The worst thing in it all (reflected Charles, with worriment, in the street-car) was that Sarah and the Oldmixons were far from being brazen hussies; they were really nice girls, only sharpened a little by tedium and the creeping fear of "failure." Odd though it seemed, they actually remained almost completely unconscious of their own processes. And still it had taken him and Talbott nearly a year to get out of the soft vicious circle; and still he remembered distinctly that they had then agreed upon the following as their invariable rule of conduct, thenceforward: Never be polite to a womanly girl, unless positive you want to marry her.
A _year_! And of course he had never kissed Sarah and the Oldmixons, either....
Charles went on his rounds in a humor of fatalistic despondence. The mood proved premature, decidedly: while there is life, there is hope.
And it seemed that he, by too much thinking, had wrongly discounted the promising aspects of his case. He had builded rather better than he knew.
When his lesson with Miss Grace was over, at four-thirty that afternoon, the tutor said gloomily:--
"I can"t stay for tea to-day. But I think I"ll just stand here, and look out of the window a little while."
Of course, after yesterday, there could be no more tea-taking. Equally of course, caution was more needed than ever. "Don"t wait for me,"
muttered Charles, reconnoitering, to Miss Grace. And then he forgot her entirely as his eye, shooting out the window, fell upon Donald Manford sauntering carelessly along, over the sunny street.
From the Choristers" window, Charles gazed out at his young friend with moroseness and moody envy. What he had told Angela about this youth was (by chance) almost literally true. Donald--hitherto a hard worker, through Mary Wing"s unceasing influence--_was_ visibly relaxing the ties he was so soon to sever; he _had_ come home in distinctly a holiday humor. And a lot of good that did him, Charles! Donald walked Washington Street there with utter free-and-easiness, with almost insolent impunity. Dull, lucky Donald! He, of course, did not have the devilish gift; Donald kissed no one. No one viewed Donald as her own true man; no home-maker chased him all over the city in a Fordette.
Behind him, Miss Grace pushed a flat b.u.t.ton on the wall and said: "Tea"ll be ready in a minute, Mr. Garrott. You really might as well stay, you know, as stand there looking out of the window."
The tutor made no reply. In fact, he did not hear Miss Grace. By strange luck, he was in the grip of an extraordinary, a truly fascinating experience. Quite suddenly, his ears had been captured by a sound from the street, a sound that had an arresting familiarity among all other sounds, a peculiar whirring, a rumbling, and a snorting, insistent, growing louder. Upon earth, was there but one noise like that?
Swifter than a bullet, Charles"s eyes had gone speeding down the s.p.a.cious street. And his heart leapt up within him as they lighted upon the self-propelling conveyance approaching--but half a block away, chugging steadily nearer....
Yes, his word to the wise had not been wholly wasted, it seemed. There rumbled the good little Fordette after unconscious Donald, gaining on him, gaining almost rapidly....
"Mr. Garrott, what _are_ you looking at?"
"Oh!... Nothing," said the tutor in a m.u.f.fled voice.
But in truth, he was looking, with breathless interest, at the fairest sight seen by him in many a long day. Safe behind the Choristers"
curtains, with general joy, with the acute delights of a born strategist, Charles saw what had so often happened to him, happen now to poor old Donald.
By odd coincidence, it fell out that the re-meeting of Mary Wing"s two cousins took place within fifty feet of the Choristers" window. What more natural than that Angela, in the moment of pa.s.sing her home-come friend, should look over her shoulder and speak a pleasant greeting? Or that Donald, surprised and civil, should unconsciously take a responsive step or two toward the sudden speaker of the greeting? What more certain than death or taxes but that the Fordette should thereupon come to a halt--which it did so easily and naturally? (Oh, how perfectly simple it all was, as you stood off and watched, how gentle and friendly and inexorable!) Casual talk seemed to spring up: how easily Charles, peeping with starting eyes between the parted curtains, could imagine it all!--"I"m so glad to see you back! I"ve wanted so to congratulate you on your great success! I"m crazy to hear about Wyoming!" And presently those crucial words, so innocent-looking, so sweet: "Mr. Manford, won"t you let me," etc. "Truly I"m just out for a drive." And--sure enough--oh, by George! _Hooray!_ There was the poor fool grinning; there he was compressing himself, clambering right into the jaws. _Ah, there, Miss Mary!..._ And there the two young people went snorting away up the street: perfectly normally, though something in Donald"s cramped position, his long legs hunched up to his chin, did oddly suggest a captive, seized and bound.
