The girl spoke in a small voice:

"Mamma, I want to send for Dr. Vivian--to come and see me."

Mamma, just thinking that this madness was finally disposed of, was taken suddenly. Even the birthmark on her temple, which was partially exposed, seemed to turn pale....

But once more Carlisle carried her extraordinary point. Ever since she was a little girl she had been subject to these incalculable fits, when punishment made her ill, but did not conquer the seven devils that possessed her. Mrs. Heth, frantic after nearly an hour's thundering, vanished into the telephone-booth, bent upon reaching Mr. Heth while there was yet time. But even now her strongest thought was that Cally was a sensible girl at heart, in the last pinch simply incapable of self-destructive folly.

Cally, also, had thought of the telephone. But the sight of it, after last night, unnerved her. She withdrew to the little desk in her bedroom.

So the word of the Lord came to the Dabney House, by the hand of an old negro gentleman.

* * * * *

He was standing in the middle of the floor, when Carlisle went down, an inconsonant figure amid the showy splendors of the Heth drawing-room. So much appeared to the most casual observation. Far deeper to the understanding eye went the inconsistency of this man's presence here, in an hour of appalling intimacy.

Carlisle, entering through the uncurtained doorway, halted involuntarily just over the threshold. Her eye, at least, saw all. And she was abruptly and profoundly affected by the sight of him in her familiar background, the author of the Beach opinion of her, who truly had never meant anything but trouble for her since the first moment she saw him. Time, indeed, had given the religious fellow his last full measure of revenge....

Prepared speeches of some dignity and length slipped from her. Cally spoke from her heart and her fear, without greeting, in a nervous childish voice:

"I--I wanted to see you, to--to ask you--to talk with you--as to what must be done...."

Jack Dalhousie's friend bowed gravely. There was no victory on his face, neither was there any judgment.

"I understood," he said simply, "and was grateful to you."

He, certainly, seemed aware of no discordance in himself. He advanced with a beautiful consistency, looking as if he wished to say more. But Cally, her hand gripping the back of a spindly gold divan, her gaze fallen, seemed suddenly to find her own tongue unloosed.

"It's been so terrible," she hurried on in the same flat, unpremeditated way--"no one could know.... I was in New York, and we were to sail for Europe in a few days. Everything was arranged, all our plans were made, oh, for months and months. And then.... And now I've come home--and everything is so upset--and so dreadfully complicated. And I haven't seemed able to think somehow--to decide--"

"Try not to think about it at all," said the man, with some firmness. "That's the great compensation, that you can begin to forget about it now. Won't you sit down?"

She sat down obediently, quite as if it were natural for him to be taking charge of her in her own drawing-room. And staring down at her locked hands, she fluttered on with no reference to him, with a kind of frightened incredulity, like a bird in a trap.

"It seems so unjust--so terribly _unfair_.... That all this could come from one little puff of wind!... He had gotten out of the boat. He was swimming away. And then there came one little gust. I had tied the sail, you see. He had frightened me. And now, after all these months.... But of course I never thought--I never dreamed of--of--"

"I know; I understand. No one dreamed it. You must keep sure of that," said Vivian, in his natural voice. "I knew Dal very well indeed, you know; and I felt certain that he was--safe from this. You--you mustn't think of it as something that could have been foreseen...."

He was looking down at her lowered face closely as he spoke; and went on without pause:

"You see--what upset him so was beyond your control or mine. I've heard nothing since the telegram last night. But--you may remember that he spoke of a girl in his letter, whose opinion he seemed to value. It must be that when he saw her again, she was very hard on him--so hard that he lost his grip for a moment. I can't account for it in any other way. There is another thing, too.... Do you think it's a little close in here, perhaps? May I open a window?"

She assented without speech, and he walked away with the step of his disability to the long windows. Into the dim great room stole the breath of the May morning, sweet with the fragrance of the balcony flowers.

The tall young man came walking back.

"There was one thing I wanted particularly to tell you. I sent Dal a message--a telegram--on Monday night...."

Startled, Carlisle looked up.

"On--_Monday_?... Why--I--"

"Not breaking your confidence, of course--just telling him, in a general way, to keep his courage up, that I--I thought good news was on the way.... It was without authority. I realized that. And yet I felt so sure that--when you had had a little time to think--that would be what you would wish. In fact, of course I knew it...."

Their eyes met, almost for the first time, and a sudden constraint fell upon the girl.

"But I don't see," she said, with some difficulty--"if you telegraphed him that--on Monday--I don't understand--"

"The telegram went astray. I went to the office here last night and had them find out. It should have reached Weymouth the first thing yesterday morning. It didn't arrive till about three in the afternoon. But even then.... You see, he could hardly have expected a reply to his letter till Wednesday. That's to-day--"

These two sat looking at each other: and Cally's tongue was no longer free as a hurt child's. She seemed not to find it possible to speak at all now. The young man from the other world was going on, with his strange composure.

"So you see how much was pure blind chance, that couldn't be guarded against. If he had only waited.... If he had only trusted you--two hours longer...."

Surely he had more to say, much more; yet he ended abruptly, speech being evidently not desired of him. The girl had suddenly dropped her face into her hands.

Cally did not want to look at this man any more; could not bear it indeed. His eyes, which had always seemed gifted to convey hidden meanings, had well outstripped the words of his mouth, triumphing strangely over all that he knew about her. Quite clearly they had said to her just then: "_I_ would have trusted you, you know...." And somehow that seemed sad to her, she did not know why. Why, indeed, should Jack Dalhousie have trusted her?...

Something moved in Cally in this moment which might have been the still small voice, and her weakness grew apace. She turned precipitately, put an arm on the back of the gold divan where she sat, and buried her face in it. Her struggle now was against tears; and it was to be a losing struggle. She did not cry easily. It always seemed rather like tearing loose something within her, something important that was meant to stay where it had been fixed. There was pain with these tears....

The man from the Dabney House said nothing. His was a more than woman's intuition. There was a long silence in the drawing-room....

But after a time, when there were signs that the tension was relaxing and the sudden storm passing, he spoke in his simple voice:

"You see your message would have been all that you meant, but for the terrible coincidence. You mustn't take it--so much upon yourself. That wouldn't be right. Think of that poor girl out there, who is reproaching herself so to-day. And then, besides, you must know I realize that I should have seen you last week.... You had every right to expect that, as I was--in a measure--Dal's representative...."

Cally hardly heard him.

Her back toward him, she had produced from some recess a small handkerchief, and was silently removing the traces of her tears. She had dimly supposed that there would be a long discussion; all at once it was clear that there was nothing to discuss. And she thought of Hugo, and a little of her mother, waiting upstairs....

"It was too much for one person to carry alone," continued the alien voice, sounding rather hard-pressed now. "I happened to be the one person in position to help, and I failed you.... I'd like you to know...."

