Charles himself hesitated on the veranda. The thing was over and done with. The Call was formally and honorably paid. Perhaps he only wanted to do something different from Donald; perhaps he thought to mark signally his revised good opinion of Angela; or perhaps mere revulsion of feeling swung him into exuberant excesses. At any rate, in the very act of extending his book, he recalled a long-forgotten promise, and said suddenly, but tentatively:--
"And Dr. Flower? I suppose he"s out, too?"
"Him? Naws", he"s in," said the slatternly and ill-favored woman.
"What!--he is? Are you sure?"
"Ef yo" want to see him, walk in."
"Ah--well, I"ll just stop and see him for a few moments. That is, _if_ he happens to be at leisure."
So the hack waited in front of the Flowers", and Charles stepped (for the first time on his own motion) over the threshold of Angela"s Home.
He felt that this was a superfluous proceeding; it turned out considerably worse. Having entered the Home, he found himself abruptly plunged into the middle of it, as it were. In fact, the impromptu extension of the Call to Dr. Flower, besides everything else that could be said against it, proved as inopportune as could well have been imagined.
The _contretemps_ indicated was due to the servant (Luemma, in short), who apparently did not believe in announcing visitors, or perhaps had never heard of the civil custom. She merely stood by, in a disapproving, suspicious sort of way, while the caller deposited his book on the hatstand beside Donald"s, and removed his overcoat and gloves. And then she said, with a manner no whit better than her appearance:--
"Walk this way."
Charles, necessarily a.s.suming that this was the rule of the house, walked that way.
The hall of the Home was narrow and dark, the pervading atmosphere noted as somewhat cheerless. It was not lighted and decked for festivity now, as on the famous night of the bridge-party: parlor and dingy little dining-room, glimpsed in pa.s.sing, wore (to the author"s sensitive eye) a depressing air, vaguely suggestive of failure, incompetence and the like. But that, of course, is the front that poverty so commonly wears: all the more reason that a hard-worked Temporary Spinster, or vicarious Home-Maker, should wish to get out sometimes, and go and meet her friends....
However, Charles also was conscious of a wish to get out. Why was he doing this, exactly? Really, now, what was the sense of it?
The black worthy was leading him toward a shut door in the dusk beyond the dining-room: the office, clearly, of that patientless provider, Angela"s father. Now the young man was aware of voices behind that door, or rather of a voice. It was a woman"s voice, pitched in rather a complaining key, and for the first second Charles thought, with a start, that it was Angela"s. It wasn"t, of course; but his steps instinctively slackened.
"Ah--the Doctor seems to be engaged--after all," he threw out, in lowered tones. "Perhaps I"d better come another day."
"Naws", he ain"t engaged. Just him and Miz" Flower talkin"."
Charles, truth to tell, was scarcely rea.s.sured by that a.s.surance: he did not like to run in on a strange couple this way, in particular when the lady was speaking in that tone. But his sour guide had not paused. And now there came a different voice through the thin door: a man"s voice, faintly humorous, faintly sarcastic, and considerably weary. It was recognizably the voice of the esteemed Doctor, and it said, with fatal distinctness:--
"Is it possible you forget, madam, that you"re speaking to your husband and the father of your children?"
If the feet of the reluctant caller had lagged before, they now stopped short. One of his overminds perceived instantly that the strange words he had had no business to hear possessed a sort of distorted familiarity, like a horrid parody of a sentiment known and established; but as to that, there was not time to speculate now. What was only too plain was that something like a domestic scene was afoot in the office of the home, making the intrusion of a stranger peculiarly inapropos.
"Don"t!--I"ll not stop now!" he murmured hastily and sharply. "Just take these cards here, and--"
But the maladroit blackamoor was already opening the door; and the young man"s last stand against the Call was put down with a brief and surly:--
"Genaman to see Doctor. Walk in."