The tutor astonished Miss Grace by bursting into a wild roar of laughter.
But of course, he understood, on cool a.n.a.lysis, that this really settled nothing. That exciting spectacle, which seemed to make the whole process so extremely concrete, represented a hope, nothing more. And the more this hope was scrutinized, the less substantial it seemed to become.
Walking safely home in the golden afternoon, Charles suddenly recalled, with cold annoyance, a remark Donald had made, after his second walk with Angela in November: "Charlie, she worries me." And Angela, for her part,--though of course womanly, and hence agreeably plastic in her affections,--really seemed hardly more attracted to Donald, as yet.
Charles thought he knew the reason, too. With a fresh chill, he recalled the look the girl had given him, on the corner near Berringer"s, to-day.
Had he really "put her on" to Donald even in the remotest degree? Was it not highly probable that she, patrolling Washington Street at four-thirty, had been looking, not for Donald, but for another?
Of course, there could not be the slightest doubt that--for the present, at least--Angela preferred him to Donald, infinitely, unreasonably. And Angela usually got what she wanted, too, it seemed. For example, she had wanted to move her family from Mitch.e.l.lton to this city, where he, Charles, lived. And she had moved.
XV
He fell instinctively into a small manoeuvre, which was merely this: that he quietly shifted forward his public itinerary by quarter of an hour. Next day, he started rapidly toward the street-cars at quarter before one, and shot out of Miss Grace"s at quarter past four, sharp.
Ultimate detection was certain, of course; but for the moment the trifling ruse did seem to win a hardly hoped-for respite in the headlong courtship. Neither on Friday, nor again on Monday, was the Home-Making Fordette so much as seen. And the next disturbance of the authority"s delicate social scales, and of the author"s Line, came, as might be said, from precisely the opposite direction.
In the Studio, matters had continued to progress backward. Once here, and the door safely shut, Charles had been steadily at work, the hymeneal shadow put resolutely from his mind. No writer"s time, he had pledged himself, should go to somber meditations on the cosmic consequences of a kiss, still less to fruitless bitterness concerning wasted write-ups, the hardness of Egoettes, etc. Day by day, he had wooed that subtle calm of the spirit which is the bread and meat of authors; night by night, expended himself in the service of pure Letters. And it had all been for nothing.
Contrary to explicit resolve, in short, he had been making a fresh attempt at his new novel, hoping--rather weakly--that his mind wasn"t quite so unsettled as he secretly knew it was. And, once more, he had been well punished for his rashness. Symptoms of weakness having developed increasingly through the week just past, on Monday evening Charles took his medicine, just before supper. Ten thousand words of brand-new ma.n.u.script lay in his drawer there; and he would be lucky if he could save a thousand of them for the novel that should be.
Of the "line" taken by this second abortive effort, the less said the better. It suffices to suggest that if Mary Wing had been a totally different sort of person, it might never have been undertaken at all.
Of all ways of spending the time known among men, unquestionably the most abominable, the most nerve-wrecking and devilish, is Thinking up a Book. Charles smoked box after box of cigarettes, couldn"t sleep at night, talked in his sleep when he did, and was growing a scowl between his brows almost as dark as poor Two-Book McGee"s--the interesting Type that was leading its own life and wished it weren"t. The final conviction of the worthlessness of his work was hardly calculated to improve the young man"s state of mind. He was, indeed, profoundly discouraged and concerned. For ten weeks now he had been struggling to isolate a point of view which would at once "carry" all his newer observations on his Subject, and command the support of his unqualified conviction. And to-night he seemed further away from his goal than he had been the day he finished "Bondwomen."
