XI
To the host, the luncheon party at the Arlington had not once presented itself as a jolly gathering of any set, young or old. He had conceived it as a duty, and an expensive one; he approached it, truth to tell, with a certain secret complacence as to Mary Wing uppermost in his mind; and he left it (after Mary"s private talk with him) with chastened reflections and a group of new reactions on the subject of Egoettes.
For two weeks, Charles had been very busy in the Studio. The luncheon stood as his first whirl in Society since Angela Flower"s bridge-party.
Donald Manford, departing to seek his biggest commission, seemed to need a friendly send-off. Miss Carson seemed to be indicated as the logical co-sharer of the same. At the Redmantle Club, as he had never forgotten, Charles had taken Donald bodily away from the firm beautiful girl Mary had selected to be his wife. Now, as it were, he was handing Donald back to her again--loyal Moderns all. Beyond the match-making, however, this function was intended to cheer up Mary, and to indicate to the Public that Charles Garrott was her supporter in adversity as in success. Thus, from every point of view, the "demoted" school-teacher was the real guest of honor, and the host, when not fomenting conversation of a matrimonial nature between the two young persons on his right, found a peculiar pleasure in conversing with her. Indeed, he could hardly look at Mary to-day without a lurking smile.
Later, as noted, Charles sobered. What Mary lingered to tell him, "for his own good," was that Flora Trevenna had gone away. As it was the one thing he had supposed Miss Trevenna incapable of doing, he was proportionately taken by surprise. But, for a moment, he saw in the tidings only that the great obstacle in his and Mary"s way back to the High School, their common Old Man of the Sea, had been amazingly removed.
Endeavoring to conceal his immense relief, he said: "Gone away! Why, where"d she go to?"
Mary"s reply was meant to shake him, and it did.
"Oh--anywhere! She went, not because she had anywhere to go, but just because she wouldn"t stay here."
"But--I don"t understand you! I thought this was where she wanted to stay."
"More than anything else in the world. And that was why she went--don"t you see? She went because of her mother and father and sisters--whom you supposed she never gave a thought to. She went because of Mysinger and me."
The two advanced friends stood among the shrubs of the Arlington winter garden, beside a little tinkling grotto. In silence, Charles dropped a pebble down among the dusky forms of fish.
"Of course," said Mary, slowly, "I told her a story about--my trouble at the High School. But I could see that she knew all the time. I"m sure now that was what decided her to go--by herself. Some friend or other got her some sort of position--in Philadelphia. Of course she went without saying anything to me...."
Her voice, which could be so annoyingly calm at times, was deeply troubled. Charles expressed sympathies, with haste; and, indeed, he felt them now, oddly and disturbingly. It was as if Miss Trevenna, by that simple act of getting down off other people"s backs, had too suddenly upset his whole opinion of her.
"Don"t you think, after all," he said presently, "it may be easier for her somewhere else for a while, than--"
"Oh, easier in a way, yes! But I know she felt, and I think, too, that her only hope of really putting her life together again, ever, was here--where she broke it in two. To go and bury herself among strangers won"t ever settle anything. Oh," exclaimed Mary, "if she could only, only _marry_ now! I suppose people might stop thinking of her as a pariah then, I suppose she might come back! But what"s the use of hoping? She"s still crazily in love with that man, you see."
"What!--she _is_! Why"d she leave him then--?"
The former princ.i.p.al regarded him, drawing on her gloves. She had dark eyebrows, well-marked and unusually arched; they gave a peculiar intentness to her blue gaze, and a faint habitual interrogativeness.
Now, perhaps at the young man"s expression, she laughed, suddenly and naturally. Her spirit was not broken certainly.
"And women are really so awfully simple, too! Of course she left him, Mr. Garrott, because she didn"t think he cared enough for her any longer to--justify her."
And, grave again, she asked, directly: "Have you really doubted that she has a higher ideal of love than half the good people who"ve wanted to run her out of the city and stone her?"
This, indeed, Charles had had no reason to doubt. He, of course, had never shared the low opinion of a woman, that she had but one virtue, and that one too crudely appraised. His complaint against this girl had been upon a wholly different ground--now abruptly fallen beneath his feet. He was troubled with the sense that this young figure, in vanishing, had suddenly touched the dignity of tragedy. He had remembered, with a little shock, that Miss Trevenna was not yet twenty-five years of age.
And still, he, the authority, knew that having a high ideal was not enough.
As the two moderns left the hotel, he said in a grave manner: "Let me take you home."
"No, don"t think of it! I"m only going to the car-line," said Mary; and added absently: "I"ve been trying all week to go to see Angela, and now I must."
"Ah, yes!--certainly!" said the luncheon host hastily, and a look that could only be described as guilty flitted visibly over his face.
But this disappeared; the somewhat chastened authoritative look returned at once. Pursuing his tutorial round, Charles seemed able to think of nothing else but Mary"s ill-starred friend, who had so damaged Mary, who had so staked and smashed her own life, on a sentence in a book.
And who put that sentence into a book, and who was going to wipe it out with another, if not he, Charles? Here, it might be, he had a pointer or two to give to that great compeer of his, the lady in Sweden.
He had done Miss Trevenna a serious wrong, of course; he had judged her by the company she kept. It was an age when cheeky "prophets" were shouting from every bush a New philosophy which amounted to this: that civilized society must be made accommodating to self-indulgent people.
They did not mention, very probably they did not know, that it had not been easy to civilize society, and that self-indulgent people had not done the job. With such shallow egoists he had cla.s.sed Miss Trevenna; and now, silent still, she had finely refuted him. There was, indeed, a quality not for little folk in this girl"s fierce imprudences. At the test, she had repudiated the Ego, kicked off all the meanness and flabbiness of her teachings. But in the meantime, unfortunately, these teachings had done for her.
