She was looking at him with an interested intentness of which she was quite unconscious. Never before had she seen this man free of the knowledge of menacing discussion ever pressing in the foreground; so now it was a little as if she met for the first time some one whom she had heard a great deal about from others. Her eye for externals had observed his new suit at once; in this deceptive light she considered that it looked quite nice, not suspecting that it was only the Prince, reduced; and she was thinking, with a sense of discovery, that Mr. V.V. was undoubtedly a good-looking man. A certain change in his manner she had also noted; a new touch of force, it seemed, a somewhat stiffened masculinity. What had become of that rather engaging hopeful look of his, which was the second thing she had ever noticed about him?...
"Perhaps I shall see it some day," she answered. "If I ever become one of your Mr. Pond"s district visitors and investigators."
"Are you thinking of doing that?"
"Oh, I offered to try to do something, but Mr. Pond declined me, without thanks. He said I was perfectly useless to him--in his big and serious work. The worst of it was," she said, smiling rather ruefully, "he proved it."
She was glancing toward the door, with the moving and humming groups beyond, and so missed the sudden eagerness that briefly lit his face.
"What part of the work--if I might ask--were you--specially interested in?"
"I suppose I"m not really interested in any part. That must be the trouble. Probably it"s just the usual dissatisfied feeling--when one is a little tired of parties...."
Was that not yet another confidence, clearly calling for an understanding listener, for sympathetic rea.s.surance? Nothing of the sort came to Cally; nothing of any sort. The brief pause, sharpened as it was by Mr. V.V."s oddly formal bearing, was rather like a cold douche. And now it seemed that she must have been counting on this man somehow all along, though it was not clear as to what....
"So you see my peace of mind is quite safe. Mr. Pond is right, of course...." And then, thinking that this cool distance was rather absurd under the circ.u.mstances, she added in a friendlier way: "But why aren"t you the Director here, instead of Mr. Pond? I should think you would be, since it"s your Settlement."
But the result of that was only to bring new stiffness into the strange young man"s manner.
"My Settlement!... Oh, I beg that you won"t speak or think of it in that way. I a.s.sure you I"ve nothing at all to do with it, other than as one worker out of many."
Her unwarlike reply was: "Well, I haven"t told anybody."
She glanced at him with a touch of bewilderment, and glanced away again, turning toward the door. Surely he had not always been like this....
"Mr. Avery will think I"m lost," said Cally.
However, Mr. V.V. successfully checked her departure, saying:
"I"m sure you can be of the realest help to the Settlement, Miss Heth, if you care to be." And, then, veering abruptly, he said with his air of making a plunge: "But I must take this opportunity to speak to you of another matter. A matter which, I fear, will be disagreeable to you."
That sufficiently arrested her; she stood looking at him, with a conflict of sensations within. Faces of Settlementers appeared in the door, looked in at the bare room, pa.s.sed from view again. The tall young man in the new suit pushed back his hair, with the quaint gesture he had.
"You once said," he continued, in a voice of light hardness, "that I brought you nothing but trouble. That seems to continue true, though perhaps you won"t regard this as so--so serious...."
Trouble? More trouble for Cally Heth?
"Why--what do you mean?"
"The question of the Heth Works--has come up again. That, at least, is the particular application. Of course many other factories are involved."
The girl was completely taken aback. "Why, I don"t understand. What has come up?"
He then explained himself, in well-ordered sentences:
"The State Labor Commission feels strongly that the public good demands a new factory law at this time, requiring all owners to conform to a certain higher standard of comfort and safety for their employees. I must add that I fully share the Commission"s feeling. It is considered that some publicity in the press is needed, preparing the public mind for a progressive law by showing what present conditions are. A series of articles has been decided upon, to begin about the first of November and continue daily till the legislature meets in January. I have agreed to write these articles. I thought it only fair," he ended short, "to tell you this."
The girl heard him with startled astonishment. She had never, of course, been interested in her father"s factory other than as a family symbol; and that fact.i.tious interest which she had felt at times last year, born of this man"s hostility, was gone long since, effaced by a tide of stronger feelings. So his sudden exhumation of the topic as a cause of war now came upon her with the harshest discordance. It seemed almost like a wanton wounding of her, somehow like sheer disloyalty in him.
Surely if there were need of articles, this man might leave them to somebody else to write....
Her young gaze was full of an unconscious reproachfulness.
"All that means that you are going to put some more letters in the paper attacking my father?"
"I"m afraid it"s inevitable it will seem so to you."
"Oh,"" said she, it seemed involuntarily, "I don"t see how you _can_!"
The young man Mr. V.V. made no reply. It may be that he didn"t see how he could either....
He looked away from the reproachful eyes, slate-blue to match the plumes in the hat: and there were phrases from his articles singing and kicking in his head, phrases which would cry in the penny newspaper as no voice could cry from the wilderness. Ten thousand words he had ready now, in the old secretary upstairs; hard words all, that broke heads or hearts, faiths implied too, it might be, and did not care; or didn"t mean to show it if they did. And he thought, too, of a little friend he had, just pulled back from death"s door, and hardly ready for her Trip now, after ten weeks. So of course there could be no flinching now....
Through the door there came the continuous sounds of the nearness of the mult.i.tude, but these two seemed almost as alone in his old hotel as they had been on another afternoon long ago.
"Don"t you think," said the pretty voice, still not angry--and surely anger would have been easier to meet than this--"that before doing anything so--so radical as that, you might wait a little while, believing that my father would--do what is right?"
The lame doctor brought his eyes back to her and said, slowly: "You see, I"ve been worried by the feeling--that I"ve waited too long already."
"Too long for what? That"s just what I mean. What do you think could possibly happen?"
"For one thing, Miss Heth," he said, with a faint dry smile, "the building might fall down some day."
Color came into Cally"s cheek. Her feeling now was that she had made advances, spontaneous and friendly, and been smartly rebuffed. What cared he for the troubles of the Heths?...
"You really think my father would risk the lives of his employees, just to make a little more money for himself?"
He answered, almost brusquely: "I don"t mean to judge your father.
People take their views of life from the atmosphere in which they live.
You appreciate that. I, of course, concede your father"s point of view.
I fully understand it. I--wish it were possible for you to do as much for mine."
She looked at him fixedly a moment, said, "I"m sorry you think this necessary," and turned away to the door. But once again his voice arrested her.
"Miss Heth!... You feel an interest in the Settlement. You"ve felt a wish to help in the work--to lend a hand in some way to those less fortunate than yourself. You--you haven"t as yet decided just what you want to do...."
She had paused at the door, half-turning; their eyes met once more. And now the whole look of the strange young man seemed to change, and he said with sudden gentleness:
"Why don"t you go to the Works some day?"
But it was late in the day to seek to improve matters with looks and tones, with efforts to put responsibilities upon her. Cally answered as she had answered him once before: only it was a mark of some change in her--toward him, perhaps toward life itself--that she spoke with a dignity which had never been hers last year.
"I don"t think I need do that to learn that my father isn"t a homicide."
For the second time also, Cally went away from the Dabney House without the company of her staunch little mother: who would remain in this place till among the last, contending among the best people for the thing she held dearest in the world.
Cally, however, was well looked after by Mr. Avery, who welcomed her upon the threshold of the sewing-cla.s.s room (if that is what it was), removing himself firmly from the Kemper. His proposal was to continue the tour of the premises, but she replied that she found Settlementing dreadfully boring, and was of a mind to steal away for home. The disappointed pink one then proposed to accompany her, and pay a little call, as he put it. However, she professed an incurable dulness after her slumming, and countered with an offer to set him down at his club, if he liked.