However, what brought Charles"s humor to a sudden head this evening, what precipitated the fury in which Donald Manford found him--Donald, entering so happy and fine in the evening regalia which the match-making Mary seemed to clap on him every night nowadays--by chance had not to do with his own book at all, but with another"s.
In short, the young author, very injudiciously in view of his resolve to think of Egoettes no more, had been dipping into "Marna."
This book of Angela"s had long lain as a plague on the mind of Charles.
For a s.p.a.ce, he had not returned the book because of the estrangement, or misunderstanding; for another s.p.a.ce, because of the swiftly ripening intimacy, compelling the general policy of lying low; and now a large fresh obstacle had risen, in the girl"s unfortunate remarks directly connecting the return of her book with a call. Whether, after that, he could harden his heart to slip "Marna" back to her by the hand of the Judge--without any appreciative blossoms, needless to say--remained to be seen. So long as the situation remained as it was, Charles had decided simply not to take up the worry at all.
Hence Angela"s book rested, gathering dust on the Studio mantel. And, chancing to come on it in his moody pacings after supper, the author had picked it up, in mere resentment at its being there. Standing hostilely, he permitted himself to skim a few pages of the stuff, toward the end.
Next, with growing intention, he looked into the middle. And finally, he sat frankly down with "Marna" in the Judge"s new easy-chair.
It had occurred to him that it was probably his professional duty to see what sort of line on the Unrest the other fellows were taking these days. This book here was enjoying an immense vogue; every newspaper reminded you that it was the Best Selling Book in America. What truth, then, did it have to tell? Or--put more simply--it may be that Charles had merely fallen a weak victim to the true writer"s continual temptation and longing, viz.: to clutch at anything, anything, that will keep him from having to write, or think up.
Angela"s book (which was so strangely unlike Angela) had come from the typewriter of a brilliant and industrious British Thinker. From the "literary criticism" and publisher"s advertising that he read--and he seemed to read little else in these days--Charles had already gathered that "Marna" followed that simple "ultra-modern" line which to him, with his expanding knowledge, now seemed so oddly old-fashioned. In his standing skim just now, he had noted, with quickening distaste, how easily _Marna_ accomplished a glorious Career: as, indeed, a girl has small excuse for not doing, when she has an able author working for her night and day. In particular, he observed that her "demonstrating experiment in freer forms of union" turned out far more happily than poor unauth.o.r.ed Flora Trevenna"s. As well as Charles could make out, _Marna"s_ swain not only had a wife living when she met him, but was engaged to another woman besides. But when the splendid girl said to him, on page 478: "What a joy, beloved, to strike back at the grubby little people who"re trying to fetter the love-spirit! Ah, but I"m glad you"re married!"--after this, every one knew that it was all up with _De Bevoies_, who, being a poet, could hardly be expected to argue back at agreeable talk of this sort. (_Marna_ had met him at an anarchist "social"; he was stunningly modern, and borrowed two pounds from her the first thing next morning.) Not long after the talkative but Higher Honeymoon on the Breton Coast, _Mrs. De Bevoies_ died, with thoughtful promptness, and it was noted that the New couple at once adopted the old-established form of union, after all, and (of course) quickly became the toasts of London.
"_George!..._ How easy writing would be," thought Charles, with great indignation--"if only the truth were as simple as that!"
