Cally laughed merrily, and extricated herself.
"We"ll have plenty of time to decide about _that_.... Now, I must fly and dress. I shan"t have time for dinner, mamma. Will you send me up something--just some soup and coffee?"
"Certainly, darling," said mamma.
Already there had crept a certain absentness into the campaigner"s voice. Her strong, constructive mind was slipping away from this present, measuring over the triumphs that lay ahead. After her darling vanished upstairs, she remained standing motionless by the newel-post, in her fixed eyes the gleam of a brigadier-general who has pulled out brilliant victory over overwhelming obstacles. The G.o.d in the machine had, indeed, forever put the name of Heth beyond the reach of hateful malice....
Suddenly mamma said aloud, rather indignantly: "I wish I had that ten thousand back!"
In her own room, Cally bathed, dressed at some speed, and dined lightly between whiles. She was in a state of inner exaltation, contrasting oddly with her depression two hours earlier. Obliterated now was her conviction of her own human uselessness in a world of s.e.xes, though it couldn"t be said that anything had happened to disprove that conviction, exactly. In this moment she was continuously elated by all that was signified in the fact that Hugo Canning was to spend the evening downstairs talking decorously with mamma and papa while she, Cally, loved of him, was to go off to the theatre with J. Forsythe Avery....
If Canning had failed her in her greatest need, time, indeed, had exquisitely avenged her. The Lord of the righteous had delivered the prince of lovers into her hand. With his very first words in the dim drawing-room, Hugo had admitted, for the second time in their somewhat stormy courtship, his unconditional surrender. He made no mistake this time about the nature of a woman"s heart; he was not logical or controversial or just; but advancing straight upon her over her decidedly forbidding greeting, he had spoken out with evident emotion:
"Don"t look at me that way--I can"t bear it.... Don"t you know _now_ that I love you? I love you so that I won"t live without you."
Yes, Cally did know it now. She had clearly wronged both Hugo and herself in ever thinking of him as a male flirt, a light-loving jilt who too easily found balm for a heart not made for deep hurts. Busy and gay with her dressing, Carlisle thought of the Honorable Kitty Belden, and laughed musically to herself.
Yet how was it that, under so manly and sweet an appeal straight to her woman"s heart, she had not instantly subsided on the shoulder of her contrite lover, with grateful tears? Cally herself hardly understood.
She was, truth to tell, secretly surprised and thrilled by her own high-handedness. To what degree she and her former betrothed had remet under permanently changed conditions, it was beyond her thought to try to a.n.a.lyse now. Perhaps it was only the completeness of her triumph that had so fired her feminine independence. Had she met Hugo by chance, and found him lukewarm, doubt not that she would have striven to fan the embers....
She had followed her intuitions, which never reason, and when she said that she was now disciplining her prodigal, she spoke out her actual feelings as far as she herself understood them; feelings, they were, which had a deep root far back in all the summer"s unhappiness. There was a sentence of Hugo"s last May: _"I asked one girl to be my wife; have you the right to offer me another?"_ She would make Hugo pay a little more for that remark, now that she could just as easily as not.
Like Aaron"s rod, the return of Canning had swallowed up all other facts of the girl"s existence, or nearly all. She was lifted, as on wings, out of the slough of her despond. Nevertheless, the news heard at the Settlement recurred even now; and when Mrs. Heth appeared in the bedroom, just after eight, Carlisle greeted her with:
"Has papa gone out, mamma?"
Mamma said no, papa was in the study, though Mr. MacQueen was with him just at the moment. Something about installing some new machines at the Works, she believed....
"That will do, Flora--Miss Carlisle has everything she needs...." And then the good lady said, with a smile so knowing as to amount to a tremendous wink: "You are going to tell your father to-night.... That"s right, my dear--"
Cally gave a burst of gay laughter, declaring that there was not one earthly thing to tell.
"Of course, darling, mamma understands," said that lady, promptly, with her unconquerable beam.
And a few moments later she added:
"Cally, I was just thinking--no harm in being forehanded, as I always say!... Considering all the circ.u.mstances, what would you say to a small, dignified home-wedding, with two or four bridesmaids, and a large breakfast to the most intimate friends?"
Cally was even more amused....
There hovered over her in this moment, however clearly she knew it, an immense pressure, born both within and without--pressure of her own lifelong mental habits and ideals, of her parents" wishes, strengthened by the family"s late loss of prestige, pressure of public opinion, of orthodox standards, of manifest destiny, of the whole air she breathed--driving her, quite irrespective of the heart question, straight to brilliant success in Hugo"s waiting arms. The wing of this vast body brushed Cally"s cheek now, in mamma"s cooing notes. She felt it, but only smiled. A new strength possessed her; she was her own girl now as never before.