But the girl had risen, ending his speech, her need to talk with him past. Her self-absorption was without pretence. Wan and white and with a redness about her misty dark eyes, she stood facing the old enemy, and spoke in a worn little voice:

"You said you'd see his father for me, didn't you?"

The man, having risen with her, looked hurriedly away.

"Yes--of course. I'll go. At once."

And then, as if pledged to speak, though well he knew that she had no thought for him, he added abruptly: "But you mustn't think of yourself as being alone with this. I promise you I'll keep the knowledge, to punish me, that if--if I'd been the sort of man you needed, you'd have settled it all long ago...."

"That's absurd...." said Cally, somehow touched, but with no conception of the depths from which he spoke.... "I never meant to tell at all if it hadn't been for you."

She added, seeing him turn away, looking around the long room: "I think you must have left it in the hall."

And then, winking a little, she began to blow her nose, and moved away toward the door.

She encountered the butler, old Moses, entering from the hall. There was a yellow envelope upon his tray, though she had heard no ring at the bell.

"Excuse me, ma'am. This message just kem for you, an' I signed for it at the do'."

Carlisle thought instantly, Hugo!... And when, having quite forgotten the man standing silent behind her, she broke open the envelope with nervous fingers, the hope of her heart was at once confirmed:

Am coming to you. Arrive four-ten this afternoon. Wait for me. H.C.H.C.

Did a tiny corner of her tightly closed mind open a little as she read? _Wait for me...._

She turned back to Jack Dalhousie's representative with something like eagerness, to find his eyes fixed upon her.

"Oh!--would it do any harm to wait a little while, do you think?--just till this afternoon?"

"No, no," he said, in rather an odd voice, "it will do no harm now."

"Then I'll send word to you this afternoon--at five or six o'clock," said Cally, with vague flutterings of relief, of hope, perhaps. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, she added: "I will tell you why I want to wait. I am engaged to be married. I think I should tell my fiancé, before anything is done...."

To this V. Vivian made no reply. He was advancing to the door. And then as he paused before the stricken Hun, and saw the glitter of a tear on the piquant gold-and-black lashes, the young man's twisting heart seemed suddenly to loosen, and he said quite simply:

"Won't you let me say how fine and brave a thing you're doing, how splendid a--"

"Don't!" said Cally, recoiling instantly from she knew not what. "_Don't!_... I'm not brave--_at all!_ Oh, no--that's just it...."

And then, looking down, she added somewhat pitifully: "But I really didn't mean to do anything so bad...."

The alien turned hurriedly away. He went without another word.

The front door shut upon him. And Cally gave a little jump, hearing above her the imperious tread of her mother.

XXI

That Day at the Beach, as we sit and look back at it; how Hugo journeys to shield his Love from Harm, and Small Beginnings can end with Uproars and a Proverb.

Canning arrived at the House of Heth shortly after four. He had had an all-day journey in summer heat, and a bad night preceding. In the still watches following his ladies' departure from New York, he had had time for calm reflection, nothing else but time; and the more he calmly reflected, the less could he understand his betrothed's singular desire to pay this tribute to the dead. The thing grew increasingly mystifying; increasingly unorthodox and undependable, too. Moreover, the second thought reproached him that, Carlisle being so greatly upset, however unreasonably, he himself should have accompanied her homeward, in her most need to go by her side. And thinking these things, the disturbed young man had tumbled out of bed in the small hours, to make inquiries regarding trains.

He was received at the House by his future mother-in-law, who was once more the accredited intermediary. Canning was hot, sooty, and suffering from want of sleep. There were cinders down the back of his neck. Mrs. Heth had Moses prepare for him a long iced drink, with rime on the glass and fragrant mint atop. And then, as the prize of her lifetime sat and sipped, she seated herself beside him, her strong voice trembling....

All hope of discreet reticence was now ripped to shreds. What chance remained of rescuing the name of Heth from the scandalous horrors of a suicide lay all in arousing this stalwart man to the imminence of the common peril. Mrs. Heth, somersaulting without hesitancy from last night's caution, flooded the dark places with lurid light.

Canning listened with consternation and chagrin. His moral sensibilities, indeed, received no particular shock, since Mrs. Heth's narrative frankly disclaimed any wrong-doing on Carlisle's part, but attributed the misunderstanding to the excited gossip at the time. And by the same token, he was not unduly perturbed over the girl's hysterical ideas of her present duty. What struck Canning most sharply, indeed, since he was human, was the personal side of the matter: the stark fact that important developments touching Carlisle's name and happiness had been running along for some time, wholly without his knowledge, but under the direct personal superintendency of another man, this Mr. Somebody's unknown friend. So extraordinary a course of behavior seemed to reveal a totally new side of his betrothed, hitherto unsuspected. Canning would have been too saintly for this earth if he had not learned of these proceedings with the deepest surprise and vexation.

And yet--what of it? Of course there was some simple and natural explanation, which she would give when she felt better able. Doubtless she had been threatened; blackmailed perhaps. And meantime the light thrown directly and indirectly on Carlisle's distraught mood touched the lover deeply. He hardly needed Mrs. Heth's frightened hints about the necessity of gentleness with firmness in dealing with a flare-up. Had he himself not known the wilful nature of her spirit in excitement, that never-forgotten evening in the library?

And when the striker of the right note withdrew at last, and Carlisle herself appeared in the drawing-room, very white and subdued, the last remnant of a personal grievance vanished from Canning's manner. Nothing could have exceeded the tenderness of his greeting....

"Did my telegram surprise you?" he said presently. "I got so troubled about you after you were gone.... I couldn't bear to leave you alone with this...."

And Cally said, with a quiver in her voice: "Oh, Hugo!... If you only knew how I've wanted you to-day!..."

She meant it with every fibre of her being. Doubly he had convinced her now that he could never be shocked or disgusted with her, that in him a perfect sympathy enfolded her, covering all mistakes. That he might not understand quite yet how she felt about everything was possible, but that was nothing now, by the fact that he understood _her_, at any rate, as mamma never could.

Some discussion of the matter was of course necessary. And presently, after they had talked a little, quite naturally, of his journey and how she had slept last night, the lovers drifted on into Mr. Heth's little study, reopened against this need.

Here they sat down and began to talk. And here, in five minutes, Carlisle's heart began mysteriously to sink within her....

She had been going through a series of violent emotional experiences in which he had had not the slightest share, and now required of him that he should catch up with the results of these experiences, upon a moment's notice and at a single bound. She could not realize the extreme difficulty of this feat. Nor, indeed, could Canning himself, confident by the ease with which his love had appeared to put down all personal irritations. To his seeming, as to hers, they had met in perfect spiritual reunion.

Accordingly, when he proposed that the matter be allowed to rest quiet for a day or two, till they were all in a little better frame of mind to view it calmly, he offered a temporary solution which he felt certain would seem to her as reasonable and as tactfully considerate as it did to him.

