"What sort of hack?" demanded Vivian, as if a good deal might depend on that.
"Reg"lar sea-going," answered the Commissioner, confirming the worst.
"Kind with the fold-back top, like you see princ.i.p.ally at n.i.g.g.e.r funerals and aldermen"s parades...."
But it was evidently no merry matter to V.V.
"Then he"s off," said he, slowly, and glanced at his watch.... "He seemed all right when I saw him last night. Only you never can tell, with him.... I wonder if I could catch him...."
The Commissioner thought not. "He was headed straight for Centre Street Station, and that was a half-hour ago. Had a bag out front in the sea-going, too. Oh, thunder, he"s all right. Little trip"ll do him good...."
Left alone in his office, V. Vivian stood still, staring intently into s.p.a.ce.
New-returned to his old home town, this young man was deep in love with twenty gallant schemes, from the general reform of the world, by his own system, to the repairment of the stomachic equipment of Tubby Miggs, aged six. But O"Neill"s tidings of the vehicular lad knocked them all from his mind. He forgot the Huns; forgot John the Baptist; forgot even his sick, till one of the weller of them (as we may a.s.sume) knocked memorially upon his door....
What trouble was brewing for his frail friend Dal?
Upon this matter, now and henceforward, the other House was to have information first. Dusk of that day had fallen before the word came to the deserted hotel. But when it did come, the lame doctor broke his evening office-hour without notice, and caught a train by thirty seconds.
II
Two Persons of More Importance, and why they went to the Beach in October; Miss Carlisle Heth, and how she met an unwelcome swain at Sea; how this Swain could swim enough for one.
Mr. Heth perused the Severe Arraignment of himself about nine o"clock, over his second cup of coffee. He perused with indignation; but, being long since trained to keep a neat part.i.tion between downtown and uptown, he did not divulge his sentiments to the breakfast-table, and even carried the paper off with him to the office. By such demeanor, he abdicates our present notice. Mrs. Heth, hours later, bought a copy of the "Post" from a uniformed newsboy, to see what they had to say of the a.s.sociated Charities meeting on the evening preceding, and of her remarks in accepting the office of First Vice-President. Absorbed by this particular piece-in-the-paper,--for so the good lady named all journalistic efforts, from dry-goods advertis.e.m.e.nts to leading editorials on Trouble in the Balkans,--it was past three-thirty o"clock, post-meridian, or well after luncheon, before her eye chanced to alight on the Dabney House"s winged words.
At this hour the ladies sat at ease in their private sitting-room on the seventh floor of the great handsome caravansary by the sea. For to-day, as it falls out, the House of Heth, just as we have it so firmly fixed on Washington Street, had split and transplanted itself; all that mattered of it, the soul and genius of the House, having flitted off seventy miles to the Beach for an over-Sunday rest.
It was the 29th of October, which should have meant grate-fires. On the contrary, two windows in the rented sitting-room were open, and Miss Carlisle Heth, laying down "Pickwick Papers," by d.i.c.kens, the well-known writer, now rose and flung wide the third.
"Whew!" said she, just as an ordinary person might have done. "It"s stifling!"
Her mother, a lifelong conservative, presently replied:
"It isn"t the heat, it"s the humidity."
Carlisle looked out over the sunny sea, and wondered if her mother were never going to take her nap. She was twenty-three years old, and, Hun or no Hun, was certainly not displeasing to the fleshly eye. Also, she much desired to pa.s.s the time with a little sail, having already privately engaged a catboat for that express purpose. There was no reason whatever why she shouldn"t have the sail, except that her mother was opposed on principle to anything that looked the least bit adventurous.
"There are cinders on me yet, in spite of my bath," added Mrs. Heth, whisking through the less interesting pieces in the "Post."... "Willie"s train arrives at four-thirty, I believe?"
Miss Heth confirmed the belief.
"I wonder, really," mused the dowager, not for the first time, "what attraction the place can offer Mr. Canning. Men are strange in their choice of amus.e.m.e.nt, to say the least."
"He"s tired of the hermit life, and wants to let down his bars and have a little fun."
"He could have all the fun he wants in town, Cally. He has only to make a sign--"
"Of course!--and be snowed under with invitations which would be odious to him, and probably roped in for something by Helen and Sue Louise Cheriton, say. He can have fun here, without its leading to anything."
She added, with perverse merriment: "At least he thinks he can, not knowing that two enterprising strangers are camping right across his little trail."
