"Only when I got there, and peeped in, it all looked so dreary and hopeless that my heart failed me, and I turned right around and came back! Was it--"
"You did! How long were you there? There"s a little too much powder on your nose, my dear--there! Did you come upstairs?"
"Oh, no! I just slipped in for a moment or two and glanced about that queer old court downstairs. Quaint and interesting, isn"t it? How was the meeting?"
"Most interesting and gratifying," said mamma, sinking into a rose-lined chair. "We begin a n.o.ble work. You may go now, Flora. I am made a governor, as well as chairman of the most important committee...."
She monologized for some time, in a rich vein of reminiscence and autobiography, revealing among other things that she had rather broadly hinted, to Mrs. Byrd and others, who was the anonymous donor of the Settlement House; a certain wealthy New Yorker, to wit. However, it was clear that she saw nothing amiss, nor did she say anything more germane to her daughter"s inner drama than, in the moment of parting:
"Rub your cheeks a little with the soft cloth. You look quite pale."
Carlisle rubbed faithfully, aware of a lump of lead where her heart should have been. Later she went downstairs, and then on for dinner at the McVeys". Most grateful she was for this mental distraction; to-night she would have played three-hand bridge with papa and Mattie Allen with enthusiasm.
Evey"s dinner, of course, was far ahead of three-hand. The McVeys were very rich, far richer than the Heths (theirs had been the marriage of McVey"s Drygoods and Notions, Wholesale Only, and Herkimer"s Fresh Provisions), and were considered "not quite" by some people, though Evey certainly went everywhere and was very refined. Accordingly, the evening"s viands were of the best and the table talk at least good enough for all practical purposes. Carlisle, who was almost feverishly animated, lingered till the last possible moment: Evey actually asked her to spend the night, and she actually came very near doing it.
Escorted home in a maritime hackney-coach by young Mr. Robert Tellford (whose heart had been lacerated by rumors that persistently reached him), Canning"s betrothed permitted Robert to linger in the library, positively detained him in the library, till eleven-thirty o"clock: courtesies which would have run like wine to the young Tellford head but for the lady"s erratic and increasing distraitness....
The bibulous metaphor is here reversible. It possessed mutuality, so to say. Cally herself would drown trouble to-night with intoxicating draughts of human society. But there came a time when this resource was denied her; when the human bars closed, as it were; in short, when all the society in reach must sorrowfully put on his tall hat and go. And then there came the nocturnal stillness of the house, and then the solitariness of the bedchamber, and after that the dark.
Now the question that had rumbled all evening cloud-like in the background of her consciousness, swam and took shape in the midnight shadows, dangling before the eye of her mind in gigantic and minatory capitals:
WOULD HE TELL?
To this stark inquiry all the girl"s problem came down. Gone like a fever-mist was the emotional flare-up (as mamma would have said) which had tricked her into blurting out a secret scarcely even formulated before in her own inmost soul. That mysterious moment remained merely as an astonishment. It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her; she had simply been swept away by some unfathomable madness. And at present Nature"s first law was working in her with obliterating force.
_Would the man tell?_ Here in the sane and ordered surroundings, with mamma sleeping and satisfied one floor below, and a long, long letter to be written to her knight among men the first thing to-morrow, there was nothing in the world that mattered but that. If Vivian would not tell, then, indeed, all was well with her. If he did tell ...
He had said that he would not tell without first seeing her. But of course there was nothing under heaven to prevent his seeing her, or sending word to her, at any time, by day or by night. And then what?
Carlisle lay upon her back, rather small and frightened in the tall bed, struggling to pluck away the veil from the face of the menacing future.
What would "telling" mean, exactly?...
There was a hopeful view. The whole thing was so confused, just as he himself had admitted, more than once. It might all be put on the ground of a mistake, a little misunderstanding, recently discovered. You could tell, and not go into all the mixed-up details. Jack Dalhousie would then gratefully return from Texas (where he was really getting on much better than he had ever done at home--Dr. Vivian had practically said so); his father would quietly take him back; and it would be generally understood that Jack was not a coward now, and was greatly improved morally by the disciplinary exile, and everything would be all right.
But of course the difficulty here was that somebody (like Colonel Dalhousie, for instance) might think to ask why the discovery of the little misunderstanding came now, instead of six months ago. You could hardly reply to such an one that you had just discovered the mistake as the result of a flare-up, caused by a slum doctor"s giving twenty-five thousand dollars to buy an old hotel. Who would understand that, when you didn"t yourself?...