"In this moment of shock and distress," he said, with admirable restraint, "you are not quite in the best frame of mind, you see, to decide such a serious matter. Fortunately, to wait a little while and think it over quietly can do no harm to anybody now. And then, if you still feel the same way about it, of course I shall want to do what you wish."

He had had Carlisle's feelings only at second-hand, through a medium perhaps wanting in transparence. Her hesitancy considerably surprised him. To Carlisle, as was almost equally inevitable, it was as if in the solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,--something, say, as if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before. And she tried to make him understand this, saying--what seemed a feeble reply to his logic:

"You see, I--I've already thought about it a good deal, Hugo ... And putting it off would only make me--miserable and ill. I can't explain very well.... I think I could begin to--to forget about it if--when...."

This she said over several times, in different ways, as the necessary discussion proceeded....

It was naturally hard for Hugo to grasp the grounds on which she rejected a mere deferment of painful discussion till to-morrow morning (for he reduced his proposal to that), or even to see why, though opposed herself, she would not readily be guided in so small a matter by his wishes. The soft chimes in the hall had rung five before it definitely came over him that the preliminaries had oddly, indeed incredibly, gone against him.

He faced the fact frankly, without perceptible sign of annoyance.

"Well, then, my dearest girl, I'm afraid we shall have to talk about it a little now...."

They sat side by side on papa's faded old lounge, where they had spent many an hour together in happier days. Canning held Carlisle's hand in a reassuring grasp. Her heart warmed to him anew: if he did not quite seem to understand--what wonder when she hardly did herself?--his was a love that drew its roots deeper than understanding. Nevertheless she flinched from a discussion which promised to be carried on chiefly by her over-strung nerves; and all at once she felt that she must know instantly what threatened, exactly what he thought about it.

"Hugo ... do you--don't you think I--I ought to tell?"

Far readier and surer was his voice in reply: "Frankly, darling, I can't as yet see any necessity."

How could he possibly see?--Ought to tell what? Had not her mother told him that he had to deal with the nightmare illusions of a disordered mind?...

Canning added with great considerateness: "I've thought it all over from every point of view--and you know I'm better able to think dispassionately to-day than you are--and I simply can't persuade myself that we have any such obligation."

Carlisle thought, with a little hopeful leap, that Hugo _must_ know. It was all irrevocably settled; and yet at the same time it may have been that, woman-wise, she had left ajar a little door somewhere, through which his man's wisdom might yet storm, and possess all....

"But--but doesn't it seem that if I--did him a wrong, I ought to be willing to set it straight?"

"Well, naturally!" said Canning, and smiled a little, sadly, to see how white and sorrowful-eyed she looked. "If you did him a wrong. But that's just the point. I'm afraid I can't agree with the somewhat extreme view this friend of the poor fellow's seems to have put forward.... By the way," he added, finding the natural question popping in so suitably here, "who is this man that has talked with you about it, Carlisle? Your mother didn't go into particulars."

Carlisle felt some surprise. "Oh--I supposed she told you. Dr. Vivian--you remember--who ..."

The name took Canning completely aback.

"Vivian?--no!... _That_ chap!..."

Both remembered in the same moment his quizzical complaint that this man was his hoodoo. Both felt that the pleasantry had a somewhat gritty flavor just now.

"I hadn't thought of him," said Canning, at once putting down his surprise and explaining it, "because I didn't think you knew him at all. In fact, I didn't know you'd ever seen him but once, or perhaps twice...."

Carlisle regretted that mamma had not explained all this. "I haven't more than three or four times.... Twice when I was with you, you remember, and then I met him again at Mr. Beirne's and the Cooneys'--some cousins of mine. You see--he was a great friend of--his...."

"And I suppose he has worried you about this every time he got anywhere near you?"

"No," Carlisle answered, laboriously, "I don't think he has ever mentioned it--since the first. Of course I've had hardly any conversation with him--and it's always been about the Works. You know, I told you he usually talked to me about that--"

He said that he remembered; and each was then aware that the harmony of a moment ago had somehow slipped away from them. Canning, indeed, instead of being enlightened by the explanation, was more bewildered than ever. How could it be that this man, her father's assailant in the newspapers, the religious fellow whom Carlisle had never mentioned but to belittle, should have been the recipient of intimate confidences which she had withheld from him, her future husband? Naturally he could not understand in the least. However, glancing at her still face, he forbore to put another question.

"Well, that's got nothing to do with it anyway," he said, lightly, dismissing the side-issue. "Now, let's see.... Sit back comfortably, my dear, and we'll take it all quietly from the beginning...."

Hugo had got his facts from Mrs. Heth, and nothing had happened yet to suggest that they were in any way inaccurate. On the contrary, they seemed to have received subtle moral corroboration, so instinctive was it for the lover to lean backward from the views foisted upon Carlisle by her singular and religious confidant. That he himself was capable of coloring the case, attorney-wise, to suit the common interest did not really cross his mind.

The whole issue in the singular muddle, he pointed out, seemed to be whether or not the poor fellow had known that the boat was upset. Well, who could say what he knew, an intoxicated man in a blind passion? Not Carlisle, certainly, plunged suddenly into the sea and intensely occupied with saving her life. How, for instance, could she know it if, in the instant when she was under water, the man had glanced back and--deadened by his drunken anger, admit that for him--had not returned for her? Of the dozens of people who had witnessed the disaster, not one had doubted that the unfortunate chap's desertion of her had been deliberate.... However, imagine that it hadn't been, exactly, imagine that the women in their excitement and resentment, and through misunderstanding of each other's statements, had failed to give him the full benefit of the doubt. It was still a great mistake to assume that what they had said or left unsaid had been decisive. Public opinion, knowing the unstable character of the man, had already judged him. Did his later life and behavior indicate, really, that that judgment was far wrong? And as to that night of excitement long ago, the world's rough-and-ready justice would hardly have taken much account of Carlisle's generous theory that perhaps the man didn't know what he was doing. By the same token, it would scarcely reopen the case now to admit that kind conjecture....

"I honor from the bottom of my heart, Carlisle," said Canning, "your wish to do the strictest justice. Need I say that I'm with you there, against the world? But what is the strictest justice? Perhaps you might bring a ray of relief to the poor man's father, and that's all. Is that really so great an object to move heaven and earth for, at the cost of much pain and distress to all who love you?..."

Having spoken at some length, Canning paused for a reply. The pause ran longer than he found encouraging. However, he was no more sensitive to it, to Carlisle's strange unresponsiveness as he talked, than was the girl herself. Indeed, it tore Cally's heart to seem to oppose her lover, pleading so strongly and sweetly for her against herself. Yet she had several times been tempted to interrupt him, so clear did it seem to her that he did not understand even now all that she had supposed was fully plain to him last night.

