Yet the creator of all these wonders was well aware that she was not giving her dowry to Miller, exactly....
Descending from the car at her own door, Cally encountered Mr. Pond, of the Settlement. The dark-faced Director was loafing, oddly enough, on Mrs. Mason"s steps, which had once been Mr. Beirne"s, four doors from home. He raised his hat about two inches at the sight of her, returned his watch and some typewritten papers to his pocket, and came forward.
"Don"t run," said he, unsmiling. "I want to know plainly whether or not you are coming to my meeting to-morrow. Yes or no."
Cally laughed gaily. There was a radiance within her, and she liked this man increasingly. Several times they had met, since their antagonistic talk at the Settlement; and in the blunt Director"s manner she had lately observed that creeping change which she had witnessed in men as stalwart, before now....
"Don"t look so fierce," said she, "for I"ll not be bullied. Or at least not till you explain why you"re hanging around in front of the neighbors" at twelve o"clock in the morning--you who always pretend to be so frightfully busy."
"Waiting for Vivian. And I am busy, confound him.... Not too busy, as you see, to take a kind interest in your welfare--"
"Oh!... Is Dr. Vivian _there_--at the Masons"? Why, what are _you_ waiting for him for?"
"Seems to me you ask a good many questions for an idler."
He stood on the sidewalk, looking up at her with his hawk-eyes, a man yet in the early thirties, but of obvious power.
"We"re going to buy second-hand benches, if you must know," continued he. "He says he can show me where to get "em cheap. Anything else?"
"No-o--except ... How much will the benches cost? Perhaps I--might be able to contribute something--"
"I don"t want your old money," said Pond. "When are you going to be serious about serious things?"
"I think now," said Cally ... "Only, you see, I don"t know anything at all."
"I"ll teach you," said the Director.
Cally, standing on the broad white slab before her own door, did not answer. Her glance had turned down the street: and at this moment there emerged from the Masons" door the tall figure of V. Vivian, the article-writer, who would never have to put anything in the papers about papa now. He saw her instantly, and over his somehow strange and old-fashioned face there broke a beautiful smile. He lifted his hat high, and, so holding it at height, posed as if for a picture, gave it something like a wave, as in double measure of greeting and good-will. A proper salutation from friend to friend; and the sunlight gleamed on his crisp fair hair....
Cally"s return greeting was somewhat less finished. She gave the lame doctor one look of brilliant sweetness; and then she said to him, "Oh, how do you do?"--in a voice that he could not possibly have heard. Next she said, "Yes, I"ll be at the meeting to-morrow," with her back turned squarely toward Mr. Pond. And then she opened her door and went in quite quickly, leaving the Director staring intently at a crack in the sidewalk....
Within, Cally perceived that she had acted rather unreasonably, missing the opportunity to tell Mr. V.V. that she desired to speak with him: but that, of course, was only because she had not wanted to interrupt and detain two busy men at their labors. The oversight, besides, was easily to be remedied; though she did not again send the clear call for Meeghan"s. She decided to write a brief note instead, and did, asking her friend if he could come and give her his help about a matter--say at four o"clock that afternoon. The note was dispatched, not by old Moses this time, but by the hand of an urchin in a blue uniform, who was deep in "Lady Helen, the Fair Ghoul," as he bicycled, but apparently reached his destination in due course.
And V. Vivian, once again, was not disobedient to the heavenly summons.
x.x.xII
Time"s Jests, and now the Perfect Apology, to stand a Lifetime in Brick and Stone; concluding with a Little Scene, which she will remember while she lives.
She had called him untruthful once for speaking the truth about the Works. Now she would make her apology due, to stand a lifetime in brick and stone. This Cally did for the man of the slums to-day; and this she meant him to understand without much speech, since speech, in the circ.u.mstances, would be somewhat difficult.
But then, of course, she could know nothing of those colloquies Mr. V.V.
had had in his time with O"Neill, the hard-joking Commissioner, of inner conflicts he had had of late all by himself. Nor did she even take it in how far her advancing thought of him, and of all this subject, had outrun anything she had ever put into word or deed before. So she was far from imagining what a miracle she made for him this afternoon, like a midsummer dream come true; far from guessing how he, with his strange unconsciousnesses, would think of it all as just a beautiful but detached happening, a glorious coincidence....