Carlisle, indeed, being a practical girl, did not linger long on the optimistic prospect. For to-night at least, "telling" seemed a matter too dreadful to contemplate. Colonel Dalhousie was an irascible and solitary widower with one son whom he had once been proud of; and this son, having been strangely compelled to take a lady"s word as to his own conduct, had been disgraced by that word, cast out with his father"s curse upon his forehead. Was it likely that these two would take the discovery of a little misunderstanding now with a charming quiet courtesy?--that, shouting the discovery abroad to save their faces, they would have due regard for careful qualifications and for striking the right note? The reply was the negative: it was not at all likely.
Cally knew the world"s rough judgments, where all is black or all is white, and ifs and buts go overboard as spoiling the strong color scheme. And well she knew the way of horrid gossip; none better. That she, Carlisle Heth, had deliberately lied merely to save her name from public a.s.sociation with young Dalhousie"s, and by this lie had ruined a boy who in his way had loved her well: such would be the story which the angry Colonel (perhaps coming to shoot papa besides) would throw to the four winds, to be rolled in the mouth of gossip forevermore. O what a tasty morsel was here, my countrymen!...
Staring fearfully into the dusk, Carlisle pictured herself as hearing such a story about Evey or Mattie: she perceived at once, with sickening sensations, how intensely she would be interested in it. Yes; once started, it would sweep through drawing-rooms and clubs like fire. With what glee would the world"s coa.r.s.e tongue make its reprisals upon brilliant success! Town-talk the lovely Miss Heth would be, spotted all over with that horrid tattle from which she (and Hugo) had ever so shuddered and shrunk....
And against this threatened avalanche, entailing who knew what consequences, she had but the frail shield of the sense of honor--well, then, say, the sense of chivalry--of a man far beneath her world, whom she had frequently told herself that she disliked and despised.
A pale yellow ray of the moon, journeying upward over the coverlet, fell across her face. She rose, pattered on slim bare feet over the chequered floor, lowered the shade. Inside and out, all the world was still. Cally dropped down on her chaise-longue by the window, very wide awake....
And, gradually, since she was practical, she formed a plan of action: a plan so simple that she wondered she had not thought of it at once....
A long time she had spent in trying to think how she might compel, cajole, or bribe the man at the Dabney House to pledge her his eternal silence. But she had not been able to think of any promising way: each time, she brought up confronting with painful fascination the conviction that religious fellows were hard. And out of this conviction there grew, in time, her own resolve. Well, then, she would be hard, too. She would avoid seeing or having any communication with Dr. Vivian, and if he dared to repeat _anything_, she would simply laugh it all aside. She would deny that she ever said any such preposterous thing in her life.
She would _have_ to do that; her duty to others demanded it.... And what could he do then? It would merely be his word against hers, Miss Heth"s.
He would be left in a most unpleasant position....
In this position V. Vivian remained while Carlisle slept. However, the new day, as it pleasantly proved, brought no need for such severe measures. Many rings at doorbell and telephone Cally"s strained ears heard between getting up and bedtime, but the hard ring of Nemesis was never among them. All day silence brooded unbroken in the direction of the Dabney House. And when another morning wore to evening, and no heart brake, and yet another and another, there descended again upon the girl the peaceful sense of re-won security....
In these days the House of Heth was in a continual bustle. On Tuesday next--a week to a day from the Settlement meeting--the ladies were to depart for New York, Hugo, and Europe, the Trousseau and the Announcement, to return no more till mid-September. On the same day the t.i.tular master of the house was to go off for a five days" fishing junket, thence flying to New York for the "seeing off," and soon thereafter starting out for a three weeks" business trip to the Far West. Along with the various domestic problems raised by this programme, there were all the routine duties of the season to be attended to.
Cold-weather things must still be salted down with camphor b.a.l.l.s and packed away; costly pictures provided with muslin wrappers; drawing-room furniture with linen slip-covers; rooms cleaned and locked up, doors and windows screened and awninged. Mrs. Heth went dashing from one bit of generalship to another, and telephoned ten thousand times a day.
Nevertheless she kept eyes in her head, and accordingly she observed to Mr. Heth one starlit night, as they sat _a deux_ on the little front balcony where flowering window-boxes so refinedly concealed one from the public view:
"I never saw a girl so absolutely naive about showing her feelings. She began to droop the minute he left the house, and hasn"t been her natural self since.... Irritable!--till you can"t say good morning without her snapping your head off."
"Maybe, it"s the weather," suggested Mr. Heth, who wore a white flannel suit and fanned himself with a dried palm-leaf. "And I reckon, too, she"s feeling sorry to leave her old father for such a long time. Four months--hio!"
"Cally"s not the girl to get black rings under her eyes for things like that."
She added presently: "It"s a pure love-match, which is naturally a gratification to me, who brought the whole thing about. "Thank G.o.d, Cally, you"ve got a mother," I said to her only the other day. But I do say there"s such a thing as carrying love just a little too far."