She said with marked nervousness, and a kind of eagerness, too: "You're so good and dear in the way you look at it, Hugo. You don't know--how sweet.... But it all comes down to whether he knew--doesn't it--just as you said. Well, you see I really _know_ he didn't--"

"You're mistaken there, my dear! Only God Almighty knows that. Don't you think we had better leave the judgment to him?"

That Canning spoke quite patiently was a great credit to his self-control. His failure to move her had filled him with a depressing and mortifying surprise. To say nothing of the regard she might be supposed to have for his wishes, he knew that he had spoken unanswerably.

"But you see--I really do know he wasn't such a coward, Hugo," said Carlisle, with the same nervous eagerness to accuse herself. "I--I knew him quite well--at one time. He was a wonderful swimmer, never afraid.... Perhaps it's only a feeling--but, indeed, I _know_ he wouldn't have swum off and left me--if--"

"My dear girl, if you were really so certain of that, why didn't you say so at the time?"

Carlisle, looking at the floor, said wistfully: "If I only had...."

She was acutely aware that his question carried a new tone into the discussion, that Hugo had criticised her for the first time. The tiny crack in their perfect understanding yawned suddenly wider. And distressed, and pitifully conscious that it was all her fault, Cally flung herself instinctively across the breach. Her gaze still lowered, she took Hugo's hand and pressed it to her smooth cheek: an endearing thing, and done with a muteness more touching than any speech.

Canning was moved. She was not demonstrative by habit. He kissed the cheek, for once almost as if she were a child. And he said that of course she would have said so that night, except that she hadn't really been certain of anything of the sort then. That feeling came now, born of excessive sympathy and nervous shock. The mistake would be to accept these feelings for her final judgment on such a very complicated and serious matter.

So he was arguing the case for postponement of discussion once more, with excellent good sense and an even more moving insistence....

If he had now but ceased his argument, turned, gathered her to his arms, and adjured her by his overflowing love to entrust herself to him, it is possible that within two minutes he might have had her weeping on his breast, in complete surrender. Body and soul, she was sore with much pounding: more than an hour ago, she needed sympathy and comfort now, loverly occupation of the desolating lonely places within her. But Canning argued, seeing nothing else to do, argued with a deepening note of patience in his voice. And when he stopped at length, it was natural that she should argue back: though she really meant this for her last attempt to convey the dim light that was in her.

"I hate to seem so silly and obstinate, Hugo. I--I can't seem to explain it exactly. But I really don't think that waiting would make any difference--in my feeling. And don't you think, if I feel I ... couldn't be happy till I--got this off my mind...."

Again he explained that this feeling was but a passing illusion, here to-day, gone to-morrow.

Carlisle hesitated. But Canning, seeing only silence for his pains, said with a little quickening of his tone:

"Tell me, my dear! Honestly, would such a thought as that--about your happiness--ever have occurred to you if it hadn't been suggested to you by Dr. Vivian?"

Natural as the inquiry was to Canning, it jangled oddly upon Carlisle. She could not understand Hugo's recurrence to this man; it seemed curiously unreasonable, quite unlike him and somehow quite unjust....

"Why, I don't know, Hugo. I--I seem to have had it on my mind a good deal lately. Perhaps he first made me think of it that way--I don't know."

"Don't you think perhaps we might have understood each other a little better all along, if you had talked it over with me before you talked to him about it?"

"Yes, I do now. I didn't seem to think.... It all happened so unexpectedly--I never planned anything at all. And then I thought--I hoped--you would think I was doing right."

"My dear girl, nobody in his senses could possibly think you were doing right, and nobody who cared for you could want you to abandon yourself to the impulses of a moment of nervous hysteria."

He rose and paced the floor, four paces to the room. A handsome and impressive figure of a man he looked, his hands rammed into the pockets of his beautiful blue-flannel coat, his fine brow wrinkled with a responsible frown. He was seven years older than Carlisle, and, in the absence of Mr. Heth (whom neither telephone nor telegraph, prayer nor fasting, had yet been able to reach), he stood as her lawful protector and the man of her family. He must save her from the effects of her own hysterical moment, or nobody would. Clearer and clearer it had grown that he had to do with a distracted creature who, in a state of shock, had somehow passed under the influence of a man of the unscrupulous revivalist type, and upon whom, in her present mood, all reasoning was thrown away. Gentleness and firmness were the notes for dealing with a flare-up. Well, gentleness had been tried in vain....

Carlisle looked at Canning as he paced, in the grip of a heart-sick fear. The same comfortable, homely little room, with tight-closed door; the same evening sunshine filtering in across the faded carpet; the same situation, the same man and woman. But what was this new shape that peeped at her from behind the familiar objects? A delusion and a snare had been her first feeling of perfect unity. But was it conceivable that she and Hugo might _quarrel?_...

That was the one thing that could not be borne; anything to avoid that. She must give him his way, since he would not give her hers. She must agree to put it off till to-morrow, and then to-morrow he would still think she was unreasonable, and so they would put it off again, forever. She thought of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back, but with open eyes which did not cease to question her; of poor Dr. Vivian, even now awaiting her word with trusting eyes which did not question anything; and she saw that to turn back now would be like a physical fracture somehow, like breaking her leg, and that the moment she had said she would, she would have to cry again, and afterwards she would be quite sick. And then she looked at Hugo, who was so manly and sure, who _must_ be right, no matter how she felt now: and so began to nerve herself to speak....

But Canning had a new thought, a new argument, which now became definite. Coming to a halt in front of her, he said in a businesslike sort of way:

"Let's see now. You want to send word to Dr. Vivian this afternoon that he is to tell Colonel Dalhousie that you feel you did his son an injustice. Is that it?"

Checked in her drift toward yielding, Carlisle said that was what she had thought.

"Well, let's imagine what would happen then. I said just now that for you to do this would accomplish nothing, but it would of course raise a cloud of doubt, of which the Colonel would probably make the very most. He would not be so scrupulous about giving you the benefit of the doubt as you feel, at the moment, about giving it to his son. He could make a most unpleasant story of it."

Carlisle sat with lowered eyes, listening to the firm just tones. Very lovely and desirable she looked in a "little" white dress which Hugo had praised once....

"And malice would seize on this story and make it worse and worse the further it travelled. If you stop to think a moment, you will easily see what a sensation the scandalmongers can make out of the materials you ingenuously wish to offer them."

He himself stopped to think; his keen mind flung out little exploring parties over the prospect he hinted at, and they raced back shrieking with vulgar horrors. Surely, surely his chosen bride could never have contemplated this.

"Carlisle, have you reflected that you would be pointed at, whispered about, till the longest day you live?"

