The scientific inquiry had a perfectly proper answer, of course. In the truest sense, Mrs. Flower was the housekeeper in question; that faded belle, with the b.u.t.ton off her waist, owed the beauty and charm due in this quarter. Not for nothing did she have that distinctly inefficient voice. And the moment Charles thought of that voice, his mind, with a sort of jump, made a link, and he understood at once why the Doctor"s strange speech, eavesdropped by him outside the door, had seemed to have the quality of a parody. Of course! This dry husband, with the sick-man"s face, had merely been giving back, in a masculinized version, a reminder not infrequently heard on the lips of womanly women, when married. Before he had invented that ironic retort, how often had Angela"s father heard it said: _I"m your wife, and the mother of your children...._
"And what," the civil caller said, "do you think of Mary Johnston"s picture of Jackson? I a.s.sume, of course, you"re familiar with--"
"A brilliant achievement, sir. Indeed, astonishing--for a woman," said the conservative Doctor, jerking his neck; and resumed.
But the young authority found his reactions oddly and increasingly disturbing, and shortly rose to go. He had become certain, abruptly, that he had party-called long enough.
His eccentric host, who had appeared so dryly indifferent to his coming, seemed, on the whole, to regret his departure. And Charles, perceiving this, found himself feeling rather sorry for him. But he showed his sympathies, not by offering to stay longer or to come again, but by inviting Angela"s father to lunch with him at Berringer"s, one day very soon at his convenience.
"I feel that we should further the acquaintance," he said, as they shook hands, "because of--ah--my long friendship for your--that is, for your wife"s cousin."
And then he had a new surprise; for, though the Doctor"s lips twitched a little at his correction, showing that he was not altogether devoid of humor, it was with instant seriousness that he said:--
"I do insist upon the distinction, you allege? Well, I"m free to say to you, sir, that I have but scant sympathy with these fantastic modern notions. If all women did as my wife"s young cousin does, what, pray, would become of the Home?"
"Ah, what?" said Charles.
And as he thought of Mary Wing"s charming and beautifully kept sitting-room, he seemed to feel his head going round. Surely, he had never before seen conservatism so magnificent as this.
"Meanwhile, come in again, sir, when you find time. I have few callers, and have appreciated your visit--"
"Yes!--thank you!"
"My daughter will be sorry--"
And then, as the Doctor opened the door, and his l.u.s.terless eye looked out, he added with an approach to grave pleasure in his voice:--
"Ah, here is Angela now--just in time."
The caller"s eye went slipping down the hall; and so it was. In the light of the open front door, her rural swain behind her, the young home-maker stood by the hatstand, examining the two returned books she had just found there. What chance had brought her back thus early, cutting off his retreat? Had she pa.s.sed and seen his hack standing there, and wondered?
But, curiously, Charles"s bachelor shrinking from this re-meeting seemed suddenly to have vanished. All his determined championship of the Type, dating back to the Redmantle Club, all his personal sense of honorable obligation, had mysteriously thinned to nothing in half an hour in Dr.
Flower"s office. In some way that defied a.n.a.lysis, the interior of the Home seemed to have wiped out Angela"s girlish claim, the ash-tray had overcome the Kiss. And Charles, bidding her father farewell, went walking down the narrow hall with a tread firm as a soldier"s.
Angela had turned at the sound of voices; she stood gazing somewhat uncertainly into the dimness (for she was a little short-sighted without the opera-gla.s.ses, and perhaps this was only a patient). The instant of recognition of her friend was marked with an exclamation, almost a cry, of pleasure; and she started toward him with the happiest surprised welcome.
The re-meeting was effected by the hatstand, where Charles had stood on the day he had borrowed the book he now came to return. Water had flowed under London Bridge since then. Mr. Jenney, owner of the celebrated ring, was presented. He was a long-legged, gangling, curly-headed youth, with a face that was beautiful in its way, no less; and it must have been a frank face, too, since Charles, the observer, immediately had the fellow"s whole secret. Here was Mr. Jenney"s fair ideal, his high star and lady of dreams; and his full reward for his pure devotion was to be kept hanging on, a masculine anchor to windward--just in case, as they say. Still, he might prove the _deus ex machina_ of the issue yet.
At the moment, however, little was seen of Mr. Jenney, since, almost in the first breath, his star said: "Oh, Dan, father"s in now, and he"ll want _so_ to see you!"--and Mr. Jenney straightway withdrew obediently.