Cally, meantime, while affecting no interest in summer clothes for chairs, kept as closely occupied with her own affairs, social activities and preparations for the brilliant absence, as mamma did with hers. Much time went, too, to her correspondence with Canning, who wrote her daily fat delightful letters, all breathing ardent antic.i.p.ation of her approaching visit in his own city. And back to Canning, she wrote even fatter letters every morning in mamma"s sitting-room, dear letters (he thought them) in which she told him every single thing except what she was really thinking about....
And why shouldn"t she tell Hugo that also? Once or twice she really came very near doing it. For as her mind had become released from her first acute apprehensions, it had seemed to insist on turning inward a little; and there grew within her a sense of unhappiness, of loneliness, a feeling of her poor little self against the world. She longed for some one to explain it all to, to justify herself before; and who more appropriate in this connection than her lover? That Hugo might have been shocked, and perhaps disgusted, to have the misunderstanding discovered to him by way of the Dalhousies" megaphone was, indeed, likely; but to have her quietly tell it to him, as it really happened, with the proper stress on circ.u.mstances and gossip, would be quite another matter. She felt almost certain that he would agree with her; it once that it would be a great mistake to rake up all this now, when it had all blown over and Dalhousie was doing so splendidly down in Texas....
However, Cally procrastinated. And then, Sunday morning in church, as she sat pensively wishing for a confidant, it came upon her somewhat startlingly that she already had one: Dr. Vivian was her confidant. Did he not know more about her than anybody else in the world?...
The simple thought seemed to cure her instantly of her wish. She had tried having a confidant and it had brought her to this; henceforward let her keep her own counsel. (So she mused, walking homeward in the brilliant sunshine and light airs with J. Forsythe Avery, who had just conquered his pique over his rejection last January.) That her one confidant"s honorable silence expressed his trust that she herself would "tell" was possibly true; but that, in this no-quarter conflict between them, was merely so much the worse for him. She would not think of him at all. She had run away from him every time she had seen him; now she had but to do it once more, and all would be as if it had never been....
At the Sabbath dinner-table, which was to-day uninvaded by guests, the Heths" talk was animated. The imminent separation brought a certain softness into the family atmosphere; papa basked in it. He had spent his Sunday morning playing sixteen holes of golf at the Country Club, and would have easily made the full round but for slicing three new b.a.l.l.s into the pond on the annoying seventeenth drive. This had provoked him into smashing his driver, as he had a score of only eighty-eight at that point, which was well below his personal bogey. Even mamma affected interest in her spouse"s explanations of how it all happened.
"Of course the caddy simply slipped the b.a.l.l.s in his pockets the minute your back was turned--they"re all thieves, the little ragam.u.f.fins," said she. "And, by the way, I haven"t telephoned the bank about the silver."
Encouraged by his ladies" consideration, Mr. Heth proposed a little afternoon jaunt with Cally.
"It"s too pretty a day to stay in," said he. "Let"s take the car, eh, and run down and look at that new cantilever bridge at Apsworth?"
"Oh, papa!" said Cally, regretfully. "I promised Mr. Avery I"d take a walk with him. He looked so fat and forlorn I didn"t have the heart to refuse. I"m so sorry."
Mr. Heth started to quote something about your daughter"s being your daughter, but when Cally added, "You know I"d lots rather go with you, papa," he changed his mind, and went off to his nap instead.
Mamma similarly departed. Cally, not feeling nappy, sat in the library and wrote to her lover the last letter but one she would write before seeing him in New York. Her eager pen flew: but so did the minutes also, or did the impetuous Avery antic.i.p.ate the moment of his engagement? His tender ring broke unexpectedly across her betrothal thoughts, and Cally returned to earth with a start ... Good _heavens!_ Four o"clock already!--and she with twenty minutes" getting ready to do!
She caught up the pages of the unfinished letter, and skipped for the stairs. In the hall there was unbroken quiet, with no sound of a servant coming. Cally paused, listening, and then remembered that it was Sunday afternoon, when even the best Africans are so very likely to have "just stepped out." Why wait? The girl went and opened the door herself, a smile of greeting in her eye, a lively apology for her obvious unreadiness upon her lip.
However, it was not, after all, the amorous Mr. Avery who confronted her. The vestibule held only an ill-dressed young girl, in a gaudy red hat, the sort of looking person who should at most have rung the bas.e.m.e.nt bell, if that: and she herself seemed to realize this by the guilty little start and tremble she gave when the stately door swung open upon her. The young mistress of the house eyed her doubtfully.
"Good afternoon."
"G-good evenin", ma"am!..."
As she seemed at a loss how to proceed, Carlisle said: "Yes? What is it?"
The young person raised a bare hand and brushed it, with a strange gesture, before her eyes.
"Dr. Vivian he told me to give you this note, ma"am."
She added, as if suddenly moved to destroy a possible impression of Dr.