She sat motionless, with averted face, and felt that she was slipping from her last mooring. Was it conceivable that Hugo was persuading her to hush it all up again--just because it was _easier?_... She and mamma had done that and thought nothing of it. But, for this moment, at least, it seemed horribly different to have such a thought about Hugo....

She said in a little voice: "But if it's right, I oughtn't to think about consequences, ought I?"

Canning groaned.

"How many times must I tell you that it's not right, that it's preposterous, that you yourself will say so to-morrow!..."

She made no reply, and then Canning, goaded on by his sense of strange impotence, spoke the depths of his secret resentment:

"Really, I should have thought that the views of your future husband would have more weight with you than those of a casual medical missionary, known to be irresponsible and untrustworthy."

Cally gave him a look full of young reproach, rose with nervous purposelessness, and went over to the empty hearthside. Much nearer now peeped that startling shape. She leaned upon the mantel and tried to think: of her duty to Hugo, of how natural it was that he shouldn't understand, of how all this had begun. But unhappily the tone of his last remark seemed to have set other chords quivering within her, and all that she seemed able to think of was that it was cruelly unjust for him to misjudge her so. He had promised to stand by her no matter what happened, and besides Dr. Vivian wasn't irresponsible and untrustworthy. The wild thought knocked that Hugo, now that he knew the truth about her, had ceased to love her....

"Carlisle," said Canning, with more restraint, "isn't it reasonable for me to think that?"

Her reply showed some signs of agitation: "Why, Hugo--of course ... You must know your views have all the weight in the world with me. His have none ..."

He came up to her on the hearthstone, raised her hand, and kissed the little pink palm.

"Never mind--I'm sure that's true.... Now, my dear, we seem unable to understand each other to-day, and trying to do so only throws us farther and farther apart. We both need rest, and time for quiet thought. You must let me decide this point for you. I am going to send word to Dr. Vivian now that you will let him hear from you to-morrow morning."

He released her hand, and turned decisively away. At that moment, the dim hall chimes began to strike six.

"Oh, no, Hugo! Please don't," she broke out, taking a little step after him.... "_Please!_ I don't think I could bear it...."

Canning wheeled instantly, his virile face darkening and flushing.

"You don't?... My views don't seem to matter so tremendously, after all!"

"Ah, Hugo dear! That hurts. How--"

"Tell me, Carlisle, did the idea of telling Colonel Dalhousie, for your happiness, originate with you or with this man?"

Touched once more in her spirit by his singular obsession, she replied, with constraint: "I don't remember, Hugo. Perhaps with him. But it wasn't his saying so that made it true. It is the way I feel ..."

"That brings us back to the beginning again. I have done my best to persuade you that this feeling is an hallucination."

Over and over this ground they went with quickening exchanges, Canning's patience wearing sharper at each circuit, Carlisle growing steadily whiter, but unluckily not more yielding. At last Canning said:

"You are going to trust your whole future life to me, Carlisle. It is hard for me to grasp that you refuse to trust me in this, the first thing I have ever asked of you. Tell me plainly that you mean to have no regard for my wishes."

Carlisle felt ready to scream. How had this miserable misunderstanding arisen? What was it all about? Her mind glanced back, but she could not remember, could not begin to retrace the bewildering steps. Worse yet, she hardly seemed to want to now, for Hugo could not possibly speak to her in this way if he loved her as he had said.

She said in a small, chilled voice: "That's unjust, Hugo. I have every regard--"

"So you say, Carlisle. But nothing else that you say supports it in the slightest."

The girl made no reply. And then Canning struck out:

"My entreaties carry no weight with you, it seems. Well, then I forbid you."

For the first time a tinge of color touched Carlisle's cheek.

"You forbid me?"

He had no sooner said the words than he regretted them. In the beginning nothing of this sort had been within his dreams; had he foreseen the possibility, it is probable that he would have given Carlisle her head at the start without argument. But, once the position taken, he could not bend back his pride to recede. And to him, too, came prodding thoughts, of a bride who was revealing strange sides of her nature, strange unlovelinesses....

"Good God!" broke from him. "With such excessive consideration for _two_ other men, haven't you an atom for the man you are to marry? Hasn't it occurred to you that in a matter seriously involving my life as well as yours, I have a claim, a joint authority with yourself?"

"Occurred to me? It has never been out of my mind."

"Yet you resent it, it seems. I say that I forbid your doing something so full of painful consequences to us both, and you show that you resent it ... Don't you?"

"It's a surprise to me that you would want to use your authority in such a way. But--"

"Then you must have failed to grasp that this act of folly you contemplate, over my entreaty and command, would bring an entirely new element into the situation ..."

Carlisle looked at him without shrinking now. "A new element into the situation? I don't understand. How do you mean?"

"Carlisle! Be frank! You know the effects of all this. Have you the right, when I have sought one girl for my wife, to offer me quite another?"

Pink deepened on the girl's cheek.

"I don't think I have.... Well, Hugo, you are free...."

"_Don't say that!"_ cried Canning, in a voice thick with a chaos of feeling. "It's unendurable ..."

He turned abruptly away.

Of the two, in that disruptive moment, Canning was far the more visibly perturbed. If women think with their emotions, Carlisle's emotions, rebelling at long overstrain, had now run away with her. She was never a docile girl, as her mother well knew. To Canning she had dealt the ultimate unbelievable buffet. Through all her incredible obstinacy, through all his knowledge of the capabilities of her spirit, he had hardly doubted that one hint of betrothal restiveness would be sufficient to bring her to her knees. Now he seemed to wear her words like a frontlet, branded in the mantling scarlet of his brow. The young man felt himself falling through space....

The same familiar little room, but now with a new face. Twilight began to steal into it. On the cheerless hearthside, the lovers stood, and each knew that words once spoken live forever. And looking at each other's faces each knew, and could not change it, that the lover was not uppermost in them now. They were two human beings spent with long arguing, two wills hopelessly at the clash.

In the sudden break-up of the trusted and reliable, Canning's polished style had been torn from him. He owned, laboriously and at some length, that this serious disagreement between them was terribly disturbing to him. How would it be later, if she refused now to show any regard for his urgent requests? Was it unreasonable for him to expect his chosen wife to consider the responsibilities entailed by his name and position, to share his ambition to hold both above the stings of malice and unmerited scandal?

At another moment, both the manner and matter of Hugo's remarks would have touched Carlisle profoundly. But she was beyond thinking of Hugo now. All that her fluttering heart could feel was that when he had promised to stand by her through all time, he had meant only to stand by her as long as she did everything as he told her....

"No, Hugo, it is reasonable. That is what I say. I am unreasonable. I don't seem able to help it to-day."