One gathered that obedience was his fatal quality.
Thus the unheroic Charles confronted his Temporary Spinster at last, in her dark home-hall. And she, not guessing the new philosophic resistance within him, said, with the gayest confident air, and no little archness, too:--
"Well, Mr. Garrott!... Did you decide to pay your party-call?"
Charles smiled.
"I"ve been promising myself to come in for some time," he said pleasantly. "I had several excellent excuses, you see. For one thing, there was your book, which I"ve appropriated all this time--"
"Oh, that! I just saw it there--and thought I must have missed you! That would have been too mean, after all this time!" She glanced toward the hatstand, adding: "And--Mr. Manford gave you that other one to bring back, I suppose?"
"No--ah--we came together, but, of course, he left when he found that you were out. I wanted especially to pay my respects to your father, so--"
"I"m awfully glad he kept you for me.... How are you now? You don"t know how I"ve missed you, since you had to stop walking entirely!"
"I"ve been extremely well, thank you. Or--at least--I"ve been pretty well--"
"Oh, I know you haven"t been well!--you just try to make light of it!
Mr. Manford told me you were breaking yourself down from overwork--you oughtn"t to do it! And then that night when I phoned, and your Secretary said you were sick from not taking any exercise, I was worried, truly I was! I wanted to write you a little note--but--"
"A mere temporary indisposition, not worth a moment of your thought,"
said Mr. Garrott. He was wholly recovered now.
"I"m so glad. You really do look well! It"s been ages since I"ve seen you! But why," she said, laughing up at him prettily, "am I keeping you standing at the door like this! Come in the parlor."
"I"m sorry, but I really can"t, thank you. I must be going."
She stopped in complete surprise. "Going! Oh, you mustn"t go _now_!--when I"ve just come in! Why, you _couldn"t_!--"
"My time"s up, you see, and more. Writing," said Charles sententiously, "is a dreadful taskmaster. But I"ve explained all that--"
"I know!--but you"re here now! You can surely take a _little_ time, Mr.
Garrott--when I haven"t seen you for days and days--"
"I"ve already overstayed my scant allowance, you see, with your father.
But I"m glad to have had a little glimpse of you, at any rate."
On the whole, he had sought to speak in his usual voice and air; but now he saw that his new power of firmness had disclosed itself to her not too sensitive ear. The liquid eyes under the becoming new hat regarded him with sudden inquiry, puzzled and speculative....
To think seriously ill of this girl, because, perhaps, she was not an enthusiastic cleaner of the parental home, was not in Charles, the man, whatever the authority might have to say. Her soft and unlessoned youthfulness, confronting him, disarmed all criticism. But the chance resemblance to her plaintive mother had seemed, oddly, to strike him much deeper. Looking down at this virginal sweet freshness, by the hatstand and the books, the young man had been full of the elusive sense that as the daughter looked and charmed now, so the mother had looked once; and beyond her present air of alluring femininity, he seemed persistently to be seeing Angela at fifty, sitting idle in an unswept room and continually reminding a worn-out husband of her sacrifices and her service.... Pure fantasy, was it, a fiction-writer"s imagining born of a superficial likeness? Or was there a deeper, a more romantic, kinship between the girl who set so nave an estimate on the value of her kiss, and the woman who would plume herself through an indolent lifetime on the ancient history of her maternity?...
The girl opened her mouth to speak: but there came a welcome diversion.
A step was heard on the wooden verandah, and the two young people, turning their heads together, saw a liveried servant at the still open door, bowing, speaking:--
"Miss Flower, marm?"
"Yes--I am Miss Flower."
"Fum Mr. Tilletts, marm," said the servant, extending a note. "And he say please don"t you trouble to write, if you"d kindly send an answer by me, marm."
"Oh! All right."
Having said, "Excuse me, Mr. Garrott," Angela opened and glanced through her note, and then remarked: "Mr. Tilletts wants me to go to the theater with him to-night. How nice!"
Her back to the servant, she made a little deprecating face at Mr.
Garrott; but her voice seemed pleasurably stirred all the same, and her answer to the chauffeur was:--
"Thank Mr. Tilletts, and say Miss Flower"ll be very glad, indeed, to go, and will be ready at quarter past eight."