And then, seated under the lamp Wallie Flower had so skillfully repaired, he turned to page 1, intent upon getting this other fellow"s heroine, and her Career, at the point of origin. The _Twexhams_, he learned, lived quietly, thirty miles from London. (Their address, if it is of the smallest interest, was Fernleigh Cottage, the Priory, Dean"s Highgate, Lower-Minter-on-the-Mavern, Ess.e.x.) _Marna Twexham_ had the striking beauty conventional among the Freewomen of fiction. Having had a year at college, attended several gatherings in the Redmantle Club vein, and read three or more books in which unmarried women told the truth about Life, she inevitably reached the conclusion that it was her duty to make herself free. Put in another way, she saw that it was her duty to go to London. For, of course, "young women of genius" understand perfectly that freedom is a matter of geography, a metropolitan consummation, as we might term it, and would properly smile at the antediluvian who maintained that people can be free in the suburbs, if they can be anywhere. Thus _Marna_ smiled at the old fogey, her father, who opposed her going to London to be free. It seemed that the old chap, for reasons Charles could not fathom, actually wanted to keep the girl with him. "There are dangers in London that a good woman knows nothing of," he said, warningly; but _Marna_ eyed him so knowingly that he changed his tune at once. "You are all we have left, Marny dear," he wheedled. "Don"t go away from us--yet, at any rate." "Why is it a.s.sumed that a woman who does not choose to marry is _left_?" asked the wise strong girl; and while her father scratched his head over this poser, she continued, firm but kind: "Really, you know, Dad, the idea that people have got to spend their lives together merely because of an accidental birth relation--really, you know, all that"s jolly well played out. We"ve proved quite too awfully much about the beastly repressive influence of the family-tie." "But your sister!--poor invalid Muriel!" pleaded old _Twexham_. "She loves you so much, she so dependent on you! It will kill her to--" _Marna"s_ smile, checking his maundering, was a great credit to her self-control (the author said). To set up playing checkers with a neurasthenic spinster, against a soul"s sacred duty to itself and mankind! "Can"t you really see, Dad," she said, quite patiently, "that a trained nurse can look after my sister much more efficiently than I can?" "It isn"t that--exactly," faltered the moss-back parent. "It"s your love she needs. And--I feel that you _do_ belong to us, Marny dear! I feel that--" "No, father," replied the glorious creature, gazing out the oriel window, over the terrace, rose-garden, etc., and into the morning sun. "I belong--out there! Such small abilities as I may possess," said _Marna_ with exquisite modesty, "belong to the Race. Such small contributions as I may be able to make to the thought of my time, I dare not withhold. I cannot be weakly sentimental--and stay," she concluded, with some feeling. (And indeed Dean"s Highgate _was_ a quiet, dull place; Lower-Minter-on-the-Mavern, also.) Presently, the old fellow broke down and wept, and then _Marna_, repelled, eyeing him as if he were something odd and decidedly contemptible, said firmly ...
"Nasty little beast!" cried Charles Garrott, aloud.
He leapt from Judge Blenso"s easy-chair, and glared about like one desirous of something to kick, and that right quickly. Then, with a flashing understanding of his need, he went springing toward the Studio window. And pa.s.sionately he flung the window wide, and pa.s.sionately he hurled the best-selling book in America forth into the winter night.
"Faugh!" shouted Charles.
Down in dark Mason Street, the shooting "Marna" struck the limb of a large tree, and caroming violently, bounded back against a pa.s.sing old gentleman in a black felt hat, who looked like a Confederate veteran.
The old "un, starting with annoyance, clapped a hand to his shoulder, and gazed round and up; then, suddenly catching sight of the young man standing at the third-story window, he shouted something in a high angry voice, and brandished an aged arm with menace. But the young man merely continued to stand there, silently scowling down at him. So then the old gentleman, composing himself but resolved that he should not be smitten for nothing, picked up Miss Angela Flower"s new book from the sidewalk before him, dusted it carefully with an experienced handkerchief, and hobbled away with it into the darkness.
"Disgusting little Egoette!" said Charles, scowling after him.... "And that"s the sort of stuff that pa.s.ses for _thinking_ nowadays! That"s the stuff our women are reading, forming their--"
"Who"re you cussing out the window, Charlie?" said Donald Manford"s hearty voice behind him.
Charles wheeled sharply.
He resented being walked in on this way; resented all companionship from his kind just now; in especial, he resented Donald Manford"s contented, care-free face. At the same time, this face of Donald"s awakened other and different emotions, relative to the slim hope it embodied, and enjoining tact, some cunning.
So, controlling himself, Charles merely said: "Well? What"re you horning in here for?"
"Dying for one glimpse of your sweet phiz. Nice welcome!" laughed the young engineer, exuberantly. "But how"d you ever get into a street-row, Charlie, out of your third-story window?"