And Hugo, with the last remnant of his unconquerable incredulities, for the twentieth time mentioned another day. A post-mortem flicker of reargument started: started, but went out, quickly extinguished by the perilous fascination of the personal. Unspoken thoughts pressed in upon them as they circled, lifelessly reiterating. These thoughts grew rapidly louder; and Canning, striving to keep his bitter hostility from his tone, gave voice:

"Of course the truth is--though I am sure you don't realize it yourself--this man has somehow got you under his influence ... A sort of moral hypnosis ... to compel you to do what is against your nature ... and will bring you great harm."

At what conceivable point had the grounds of discussion become so completely metamorphosed?

"No, that isn't true. I'm not doing--"

"I suggest that in your interest ... Otherwise I should be unable to account for the predominant part you have allowed him to play in this."

"And yet, Hugo, he was right in saying that I couldn't be happy if I didn't tell the truth. And you don't understand that even now."

"I fear I've always been dull at these camp-meeting metaphors."

Now they had struck the greased road, and easy was the descent to Avernus. Carlisle said, all weakness gone from her:

"Well, I don't ask you to understand any more. You feel that I'm not the same girl--"

"I didn't say that! I asked ... if you had the right--now--to make yourself a--different girl. By that--"

"I'm afraid I've already made myself a different girl from what you thought. You knew that when mamma told you what I had done...."

Why couldn't he say that he wanted her twenty times over, no matter what she had done? It would have been easy to say that half an hour ago. Canning's reply was: "I've said again and again that you've done nothing. All this malicious scandal cannot touch you unless you yourself wilfully start it."

"You seem to care less about what I am, than about what people might think I am. And yet," she added, her hand upon her heart and her breath coming quicker and quicker, "you wonder that I let somebody else tell me what I am."

The deliberate reference to the revivalist fellow stung Canning like the flick of a glove in his face.

"Dr. Vivian? He has not my disadvantage of laboring to save his affianced's name from everlasting disgrace."

"Perhaps he doesn't find disgrace where you seem to look for it."

"It is cheap to be prodigal with other men's belongings. What is this man to you?"

"Hugo!--Hugo!" broke from her. "I can't bear this!... You must leave me."

"If I go," said Canning, trembling, "I do not return."

"It is what I wish," said Carlisle.

And her other hand came to her heart, to his glittering pledge upon her finger....

Canning stood watching her, paling and purpling. How they had come to this he knew no more than Carlisle; and no more than she could he force his steps backward. In truth, the deeps of him had never so passionately desired her as now, yearning beyond reason or understanding to the untamed spirit. And yet ... What did he know of her, whom he thought he knew so well? She had flirted with a young drunkard, fraternized with a low crank, inextricably involved herself in the scandals of a suicide. Taxed with these things, she was wantonly rebellious, contemptuously indifferent to his wishes. Lovely and wild she stood there. And yet ...

He heard his hoarse voice saying: "Think, Carlisle. You are sure that this is what you wish ..."

"You leave me no alternative."

"Oh, but I have ... I do."

"Not one that I can accept."

"Then you force me to say good-bye."

"Good-bye."

His legs could not have heard the marching-order; he remained rooted where he stood. Ebbings and flowings of color mottled his handsome face.

"One last word ... Is it to come to this? We stand ... at the final parting of the ways. Think ... This is what you wish?"

If he still hoped for impossible reconciliation, or if merely some instinct moved him to put the burden for the breaking upon her, Carlisle did not know. She was past arguing now.

"This is yours."

On the pink palm he had kissed such a little while ago she held out the glorious diamond he had given her in the first radiance of the engagement. Canning saw no way of escaping the offering; he accepted it with a stiff bow, dropped it in the pocket of his coat. But it was a business to which even he quite failed to impart any dignity.

He looked blindly about for his hat and stick, remembered that he had left them outside, turned and faced his love again. Between them passed a long look.

"Then ... this is good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Cally again.

And then Hugo opened the door of papa's study and went away. And in a moment there was the sound of the front door shutting.

Was it over, then? Was the parting of lovers so brief, so final?...

Cally started, as from a trance. She ran out of the study and through the dark library to the drawing-room and the front windows. Just in time, she stood behind the curtains, and caught a last glimpse of Canning's receding back. Brave and dear it looked, departing.

Over and over she said to herself: "He's gone ... Hugo's gone ... He has thrown me over ..."

Gone was the prince of lovers. Calamity fell upon calamity. It would be better to be dead. And suddenly all that was hard and resisting in the girl broke with the taut strain, broke with a poignant bodily throe, and she fell face downward into a great chair, weeping with wild abandon.

Here, within two minutes from the shutting of the door, her mother found her.

* * * * *

So the beginning at the Beach touched its farther end. It touched with the shocks of cataclysm, whose echoes did not soon cease to reverberate. The word of the Lord came to Jack Dalhousie's father, and he would not suffer in silence. Mr. Heth arrived at the House at ten o'clock that night; it was the best he had been able to do, but it was too late for a family reunion by an hour. The two women had fled away to New York, probably on the very same train that bore back Hugo Canning. And behind them Rumor of the triple head had already risen, roaring an astonishment and a proverb.

XXII

One summer in the Old Hotel; of the World's wagging on, Kern Garland, and Prince Serge Suits; of how Kern leaves the Works for Good and has a Dream about Mr. V.V.'s Beautiful Lady; of how Mr. V.V. came to sit in the still Watches and think again of John the Baptist.

And still the world wagged on.

Calamity befell one House out of many, and the natural cycles did not stir a hair's breadth. The evening and the morning were another day, and another and another. May ran indifferent out, with blue skies and a maddening sequence of "Continued Heat." Then presently the long days had reached their length, loitered awhile, turned slowly backward. And June had become July, and midsummer lay fast over the half-empty town.

It was a summer that broke records for heat, and those fled from it who could. But in the industrious backwaters of towns, where steady work means steady bread, it is the custom of men to take the climate as it comes to them, freezing or sweating at the weather-man's desire. Mountain and ocean, awninged gardens and breeze-swept deck: those solaces are not for these. Ninety Fahrenheit it ran and over, day after day, half of June, half of July. But in the old Dabney House Mrs. Garland stood on by the steaming wash-tubs, and Kern fared daily to the bunching-room at Heth's and its air like the breath of a new bake-oven, and Vivian, the doctor, was never "on his vacation" when his sick called, and stout Mr. Goldnagel, week on week, mopped his bald Hebraic head and repaired while you waited, with all work strictly guaranteed.

Of these four it was the young physician who kept the busiest, for his work never ended. Falling back from his brief appearance in the upper world, he had been speedily swallowed again by his own environment. Routine flattened him out as never before; the problem of life was to find time to sleep.

For one thing, there was a mild epidemic of typhoid this summer, breaking out in those quarters of the town where moderate conveniences (as Mrs. Garland called them) were matters of hearsay only, and the efficient and undermanned Health Department, fighting hard, did not have the law to drive home orders where they would do the most good. But the doctor of the Dabney House needed no epidemic to keep him occupied, so acceptable was his no-bill custom--still maintained--to the unwell laity of the vicinage. Through the dingy waiting-room, old state bedchamber, there rolled a waxing stream, and the visiting rounds of V. Vivian, M.D., ran long and overlong.