"I"ll give the suggestion due thought, mamma dear ... I"ve an engagement now."
Annie knocked, announcing Mr. Avery. Cally was now fully accoutred, in a small, queer hat, and a short queer wrap, draping in fantastically above the knee and made of a strange filmy material which might have been stamped chiffon. She turned, laughing, at the bedroom door, and her mother, no sentimentalist, thought that she looked extraordinarily pretty....
"Good-night, mamma.... _Be sure to remember me to Hugo._"
She went off to a merry evening in which her high spirits became a matter of remark, and her friend Evey McVey considered that they were the least bit out of taste--"so soon, you know." So Hugo Canning spent the evening of his return formally reinstating himself in the good graces of papa, who did not forget his daughter"s unhappiness of the summer quite so easily as mamma....
But next day Hugo had his innings, according to Mrs. Heth"s desire.
He had been in Washington, and had come to Carlisle upon an irresistible impulse. Steadily magnetized by the spirit of the "wild, sweet thing"
who had withstood him at the price of his hand, yearning had once more conquered pride, and again he had returned, again an astonishment to himself. In view of such abas.e.m.e.nt of his self-love, he had, truth to tell, expected to find Carlisle fully ready for the immediate rejoining of their lives. But perhaps there had lingered in him a doubt of the quality of his reception, born of the manner of their parting; and her hesitation, while it shook his vanity, by no means bade him despair.
After the first small shock, he had not failed to perceive the coyness of her; and why not? If her maiden"s whim demanded a brief ritual of probationary wooing before verbally admitting him to her heart again, never fear but he would go through his paces with a gallant"s air....
The day was what photographers call cloudy-bright, turning toward mid-afternoon into fitful sunshine. The young pair lunched _a deux_ at the Country Club, nearly deserted at this hour on a week-day. Hugo had stoutened the least bit under his sorrows; he was more masculine, handsomer than ever; his manner did not want his old lordliness, even now. He was not one to discuss business with a woman, but she learned of the affair which was hurrying him back to Washington, nothing less than rate-hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission, if you please.
The able young man was now a.s.sistant counsel for his father"s railway.
However, he was to pa.s.s this way soon again, probably next week.
They sat for an hour on the club piazza looking out over smooth rolling hills, now green, now wooded, all fair in the late September sunshine.
Away to the left there was the faint gleam of the river. All day Canning, in his subtle way, made love to Cally, but he was too wise to press hard upon her girlish hesitancy.
"I don"t believe you"ve missed me much," he remarked, once, on the wooing note. "Have you?"
Cally smiled into s.p.a.ce and answered: "At times."
"That"s cheerful ... When there"s not been an hour for me, all summer, I swear it, that hasn"t been singing with thoughts of you."
"You might have run up from Trouville, in July, and called on us in Paris."
His reply indicated that running, whether up or down, involved a considerable conquest of pride. And Cally understood that.
"I," said she, tranquilly, "have been growing weary of society. Perhaps that is your doing...."
She told him of her experience at the Settlement yesterday, of her rebuff at the hands of Mr. Pond. Canning thanked heaven that she need not bother herself with such dreary faddisms of the day.
"You can safely leave all that," said he, "to the women who have failed in their own careers."
"And what career is that?"
"The career of being a woman. Need you ask?"
Carlisle, drawing on her gloves, observed: "That would bring up the question, wouldn"t it, of what your ideal of a woman is."
"For five cents," said Hugo, "I will tell you her name."
She was pleased with the evidences of her mastery over him. The day of intimacy brought its reactions, automatically creating romantic airs.
When the time came for him to go, she was sorry; and perhaps just a little uncertain in her own mind. For the re-engagement had still not taken place. The most that could be said was that an "understanding"
existed, to the effect that it would take place on his return. And Canning, for his part, was not dissatisfied with this arrangement. In ten days he would come again, and take the wavering outposts by storm.
They said good-bye in the drawing-room at home, at quarter before five.
Cally held out her slender little hand. Hugo smiled down at it: surely, between him and her, an odd farewell. But then, as his clasp tightened, the man"s smile became a little twisted on his handsome lip.
"When I part from you again, my dear," said he, with sudden huskiness, "I swear it won"t be like this."
The girl looked up at him. He raised the hand, palm-upward, with a sort of jerk, kissed it, dropped it abruptly, and was gone.
Cally remained standing where he had left her; this time she did not run to the window. She glanced at the hand which her lover had just saluted, and was conscious of a subtle want in their reunion....