Mrs. Heth frowned slightly. She was a slim, rather small lady, and her fair face, at first sight, suggested an agreeable delicacy. To herself she acknowledged with pleasure that she was "spirituelle." To the observer, after a glance at her attractive upper face, the thick jaw and neck came as a surprise: so did the hands and feet. The feet, seen casually in a company, were apt to be taken for the belongings of some far stouter woman, sitting near. They were Mrs. Heth"s, however; and she had also a small round birthmark on her left temple, which a deft arrangement of the hair almost concealed, and a small dark mustache, which was not so fortunately placed. She was sane and sound as to judgment, and her will had raised the House of Heth as by a steam derrick.
Miss Heth, gazing down at three or four hardy bathers, who splashed and shouted at the hotel float, said, laughing:
"Truly, mamma, what do you suppose the Cheritons would have given Willie for the splendid tip?"
Mrs. Heth"s frown at her newspaper deepened; otherwise she made no response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years"
experience had at last convinced her that her daughter"s occasional mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle"s, seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality that had been routed; at least the headstone over the grave of a good quality that maybe was only buried alive. But of these people, if such there were, Mrs. Heth was positively not one....
And Carlisle"s next remark was: "What would you wear to-night, for the occasion?... Oh, there"s a big motor-boat going by like the wind."
For though she might sometimes jeer aloud over processes, the daughter was known to be quite as serious at heart as her mother, over the great matters of life. Otherwise, look you, she might not have been at the Beach at all to-day. The fact was that she and mamma had not _positively_ decided on this recuperative excursion (though they had _practically_ decided) until after the arrival of Cousin Willie Kerr"s notelet at breakfast: in which notelet Willie mentioned laconically that he and Mr. Canning were themselves going Beachward by the three o"clock train, and concluded his few lines with _verb.u.m sap_, which is a Latin quotation.
Standing idly at the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr.
Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud stranger within the gates--"house-guest," as the society column prefers it--for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed, sickened, and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had already met the too exclusive metropolitan--four days ago, by the lucky fluke of turning in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when she might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of doing so. An omen, wasn"t it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had talked, over so-called horses" necks provided by his sedate host, and before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the young man"s somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his s.e.x one could have counted pretty definitely on the thing"s being followed up.
However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her fascinatingly, and retired to re-maroon himself in the rural villa of his kinsmen, the Allison Paynes, where he halted for a week or two on his health-seeking progress southward.
It looked like a parting forever, but wasn"t, owing to that help which comes ever to those who help themselves....
To the sensible query, Mrs. Heth, lightening, replied: "Of course, the gray crepe-de-chine."
"I think so, too. Only there"s a rip at the bottom. I"m sure Flora hasn"t touched it since Mr. Avery put his large foot straight through it."
Having turned from the window, Carlisle yawned and glanced at the clock.
The two ladies conversed desultorily of draped effects, charmeuse, and why Mattie Allen imagined that she could wear pink. Mrs. Heth ran on through the "Post." Carlisle put up "Pickwick," by d.i.c.kens, sticking in a box of safety matches to keep the place. Then she examined herself in the mirror over the mantel, and became intensely interested in a tiny redness over her left eyebrow. She thought that rubbing in a little powder, and then rubbing it right off, would help the redness, and it did.
"I asked Mattie why she said such long prayers in the mornings. That was what made me late for breakfast. Her feelings were quite hurt. Isn"t her devoutness quaint, though?"
"She uses my house," murmured Mrs. Heth, "like a hotel. One would think it might occur to her that if she _must_ mummer like a deacon she ought to get up--"
She broke off, her wandering eye having just then fallen upon the Arraignment.
"She didn"t like our packing her off right after breakfast a bit either.... I"m devoted to her," said Carlisle, gently rubbing off the powder, "but there"s no denying there"s a great deal of the cat in Mats."
"Hmph!... Why, this is outrageous! I never read such a thing!"
"What is it?" said the daughter, not turning, clearly not interested.
"Here"s a man saying he visited the Works with the Labor Commissioner, and that conditions there are _homicidal!_ I never! Mmm-m-m. Here! "I speak particularly of the Heth Cheroot Works, but all four stand almost equally as burning blots upon the conscience of this community"--"
Carlisle"s attention was not diverted from her eyebrow. "The Works! He"s crazy.... Who is the man?"