She was prettier than he remembered--or was it merely that the new hat (trimmed but yesterday) was more becoming than the old?--and her gaze, though not reproachful a bit, had for him a quality subtly appealing. Of the lives and loneliness of young womanly women--of that forced _waiting_ which dams up all energies unused, and hangs the spirit to thrash about in a void, working over each small event to a towering importance--of such matters, a man, even Charles, the authority, knew only through the powers of his imagination. Charles did observe, however, that this girl seemed very glad to see him. And he felt that he now reciprocated these feelings.
"But," said he, with a hypocritically pleasant look at the vehicle, "Santa Claus seems to have remembered you, too! This is something new, isn"t it?" said Charles, though feeling that new was hardly the word.
"Yes,--aren"t you surprised? My brother in Pittsburg gave it to me. I"ve just learned to run it! It was so exciting!"
And then, in a pretty, hesitating way, she said: "Won"t you let me drive you--home, or wherever you"re going? I"d like to, so much. I--want so to tell you all the news."
He protested that he could not think of using Miss Flower as a taxicab.
But when she urged it, in pleasing, ingenuous sentences, and explained that she was out only to drive about anywhere, for practice, it did not occur to him to maintain the churlish negative. And, indeed, this was exactly what he had desired from the moment of reading her perfect note last month--sweet reconciliation in just such a casual way, admitting or entailing next to nothing.
So the returning author of the write-ups was to be seen carefully squeezing himself, and "Willc.o.x"s," into the seat of Tommy"s delightful gift.
"Let"s see--the engine"s still going--isn"t it?" said she, rather superfluously, it seemed, in view of the uproar. "Then I have to kick that and push this over...."
As the girl said, so she did, her look a little anxious, her young face flushed with excitement. And, sure enough, the vehicle, of a self-propelling type, suddenly shook itself with a few loud snorts, and jumped forward with a jar.
"And what sort of car is this?" resumed Charles, dissembling intense curiosity as mere sympathetic interest.
"It is a Fordette," replied Angela, not without pride.
As they wobbled round the corner, narrowly missing the sidewalk, she added in the same proud manner: "And this is my very first drive by myself."
The taking of the corner (she explained that she could not turn round alone yet) meant that he was not going to pa.s.s the Wings", after all; but Charles hardly noticed that. He had himself to look to, in his somewhat unusual position. However, the drive to the Studio, though noisy, was very short; her completely feminine inefficience as a driver, their snail"s progress, could not extend it over many minutes; and the whole thing proved as easy and reproachless as could possibly have been wished. Light friendly talk was the note, flowing without embarra.s.sment now. Angela told of the two great happenings in her family, seeming to count upon his interest, and getting it genuinely enough, too. He was glad, sincerely, that Luck had smiled on this girl, who had seemed to him not to be having much of a chance. But she was not one, even so, to take all the conversation to herself; it was a trait that he had noted, and liked, in her from the beginning.
"Mr. Garrott," she said, at the first little pause, "aren"t you going to have some stories out pretty soon now? You know you told me you were writing some--before you began your book?"
How gladly Mr. Garrott would have reported a little luck, too! But no, he was still known to Tables of Contents only as the author of write-ups. Somewhat ruefully, he explained to Angela his position about the editors; namely, that the sooner the lot of them came under the eye of a lunacy commission, the better for all concerned.
She became the comforter: "But perhaps they"ve accepted some of your stories while you were away so long!" He, however, knew that there was nothing in that.
"Well, no--no. You see, my--my relative who lives with me, Judge Blenso, looks after my mail when I"m away. And he"s been sending me the casualty lists from time to time."
"But that story I liked so much--you told me a little about it one day--about Helena and her husband, don"t you remember, who went off to the desert island--"
"Oh, that? That"s been declined--yes, declined three times, if I remember rightly--"
"_Really!_ But how _could_ they! I should think they would have _jumped_ at it! Why, I thought it was just wonderful...."
Her instinct for supplying charm was not amiss, it seemed.
"By the way," said the young author carelessly, as they curved into his own street, "have you happened to see this?"
And he not only showed Angela his "Willc.o.x"s," with the write-up in it, but bestowed it upon her, for her own. It developed that he had extra copies in his pocket.
Angela was very grateful for the magazine. Everything was as pleasant and friendly as possible. And at parting, she said, with only the slightest return of self-consciousness:--
"This has been a very short drive, Mr. Garrott! I hope we can have a real one some day soon."
To that the young man, standing on the sidewalk before his own door, replied with a courteous generalization. Wariness was reflexive with him, so to say. But then, as he looked at the soft young face, he seemed to become suddenly conscious of the essential caddishness of his past behavior, and of yet another feeling, too, less coolly judicial. Had not the Kiss, in fact, set this girl somehow apart from others, remaining as a subtle bond after all?