That settled the matter, beyond any undoing. Charles Garrott was a caller now, whether or no. With an embarra.s.sment such as none of his many calculations about this hour had antic.i.p.ated, he stepped blundering in upon Angela"s unwitting parents.
Dr. Flower"s small office was dark; its light came only through a single window from a narrow air-well. Hence, the forms of the lady and gentleman in it were at first but dimly apprehended. Having turned in their seats at the sound which disturbed their privacy, they seemed to be peering together, in silent inquiry, at the intruder. It was the intruder"s move, obviously; and, being in for it, he did his hasty best to pluck a hearty calling manner over his decided malease.
"Oh!--good-afternoon, Dr. Flower! It"s Garrott, Charles Garrott--perhaps you may remember--"
Now the dim forms were rising together, the tall Doctor"s with a jerk:--
"Ah, yes! Howdo, Mr. Garrott! Quite--"
"I hope I"m not interrupting! I stopped to return some books, and--ah--finding that Miss Angela was out, I thought I"d take the opportunity--"
"Quite so--very kind! Come in! But I"d better make a light? Take seat, sir. Mrs. Flower?"
The Doctor"s manner, of course, was natively too queer to betray anything, even astonishment at the Call. But it was not observed that Angela"s mother bore any of the marks of a lady surprised in the middle of a "scene," and this was a relief, unquestionably; the parents didn"t know him for an eavesdropper, at any rate. Agreeably accepting his introduction of himself, Mrs. Flower was bestowing upon him a dim but comforting smile, and a limp hand to shake.
"I feel that I already know you, Mr. Garrott. I"ve so often heard my daughter speak of you," she said, in the slightly plaintive voice he had heard through the door. "She"ll be so sorry to miss you...."
The hearty Charles spoke his little mendacity.
"But a friend of hers from Mitch.e.l.lton is here to-day to see her--Daniel Jenney--and Angela has just taken him out for a little drive in her car, to see the town. I feel sure she"ll be in soon, though."
Mr. Jenney"s presence in the city was the best news heard by Charles in many a day. All in all, things weren"t going off so badly. And, if he knew Angela in the least, she would not be in soon, either; he had thought of all that on the verandah.
Then the Doctor"s match caught the gas with a faint _pop_, and the little room filled with a high white light. In the sudden brightness, the caller"s eye noted two unrelated matters almost together. One was merely an ash-tray upon the mantel. The other was Mrs. Flower herself, and her unexpected resemblance to her pretty young daughter. Line for line, the two faces were different enough, no doubt, and this one was no longer young. But to a stranger"s eye, the general likeness was rather remarkable; Charles was much struck with it.
"Sit down, sir," said the Doctor, and contributed his match to the ash-tray.
"Ah, thank you."
But of course he could not sit down while Angela"s mother remained standing and conversing with him; and she did so stand and converse a moment or so, rather idly, seemingly uncertain whether she intended to stay or go, and trying to make up her mind. Once or twice she glanced at her husband undecidedly, as if he might have something to do with the matter; and no wonder. But her final verdict was that she was to go; and Charles was rather glad that it worked out this way, though why he hardly knew.
Mrs. Flower"s decisive remark was that she must get on with her household duties. She gave Charles her limp hand again, again mentioned her daughter"s distress, if she missed him; she bestowed upon him another pretty and somewhat significant smile; and then faded out of the Call, leaving behind a vague impression of feminine inadequacy and a b.u.t.ton missing from her black waist.
So the young man was left with the worthy Doctor, who could speak so sarcastically to a defenseless woman, his wife. And for a s.p.a.ce he found the tete-a-tete heavy going, indeed, and was more oppressed than ever with the essential meaninglessness of it all.
