"That"s absurd...." said Cally, somehow touched, but with no conception of the depths from which he spoke.... "I never meant to tell at all if it hadn"t been for you."
She added, seeing him turn away, looking around the long room: "I think you must have left it in the hall."
And then, winking a little, she began to blow her nose, and moved away toward the door.
She encountered the butler, old Moses, entering from the hall. There was a yellow envelope upon his tray, though she had heard no ring at the bell.
"Excuse me, ma"am. This message just kem for you, an" I signed for it at the do"."
Carlisle thought instantly, Hugo!... And when, having quite forgotten the man standing silent behind her, she broke open the envelope with nervous fingers, the hope of her heart was at once confirmed:
Am coming to you. Arrive four-ten this afternoon. Wait for me. H.C.H.C.
Did a tiny corner of her tightly closed mind open a little as she read?
_Wait for me...._
She turned back to Jack Dalhousie"s representative with something like eagerness, to find his eyes fixed upon her.
"Oh!--would it do any harm to wait a little while, do you think?--just till this afternoon?"
"No, no," he said, in rather an odd voice, "it will do no harm now."
"Then I"ll send word to you this afternoon--at five or six o"clock,"
said Cally, with vague flutterings of relief, of hope, perhaps. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, she added: "I will tell you why I want to wait. I am engaged to be married. I think I should tell my fiance, before anything is done...."
To this V. Vivian made no reply. He was advancing to the door. And then as he paused before the stricken Hun, and saw the glitter of a tear on the piquant gold-and-black lashes, the young man"s twisting heart seemed suddenly to loosen, and he said quite simply:
"Won"t you let me say how fine and brave a thing you"re doing, how splendid a--"
"Don"t!" said Cally, recoiling instantly from she knew not what.
"_Don"t!_... I"m not brave--_at all!_ Oh, no--that"s just it...."
And then, looking down, she added somewhat pitifully: "But I really didn"t mean to do anything so bad...."
The alien turned hurriedly away. He went without another word.
The front door shut upon him. And Cally gave a little jump, hearing above her the imperious tread of her mother.
XXI
That Day at the Beach, as we sit and look back at it; how Hugo journeys to shield his Love from Harm, and Small Beginnings can end with Uproars and a Proverb.
Canning arrived at the House of Heth shortly after four. He had had an all-day journey in summer heat, and a bad night preceding. In the still watches following his ladies" departure from New York, he had had time for calm reflection, nothing else but time; and the more he calmly reflected, the less could he understand his betrothed"s singular desire to pay this tribute to the dead. The thing grew increasingly mystifying; increasingly unorthodox and undependable, too. Moreover, the second thought reproached him that, Carlisle being so greatly upset, however unreasonably, he himself should have accompanied her homeward, in her most need to go by her side. And thinking these things, the disturbed young man had tumbled out of bed in the small hours, to make inquiries regarding trains.
He was received at the House by his future mother-in-law, who was once more the accredited intermediary. Canning was hot, sooty, and suffering from want of sleep. There were cinders down the back of his neck. Mrs.
Heth had Moses prepare for him a long iced drink, with rime on the gla.s.s and fragrant mint atop. And then, as the prize of her lifetime sat and sipped, she seated herself beside him, her strong voice trembling....
All hope of discreet reticence was now ripped to shreds. What chance remained of rescuing the name of Heth from the scandalous horrors of a suicide lay all in arousing this stalwart man to the imminence of the common peril. Mrs. Heth, somersaulting without hesitancy from last night"s caution, flooded the dark places with lurid light.
Canning listened with consternation and chagrin. His moral sensibilities, indeed, received no particular shock, since Mrs. Heth"s narrative frankly disclaimed any wrong-doing on Carlisle"s part, but attributed the misunderstanding to the excited gossip at the time. And by the same token, he was not unduly perturbed over the girl"s hysterical ideas of her present duty. What struck Canning most sharply, indeed, since he was human, was the personal side of the matter: the stark fact that important developments touching Carlisle"s name and happiness had been running along for some time, wholly without his knowledge, but under the direct personal superintendency of another man, this Mr. Somebody"s unknown friend. So extraordinary a course of behavior seemed to reveal a totally new side of his betrothed, hitherto unsuspected. Canning would have been too saintly for this earth if he had not learned of these proceedings with the deepest surprise and vexation.