Had these been pay patients, carriage trade, Receipts would have soared dizzily in these days, and handsome additions might have been made to that Beirne residue of fifteen thousand dollars, now lying useless, not even at three per centum, in Mr. Heth's Fourth National Bank. But here trooped only the unworthy with unworthy troubles, not always of the body; the poor and the sinful with their acute complaints; waiters and day-laborers and furtive sisters in sorry finery, plumbers' helpers with broken heads, bankrupt washerwomen, married grocer's clerks with coughs not destined to stop. To these through the sweltering days and nights, young Dr. Vivian ministered according to his gifts. They took his pills, his bottles and his "treatment"; they lauded but rarely took his moral counsel; and not a few spoke of loans....

All July the old hotel rang with the blows of hammer and the rasp of saw, in preparation for its new birth in September, as the Union Settlement House. There came often, in the late afternoons, the Rev. George Dayne, the tireless and kind-faced Secretary of Charities, who wandered whistling over the lower floor, while his mind's eye saw, beyond the litter of boards and brick and demolished partitions, the emerging visage of a great institution. And Mr. Dayne rarely failed to climb the stairs for a little chat with the young man in the polished coat who, under promise of secrecy, had called these wonders into being.

More regular were the visits of Hon. Samuel O'Neill, desirous of talking over the state of the Union, particularly as touching the new advanced labor law he was now beginning to draft--"stiffest factory legislation ever passed in the South." And sometimes, when the condition of the sick permitted it, these two would slip away from the Dabney House for a welcome swim, with a growing swarm of boys behind; for Vivian had been the best swimmer on the river in his day, and still did things from the springboard which many lads with two sound feet could not copy. So diversion from the medical grind was not wanting. And once in June, the doctor lunched with Mr. Dayne at Berringer's, and twice he was dragged off to supper at the Cooneys' and enjoyed himself very much, and once he took Sunday dinner with his aunt, Mrs. Mason, and his little Mason cousins: only that time he was called away from the table before dessert, and got back to South Street just a minute before Mrs. Meeghan died....

The Garlands rarely saw their boarder now except at mealtimes, and by no means always then. Kern, for her part, was off to the Works at quarter to seven each morning, and had stopped coming home for dinner since the heat got so bad. However, the women observed him, and talked him over of nights as they washed the dishes in the new detached kitchen. For the Garland _ménage_ boasted this moderate convenience now, directly attributable to the remarkable growth of Receipts (voluntary) which had reached $21.75 by the book for the single month of June. It was agreed that Mr. V.V. was not so jokey at the supper-table as formerly, and looked po'ly, in fine, and no wonder, the heat and all, and the way he let Hazens and Epsteins roust him out of bed in the middle of his sleep.

Kern deplored the doctor's thinness, and hardly less, in her secret heart, his strange indifference to his personal appearance. She observed to her mommer that she never see a gempman go so shabby. She longed to admonish Mr. V.V. on some of these matters, but on the whole hardly saw her way clear. However, it is possible to do a thing or two by indirection in this world, as one half the race has had gone reason to learn. And one sultry night in mid-July, the little buncher seemed able to talk of nothing but the astonishing suit Jem Noonan had just obtained at the One-Price Outfitting Company for the somewhat laughable sum of $7.90. A three-piece Prince serge, warranted fast, with the English shoulders and high-cut vest, which only last week had been $15, for Jem had seen it in the window with his own eyes, but had waited around, knowing that the Mid-Summer Stock Rejuicing Sales were now about due. Such a Chance Would Not Soon Occur Again: so it said on the card in the window, and so Didymus himself would have believed, hearing Kern Garland's abandoned eulogies....

And, sure enough, Mr. V.V., at length fired out of his purely civil interest, was visited with a brilliant association of ideas, as his eye betrayed. It was a matter, it will be remembered, which he had always meant to take up some day.

"Did you say the One-Price," he inquired, not without an inner sense of cleverness and enterprise, "or was it the Globe?"

Kern's heart thrilled. She was a woman, and hence the mother of all men. And this, of course, was the moment to introduce quite simply, the subject of the Genuine Mouldform Garments like the pixtures in the magazines, $15, rejuiced from as high as $28.50, and would look, oh, so fine and stylish long after the Prince serge had worn slick and faded....

"But I thought you spoke of the Prince as something especially fine," said Mr. V.V., with rather a long face for the way expenses seemed to be mounting up.

"Fine for on'y a carpenter, oh, yes," said Kern, "but not hardly what you'd recmend to a doctor, oh, no."

The young man said ruefully that perhaps he had better investigate the One-Price bargains, before Jem Noonan gobbled them all up. Then his eyes rested on Kern across the table, and the light of enterprise died out of them....

To take this child away from the Heth Works would be easy, indeed, but what to do with her then? That was a question which money could not answer. Kern's education had stopped at twelve. She was nineteen years old, born to work, and qualified to do nothing in the world but make cheroots.

After all, could anything more suitable happen to her than that she should take a fancy to Jem Noonan, the upstanding, square-jawed, taciturn youth who had appeared at the Dabney House in his Sunday blacks one night in May, and had reappeared regularly once a week since? Noonan was master of his trade at twenty-one, a lodge man, an attendant at ward meetings, and laying by money to embark as a contractor; he bade fair to be a power some day. And, though he seemed to be almost completely dumb, there must be something uncommon in him that he should be so drawn to the gay, dreaming little creature who was so clearly made of other clay than his....

"I haven't seen Jem for some time," said the doctor aloud, casually. "How are you and he getting on these days?"

Kern gave an impish little exclamation: she never liked for Mr. V.V. to mention Jem.

"Him and me mostly get off!... Him and _I_ mostly get off...."

And then she giggled briefly, and sprang up with eyes too bright and went skipping and kicking for the detached kitchen to see if there was any hot lightbread.

But she flung over her shoulder as she vanished: "Jem he lacks 'magination...."

Returning with rolls, the small diplomat reverted to the question of the Mouldform Garment, which, it seemed to be settled, Mr. V.V. was to purchase on the morrow. Kern's endeavor was to convey the idea that, in cases such as this, many men ever made it a practice to keep the old suit by, like for rainy days, and under no circumstances to give it away to the first person comes along and asts them for it. Clearly the reference here was to her father, the erring Mister, who had appeared at the Dabney House in June's first blush and was now (it was presumable) wearing Mr. V.V.'s derby down many a sunny lane.

"And the shirts they got at the One-Price Company!" cooed Kern. "And the shoes!... Lor, them people're givin' away stock awmost!..."