And it seemed to Charles Garrott, tramping intently along (for the downpour gave him the freedom of the streets to-day) that it would be a sweet and glorious thing if, say, a dozen of these leathern-lunged professors of a new chaos could be gathered up, from the studies and libraries where they sat so snug around the world, and brought here to share this girl"s catastrophe and go with her in her exile. And by George!--they shouldn"t squirm out by trying to blame it all on a mere ignorant Public Opinion either! No, he, Charles, having a lot of them together thus, would improve the occasion to explain, once and for all, that freedom was not a thing that any chance pa.s.ser could pick up and use, like a cane; but, rather, the last difficult conquest of a unified race. He would inform them that it was only too fatally easy to act "free," at others" expense, the difficult and important thing being, precisely, not so to act. And as to love, he would hammer into their thick heads that the way to freedom was NOT through the delightfully easy course of "demonstrating experiment" by self-elected Exceptional People, but by the far more difficult demonstration that men and women could be strong and constant in their affections, and trustworthy in their pa.s.sions.
There, indeed, was a demonstration for Exceptional People to get to work on at once. Why write large books to declare that "the great love" was its own justification. Why waste good ink upon an ideal truism? On what day would a New book-writer teach men and women how to love greatly, or how to tell even a little love from love"s baser counterfeit? So long as every schoolboy, drawn by a brief spark, will swear that his is the great love; so long as men greatly love one person this year, and next year quite another; so long as they will gladly deceive themselves, or ape emotions above them, lest they must deny themselves a pa.s.sing indulgence: thus long would untrustworthy mortals need the hard restraint of Law.
"Why, if men and women had the quality of love needed to make "freedom"
work," thought the tutor suddenly, sloshing along toward the Choristers", "they wouldn"t need the freedom! No, then they"d be perfectly satisfied with monogamous marriage."
Decidedly impressed with this epigram, Charles thought at once of "Notes on Women." To draw the ruined life of Miss Trevenna across the line of his new novel had, of course, come into his mind while he yet talked with Mary. But he was fully aware that not one novel, or five, would ever plumb bottom here.
Nevertheless, these thoughts pursued the young man through his lesson with Miss Grace Chorister, and up to the very door of the Studio. There, he suddenly became a working author again.
It was now five-thirty o"clock in the rainy afternoon. The demands of hospitality had forced the postponement of Miss Grace a full hour, and the cutting altogether of the old lady who was studying French. Entering his retreat thus belatedly, Charles shot a look ahead at the writing-table, according to his habit. A letter lay on the table, wearing a distinctly business air; and when the young man was still several paces off, he saw that the envelope bore the name of "Willc.o.x"s Weekly."
For the most part, Charles"s communications from editors had come to him in long envelopes of an ominous, a rejectional, fatness. Now it was his hour to see other samples from the editorial envelope supply, square envelopes, gratifyingly thin. Breaking the square thin envelope of "Willc.o.x"s Weekly" with nervous hurry, Charles read:--
DEAR MR. GARROTT:--
We have pleasure in accepting your interesting sketch of Miss Wing, for early publication in the WEEKLY. Our "Persons in the Foreground" department is always in the market for entertaining material of this character.
Check for $20 will follow in due course. We are, with thanks,
Yours sincerely,
WILLc.o.x"S WEEKLY.
Having read these few lines once, the author, still standing, read them again, and yet again. Upon his lip was the faint smile it had worn when he looked at Mary at the luncheon--before she began telling him things for his good. He was fairly ent.i.tled to wear this smile; but now it seemed in danger of becoming fixed for life.
He was selling write-ups of Mary like hot cakes; there was no other word for it. He had written and sent out three write-ups--an unprecedented number about a single person--and now he had sold two of them already.
He had hoped to plant, say, one write-up among the weeklies--to get quick results--and now he had planted two in the weeklies. Moreover, the third write-up had been in the hands of a famous weekly for ten days now.
That he had managed it all with remarkable adroitness, the young man could not conceal from himself. Cunningly enough, he had based all the write-ups on the fact that Mary Wing, at thirty, had risen almost to the top of a large city school system, where no woman had ever risen before.
For that made Mary a public figure; that justified the write-ups. But, the bait thus thrown, he had given to each eulogy a special character and thesis of its own, always with an eye to local effects. This piece here, for example, which "Willc.o.x"s Weekly" found so extremely interesting and entertaining, concerned Mary the Freewoman, and touched delicately yet with vigor upon her late persecution for righteousness"
sake. And this piece, the most personal and the best of the lot, alone bore the signature of Charles King Garrott. He had got Hartwell to sign one, Elsie White Story, President of the State Equal Suffrage League, to sign another. And only yesterday, Mrs. Story had telephoned that _her_ piece (Mary the "Feminist"--only you may be sure Charles had not used that horrible word) had been gobbled up by the "Sat.u.r.day Review,"
and sent around the "Review"s" delightful letter.
So Charles could recall Mary"s hard saying, that day at the High School, with a sense of triumph now. She, who had said he couldn"t help her, had rather overlooked this gift he had, his power and his art.
Unquestionably, the thing was going to break big: she would have the surprise of her life....
"Great heavens! _How I can write!_" suddenly exulted the young man, throwing out his arms. "I"ll beat "em all some day!"
Upon which, exactly as at a cue in a play, the door from the bedroom opened, slowly and quietly. And there stood Judge Blenso in the crack, a flat package in his hand.
Between uncle and nephew there pa.s.sed a long stare. The uncle began to turn a little pale. But it was the nephew who spoke first, nervously and yet expectantly too:--