He wore for this meeting, not his holiday raiment of blue, with the sprigged waistcoat that his Uncle Armistead might have left him, but that selfsame suit she had seen upon him all last year; including that other memorable day in her life when she had come clicking down the stairs to find the tall outlander standing here in her familiar background. Only there was no feeling in her now that he was an alien in the Heth drawing-room. No, here V. Vivian seemed to belong to-day, the best and worthiest thing in the room.
To her, that was; but it was not so with others. The one speck in the perfect balm was that, to have this man here at all, she had had to manage it secretly, as if it were something discreditable....
The greetings were over; they were seated; he was advised that it was about a building matter that she desired his help; and even when, as talk progressed, she placed her building lot for him at Seventeenth and Ca.n.a.l Streets, the doctor"s manner, which was quite eager and interested and pleased at being summoned for help, showed no signs of understanding.
"Seventeenth and Ca.n.a.l Streets," he repeated, alert and businesslike.
"Yes? It"s to be a business building, then?"
"There"s a building there now, but I"m going to pull that one down,"
said Cally. "I don"t like it."
And at this moment it was that she saw consciousness burst into the unconscious; burst with the strong suddenness of an explosion.
"_Seventeenth and Ca.n.a.l Streets_!... That"s the Heth Works corner!"
"That"s the building I"m going to pull down. I--I"ve taken a dislike to it."
The tall young man came to his feet, slowly, as if hoisted from above by an invisible block and tackle. All in a moment, his face had become quite pale.
"What do you mean?" he asked, in a queer clipped voice.
"I mean ... I don"t think you will have to say anything about my father in your articles.... We"re going to build a new Works--_now_!"
He stood staring a second like a man of stone; and then turned abruptly from her and walked away. But in that second she saw that his petrifaction was already scattering, and his face wore the strangest look, like a kind of glory....
So Cally thought that he understood now; and that was all the reward she wanted. Sitting silent, she looked after his retreating back. She perceived, with a queer little twitching in her heart, that the polished s.p.a.ces upon Mr. V.V."s right elbow had thinned away into an unmistakable darning. And then it came over her quite suddenly that the reason he wore this suit to-day was probably that he had given his blue suit away, to one of his sick. She seemed quite sure that that was it. And oh, how like him, and like n.o.body else in the world, to give away his best one, and keep the patches for himself....
And the first thing that he said, returning to her after his thunderbolt surprise, seemed also beautifully characteristic of his strange faiths.
"Well, it"s wonderful," said he, in quite a natural voice. "Of course, the greatest thing that will ever happen to me.... And yet--it may seem strange to you--but I"ve felt all along--I"ve _felt_--that something like this might probably happen any time."
Moved as she was, Cally could have smiled at that. But when she saw the intense honesty of his face, which still wore that half-startled yet shining look, the look of a man with a sudden secret all his own, she did not smile, and her own thought was given quite a new course.
"Perhaps you"re a nice sort of mind-reader," said she, gently, "for you were right to feel that way, at least as far as my father is concerned.
I specially wanted you to know about that. Papa has been planning for six years to put up a new building--only last month he had arranged to spend quite a lot of money in repairs. I just came to understand all this to-day. The trouble has been," said Cally, looking up at the old family enemy with no sense of hesitation or reluctance--"I"ve always been too expensive, you see. I"ve never left him any money to carry out his plans...."
She would not say anything about horse-leech"s daughters, not, of all things, wanting to embarra.s.s him to-day. But possibly his mind filled in a hiatus here, and there was no mistaking that what she said about her father impressed him profoundly.
"I ... I really seem to have known. You might call it a sort of--of premonition--if you wanted to ... Though you"ll naturally not think I"ve acted that way."
Mr. V.V. stood by a spindly table, carefully examining a small but costly vase, the property of Mr. Heth, of the Cheroot Works; and now he went on with a kind of diffident resolution, the air of one who gives a confidence with difficulty, but must do so now, for his honor.
"You may remember my telling you once that I was--was sorry to write the factory articles you just mentioned. The truth is I"ve hated to write them--especially as to--as to the Works.... It"s just the sort of thing I"ve wanted for a long time to write, too. I had the argument thought out down to the bone. Oh, they"re good.... I--I was going to send the first lot to the "Chronicle" this week.... And yet--well, it"s been pulling against the grain somehow, every line of the way. It seemed strange.... And now I see that I must have felt--known--all along....
But," said the strange young man, setting down the vase and hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, "I--I realize that this must sound most unconvincing to you. Probably foolish. No matter...."
But Cally felt by now that she understood him better than he understood himself.
"No, I think I understand," said she. "And if you hadn"t felt that way--don"t you see?--it never would have happened."