Pressing her slender hand, he added: "Meanwhile, I"ve enjoyed this one very much! You"ve been--extremely good to me."
"Willc.o.x"s" had given Mary the Freewoman a fine spread. The write-up occupied all of one of its large pages, with three paragraphs "Continued on Page 49," among the Men"s Ready to Wear Clothing. Out of the middle of the text, the best of the portraits supplied by f.a.n.n.y Warder gazed back steadily at the two relatives in the Studio. The famous Mary was seated in a flowered armchair, and seemed just to have looked round over her shoulder. Her delicate, quite girlish, face wore her characteristic look of faint, grave interrogation; her eyes were intent and fine.
"Gad, you know!" said Judge Blenso, who had seen Charles"s name in print for the first time with an exclamation of pride and pleasure. "Why, it"s stunnin", my dear fellow! Simply stunnin"!"
But the mind"s eye of Charles, looking down at the life-like presentment, was seeing that confident gaze averted; the ear of his fancy was hearing the low sounds of womanly emotion in this quarter at last. That, of course, was just after he had gently said to her--why, it might be next week!--"Do you remember telling me one day that I couldn"t help you at all? Why, Miss Mary, did you really suppose I"d let you go on as a Grammar School teacher till _May_!...."
"Bring "em out as a holiday book--that"s what I say! Why, good gad, Charles!--we only got twenty dollars for that piece there!"
The young man laughed absently, and removed his overcoat. A glance at Big Bill showed that it was just four o"clock. He had examined the mail, heard the secretary"s unfavorable reports. The Studio, after nearly three weeks" holiday, suggested the necessity of work undoubtedly; he was as far from settling upon his Line as ever. But it seemed that he didn"t feel like plotting scenarios to-day.
The "Post," the "State," the "Chronicle"--why shouldn"t he go down there now, get the thing started at once?...
"Oh, Judge, by the way! Do you know whether Miss McGee ever brought back that book I lent her?--fat red book, called "Marna"?"
""Marna," "Marna"? Never heard of it. Yes, that"s so, she did! Here it is!" said the Judge, and forthwith plucked Miss Angela"s long-kept loan from the bookcase close by.
"That"s it! Let"s lay it here on the mantel. Then maybe I"ll remember--"
"And borrowed a lot more, too!" exclaimed the Judge, suddenly laughing loud and long. "Gad, I lent her an armful, fact!--night we had the sleet-storm!"
"You did?--good! We"ll convince her we"re her true friends yet."
His secretary, having gazed at him a moment with brilliant blankness, suddenly exclaimed: "Why, Charles, my dear fellow, you"re looking like a fighting-c.o.c.k! You must have put on a stone--fine! Here, let me feel your muscle!"
Charles tried to evade that ceremony, but it was, of course, no use.
Having caught him going through certain setting-up exercises one night, and being misled by the light remark he let fall, Judge Blenso was irrevocably convinced that the sedentary Charles had an affair of honor on his hands. The night he made this discovery--the very night Charles secretly began the exercises, of course, the night of the day he had seen Mysinger on the street--the Judge had become almost dangerously excited, springing from bed and walking about a long time in his pajamas, saying over and over: "The old blood"ll tell! Gad, you know!
It"s the old blood!" All attempts to explain, then and since, had been utterly without effect.
However, a knock on the door interrupted the proceedings, and Mrs.
Herman came walking into the Studio--a dark, round, rosy little body, beetle-browed but beaming.
"Such a popular man I never saw!" said she, roguishly. "One lady meeting him and driving him up from the station, another calling him up before he"s hardly arrived, and goodness knows who"ll be next!"
"Why, who"s calling me, Mrs. Herman?"
"It"s Miss Wing!--waiting at the phone! And no wonder, with all you and the Judge have done for her, I"m sure! Judge, I hope you find your new chair comfortable?"
Having received the unexpected summons with a peculiar start of gladness, the young man descended the stairs with the most agreeable antic.i.p.ations. To do a valuable service for a friend is, with some natures, to become fonder than ever of that friend; and Charles, from the moment of reading her unprecedented letter, was aware that his original services to Mary had distinctly had these sentimental reactions. (For of course such natures _are_ sentimental, disgustingly so, and real Men--not to say realistic men--invariably hate and despise their friends, and speak to said friends at all only with a view to taking away their money or their wives.)
So, sitting down at the little telephone-table in the dark rear-hall, Charles smiled to himself and said, in a false voice:--
"Pardon me, but is this the famous Miss Wing, who--"
And Mary"s voice seemed to spring toward him through the receiver, like an embrace: "Oh, _King Charles_!"