However, Mr. V.V. did not purchase shoes and shirts next day, or even a Genuine Mouldform Garment. For that day was Tuesday, July 17th, the day when the professional mercury in the Government "kiosk" set its new record, which was like to stand for many years. One hundred and one it announced, not without a touch of pride; and that day Ours was the hottest city in the United States (some said in the world), and many private thermometers showed one hundred and four, five, and six. And on that day Corinne Garland wilted abruptly in the sickening heat, and her tall machine at the Heth Works stood silent after three P.M....

Kern came home and went to bed, and suddenly all the current of life in the Dabney House was changed. It was after five when Mr. V.V., returning from his rounds, heard the news, with a tightening feeling around his heart, and went down the long hall to see her.

The little girl lay silent, with feverish cheeks, and did not make a game of sticking out her tongue, which was certainly a bad symptom. However, Kern was sensitive with Mr. V.V.; she didn't like to answer his questions, wouldn't tell the truth in fact. It took a grizzled gentleman from the other end of town, Dr. Halstead, late physician to Mr. Armistead Beirne, to fix the diagnosis beyond doubt. Typhoid, said he, confirming the first impression of his learned young colleague. Kern Garland had typhoid.

Well, it wasn't her lungs, at any rate, objects of suspicion since the pleurisy in January. Only--only--how had she ever been allowed to stay on at the Works so long?...

The little girl had also a nervous constitution, hardly fitted for weathering many gales. So observed the grizzled visitor, aside. And, glancing about the poor room with its sway-backed double bed, he advised that she be sent off to a hospital without delay, and so smiled cheerily at the small patient and went chugging back to his handsome house on Washington Street, having pooh-poohed all mention of a fee.

But Kern cried bitterly at the threat of a hospital, and Mr. V.V. instantly promised that she shouldn't stir a foot from where he was. He didn't mean that she should suffer by it, either. But it would be a strange thing if he, a resident physician with the riches of the world behind him (practically speaking), could not do all that a hospital could do, and perhaps that little more beside that might make all the difference....

There followed a day of intense activity, and at the end of that time--behold the power of money in the bank, so decried by transcendentalists.

Mrs. Garland slept alone in a new room containing the sway-backed double bed, and (to tell the truth) not one earthly thing besides. Kern slept in a brand-new single bed of white iron, new-mattressed and sheeted, and not far away stood another bed exactly like it. Beside Kern's bed stood a table holding glasses and bottled milk and thermometer and cracked ice and charts and liquid diet. In one of the windows stood three potted geraniums, growing nicely and bright red. Another window, where the noonday sun shone in too warmly, was fitted with a red-striped awning; and in a third--for the pleasant old room, at the extreme back of the house, had no less than four of them--a baby electric fan, operated from a storage battery, ran musically hour by hour. And through all these marvels moved the biggest and most incredible marvel of all: a lady in a blue-and-white dress and long apron, with spectacles and a gentle voice, who was paid _twenty-five dollars a week_ to wait upon and give sponge baths to her, Kern Garland.

Yes, you could do something with one thousand dollars put into a checking account, and fourteen thousand more waiting behind that on a certificate of deposit. But was it not the irony of life, was it not life itself, that the little buncher, who only the other day would have thrilled to her marrow at the mere thought of all these things, should have won her lady's glories only when she was too strangely listless to care for them?...

Mrs. Garland feebly protested against the doctor's staggering expenditures, as in duty bound, but was silenced when he told her that, by a lucky chance, he had a fund given him by a benevolent relative for just such cases. The doctor took advantage of the interview to announce a stiff raise in board-charges, saying, in quite a censorious way, that he had been expecting for some time to hear a demand from her for such an increase. As it was, through her failure to protect her own interests, she and Kern had been doing the full duties of an office-boy for him, doing them, he might say, faithfully and well, without compensation of any sort whatsoever. This imposition must cease at once.

"Again," said he, "I am growing--somewhat heartier. I am quite aware that I eat more. I say that thirty-five dollars a month, and probably more, is the proper amount for me to pay."

And he said it so sternly, with such a superior gempman's way to him, that Mrs. Garland, feeling convicted of guilt,--and, to tell the truth, missing Kern's earnings sorely,--could only reply: "Just as you say, sir, well, now, and thank you kindly, I'm sure."

The first excitement gradually subsided, and the Dabney House settled to the long pull. Days slipped by, all just alike.

Kern's malady discouraged reading aloud. It discouraged conversation. Visitors were not allowed. But twice, without the nurse's knowledge,--Miss Masters took her rest-time every afternoon from three to seven,--rules were suspended to admit Miss Sadie Whirtle, of Baird & Himmel's,--an enormous, snapping, red-cheeked girl she proved to be, whose ample Semitic countenance gave a copious background for violet talcum, but who said nothing wittier in Vivian's hearing than "Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure"--and once to admit Miss Henrietta Cooney, of Saltman's bookstore. Hen came by from the store late one August afternoon, having heard something of the case which seemed to worry V.V. more than all his others put together. She was allowed to spend twenty minutes in the sick-room, provided she did not permit Kern to talk. Having faithfully obeyed these instructions, Henrietta returned to the office, where the doctor sat in his shirt-sleeves, humped over Miss Masters's chart.

"She's an odd little thing," said Hen, "very cute and dear with her staring eyes and her yes-ma'ams. I was telling her about the Thursday Germans, first explaining that a German had nothing to do with Germany--or has it? You know you told me she was wild about parties. She was so, so interested.... V.V., she's quite a sick girl, isn't she?"

"Quite sick," replied V.V. He glanced out of his weather-worn window, and said: "But she's going to be better to-morrow."

"Oh! That's the crisis, or whatever you call it?"

He answered by a nod, and Hen continued:

"She never belonged in the Works, and she certainly never belonged to that fat woman with the beak I met in the hall. She's a changeling--that's it. Speaking of the Works, V.V., I had quite a long letter from Cally Heth this week."

"Oh!" said V.V. "Oh, yes!--from Miss Heth. How is she?"

Hen, who had been strolling about the tall chamber and peeking into the instrument cabinet, noted the young man's guarded tone; and she wondered how many times V.V. and her cousin Cally had met, and what part he had played in all that affair, and in general what these two thought of each other.

"Well, she's certainly in much better spirits than when I had the note from her in July. One thing, her answering my letters at all shows it. They're in Switzerland now, at the National House, Lucerne, and J. Forsythe Avery has, turned up, which is a pretty good sign of the times, I should say. He's a social barometer, you know,--the last man in the world to turn up where it would hurt his position, whatever it is. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear some fine day that Mr. Canning had sneaked back, too, now that the worst is over, and wasn't so very bad at that. There's a man I'd like to have five minutes' talk with," said Henrietta Cooney. "I think I'd give him something to put in his memory-book."

Hen, having her own theory of events, gave a defiant tug to her new sailor-hat. She considered that she looked very nice to-day, and she