Angela"s father did not look like a brute, but only dryer, queerer, shabbier, than before. He jerked his neck more, looked more unrelated to his environment. He was very civil, but he c.o.c.ked his eye too much toward the ceiling, felt too little responsibility as to keeping a conversation going. Charles"s efforts (hearty enough, despite the counter-feelings going on within him) seemed to bound off dead from that juiceless, withdrawn manner. Having refused a cigar (there was a little talk about smoking, but he couldn"t keep it going), he proposed for discussion the Doctor"s son Wallie, his education, abilities as a chemist, skill as a lamp-repairer, etc. The topic promised well, and did well for a couple of minutes, but petered out mysteriously and beyond resurrection. The Doctor"s work out at the Medical School yielded almost nothing; the weather enjoyed but a brief and fitful run. Presently, Charles found himself fairly driven to Mary Wing, and her imminent departure to lead her own life; and this subject won a real success, though not of a sort he could take much satisfaction in. It quickly developed that Angela"s parent held ante-bellum views on Woman, which he put forward with some dry zest, in the strange backhanded fashion noted by Charles in their previous meeting. After a very few exchanges, the old eccentric was delivering himself of paragraphs like this:--
"Ah, you throw out that suggestion? An interesting idea!--quite so!"
(Charles had thrown out no suggestion of any sort.) "Your observation is that the Lord has formed woman specifically for the needs of family and the home--quite so!--and that efforts to change her destiny seem to result in const.i.tutional perversion? Well, sir, I dare say the physicians would support your contention there, too. Who knows?"
Even "Marna," even Mary Wing, had never made Charles so conservative as this. Oddly enough, he found the Doctor"s criticisms unwelcome; it was his turn to let a subject die from malnutrition. In the pause, he considered whether he had not called long enough now. About to rise, he chanced to note a worn volume of Henderson"s "Stonewall Jackson" lying open on the table, and asked, with little hope, if the Doctor had read it. The old codger replied: "I am reading it now for the seventh time, sir." And to the young man"s agreeable surprise, he at once unc.o.c.ked his eye from the ceiling (where he seemed to have meant to leave it permanently), and began to talk along almost like a regular person.
During the remainder of the Call, conversation flowed very satisfactorily. It appeared that the War was one of this old codger"s subjects, even as Woman was Charles"s; and he talked well, too, now that he cared to, criticizing strategy as one having authority, revealing, behind that spare, intensely conservative manner, flashes of broad outlook and incisive speech which might have helped to explain why the Medical School had been glad to draw this man from Mitch.e.l.lton to its staff. But the truth was that Charles Garrott heard scarcely a word of this excellent discourse. Once he had got Angela"s father fairly going, he became captured and fascinated by a totally independent line of thought.
In short, the young man"s gaze had returned to almost the first thing he had definitely noticed in the Home, to wit, the ash-tray on the Doctor"s mantel.
The ash-tray was really a large saucer, or small plate, and the intriguing and really exciting thing about it was that it contained the remains of scarcely less than a dozen cigars. Just before he made the lucky remark about Henderson"s "Life," the caller had inadvertently discovered two more cigar-ends, poised perilously on the mantel"s edge; this it was that had started him reacting yet again. For, considering that the Doctor was out a large part of the day, lecturing, it appeared incredible that he could have achieved such astonishing results since morning. Rather, the mantel had the air of having stood undisturbed for some little time....
"If those men," he was saying, "had but shot another way, that night at Chancellorsville--"
"Ah, sir! the vast "ifs" of history. And none bigger than that, it may be. Yet, as I say ..."
From the large heaped saucer, with its ring of spilled ashes, the detective eye flitted over the room, briefly, somewhat guiltily, yet uncontrollably. It received an impression of dust on the table, dust on the bookshelves, disorder pervasively, and a waste-basket brimful of trash. Finally, the eye rested anew on the Doctor himself, with his frayed collar and joyless mien. And all the time, under the mask of the caller, a question was irresistibly rising and thrusting itself upon the attention of the authority: What housekeeper had charge of this untidy little room, what home-maker was in the business of supplying beauty and charm to this jaded gentleman?
Unaware that he was being thought of in these terms, Angela"s father reverted austerely to the Seven Days" fighting around Richmond....