And yet--what of it? Of course there was some simple and natural explanation, which she would give when she felt better able. Doubtless she had been threatened; blackmailed perhaps. And meantime the light thrown directly and indirectly on Carlisle"s distraught mood touched the lover deeply. He hardly needed Mrs. Heth"s frightened hints about the necessity of gentleness with firmness in dealing with a flare-up. Had he himself not known the wilful nature of her spirit in excitement, that never-forgotten evening in the library?
And when the striker of the right note withdrew at last, and Carlisle herself appeared in the drawing-room, very white and subdued, the last remnant of a personal grievance vanished from Canning"s manner. Nothing could have exceeded the tenderness of his greeting....
"Did my telegram surprise you?" he said presently. "I got so troubled about you after you were gone.... I couldn"t bear to leave you alone with this...."
And Cally said, with a quiver in her voice: "Oh, Hugo!... If you only knew how I"ve wanted you to-day!..."
She meant it with every fibre of her being. Doubly he had convinced her now that he could never be shocked or disgusted with her, that in him a perfect sympathy enfolded her, covering all mistakes. That he might not understand quite yet how she felt about everything was possible, but that was nothing now, by the fact that he understood _her_, at any rate, as mamma never could.
Some discussion of the matter was of course necessary. And presently, after they had talked a little, quite naturally, of his journey and how she had slept last night, the lovers drifted on into Mr. Heth"s little study, reopened against this need.
Here they sat down and began to talk. And here, in five minutes, Carlisle"s heart began mysteriously to sink within her....
She had been going through a series of violent emotional experiences in which he had had not the slightest share, and now required of him that he should catch up with the results of these experiences, upon a moment"s notice and at a single bound. She could not realize the extreme difficulty of this feat. Nor, indeed, could Canning himself, confident by the ease with which his love had appeared to put down all personal irritations. To his seeming, as to hers, they had met in perfect spiritual reunion.
Accordingly, when he proposed that the matter be allowed to rest quiet for a day or two, till they were all in a little better frame of mind to view it calmly, he offered a temporary solution which he felt certain would seem to her as reasonable and as tactfully considerate as it did to him.
"In this moment of shock and distress," he said, with admirable restraint, "you are not quite in the best frame of mind, you see, to decide such a serious matter. Fortunately, to wait a little while and think it over quietly can do no harm to anybody now. And then, if you still feel the same way about it, of course I shall want to do what you wish."
He had had Carlisle"s feelings only at second-hand, through a medium perhaps wanting in transparence. Her hesitancy considerably surprised him. To Carlisle, as was almost equally inevitable, it was as if in the solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,--something, say, as if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before.
And she tried to make him understand this, saying--what seemed a feeble reply to his logic:
"You see, I--I"ve already thought about it a good deal, Hugo ... And putting it off would only make me--miserable and ill. I can"t explain very well.... I think I could begin to--to forget about it if--when...."
This she said over several times, in different ways, as the necessary discussion proceeded....
It was naturally hard for Hugo to grasp the grounds on which she rejected a mere deferment of painful discussion till to-morrow morning (for he reduced his proposal to that), or even to see why, though opposed herself, she would not readily be guided in so small a matter by his wishes. The soft chimes in the hall had rung five before it definitely came over him that the preliminaries had oddly, indeed incredibly, gone against him.
He faced the fact frankly, without perceptible sign of annoyance.
"Well, then, my dearest girl, I"m afraid we shall have to talk about it a little now...."
They sat side by side on papa"s faded old lounge, where they had spent many an hour together in happier days. Canning held Carlisle"s hand in a rea.s.suring grasp. Her heart warmed to him anew: if he did not quite seem to understand--what wonder when she hardly did herself?--his was a love that drew its roots deeper than understanding. Nevertheless she flinched from a discussion which promised to be carried on chiefly by her over-strung nerves; and all at once she felt that she must know instantly what threatened, exactly what he thought about it.
"Hugo ... do you--don"t you think I--I ought to tell?"
Far readier and surer was his voice in reply: "Frankly, darling, I can"t as yet see any necessity."
How could he possibly see?--Ought to tell what? Had not her mother told him that he had to deal with the nightmare illusions of a disordered mind?...
Canning added with great considerateness: "I"ve thought it all over from every point of view--and you know I"m better able to think dispa.s.sionately to-day than you are--and I simply can"t persuade myself that we have any such obligation."