"I saw you talking with Mr. Pond," said Mrs. Heth, a little aside. "How did he impress you?"
"He"s the most conceited human being I ever saw," said Cally. "I believe he said one or two fairly interesting things."
"Well--that"s not a bad recommendation. I like an important man to think well of himself. I"ll ask him for my Settlement dinner Sat.u.r.day, when those Cheritons stop nagging at him."
Mamma looked slightly flushed beneath her fixed smile; a look which her daughter had no difficulty in understanding. More than once this afternoon, Cally had encountered significant stares upon herself, instantly removed, which showed with amusing candour that she was the subject of conversation in those quarters. No more could she a.s.sume that this conversation and those stares were but the involuntary offerings of the mult.i.tude to beauty and brilliant success. And yet she did not seem to mind so very much....
"I just gave my Settlement check to Mr. Byrd," added mamma. "He was very grateful, but not as grateful as he ought to have been."
She glided back to her position near the door. Mrs. McVey, chatting on, observed that the Pond man hadn"t seemed impatient to make her acquaintance, though she had waited round some time to give him the pleasure; also that there were no refreshments but ice-water from the new ten-gallon cooler in the hall. Then she, in her turn, pa.s.sed on, as J. Forsythe Avery was discerned steering in a fixed direction through the crowd.
"Are your labors ended so soon?"
Mr. Avery bowed pluperfectly, and Cally smiled suddenly. He was a pink, slightly bald young man, and had once been described by Mr. Berkeley Page as very gentlemanly.
"What are you laughing at?" inquired he, somewhat lugubriously.
"Only at something funny Mrs. McVey just said. You know how witty she is.... Have you handed them all out?"
"I appointed a deputy," confessed Mr. Avery, "but I labored hard for a time. Am I not ent.i.tled to--er--the rewards of labor now?"
Cally glanced away, with no more desire to smile. The look in his pink eyes had arrested her attention, and she wondered whether she could possibly bring herself to take him. She was not wanted as a Settlement worker; and he would be colossally wealthy some day. Perhaps he lacked an indefinable something that comes from grandfathers, but he had never committed a social fault in his life, unless you would hold up against him an incurable fondness for just one tiny little drop of cologne on a pure linen handkerchief. Mamma would be rather pleased, poor dear.
Then her mind"s eye gave her a flashing memory-picture of Canning, the matchless, and Mr. Avery became unimaginable....
"Such as what?" said she, listlessly, to his roguish hints of reward.
"I should offer my escortage for--er--a small tour over the premises, and so forth. Why not?"
"No reason in the world, except that I may not go over the prem ..."
That word the speaker left forever unfinished. And her next remark was:
"What did you say?"
Obviously there was an interlude here; and in it Cally Heth had seen, and recovered from the sudden sight of, the strange young man Mr. V.V., upon whom her eyes had not fallen since a sunny May morning when she had sat and wept before him. He stood quite near, the founder of the Settlement, though in an obscure corner: backed there, it seemed, by a fat conversationalist in a purple bonnet. But there must have been telepathy in Cally"s gaze for her one confidant; for she had no sooner descried his tall figure through the fuss and feathers than he turned his eyes and looked at her.
She had considered with mingled feelings the prospect of meeting this man again to-day; and now the sight of his face and lucid gaze brought something of that sense of shock which had attended these encounters in other days. Only now, twined with the painfulness of many a.s.sociations which his look aroused, there was a sort of welcome, odd and unexpected; she felt a little start of gladness, as at the unlooked-for appearance of something trusted and familiar. How was it that she had thought so little of him in these months, through which it had seemed that there was n.o.body who understood?...
She bowed, in quite a bright and friendly way, putting down her inward disquiet; and then it was that, turning hastily again to the faithful Avery, Cally inquired:
"What did you say?"
"I suggested," said the pink and pluperfect one, "that you ought to see the gymnasium and swimming-pool at any rate. I"m informed that the pool is the largest in the State, and ..."
But Cally had seen that the man from another world was stepping out from his obscurity; and now there sounded above the Avery periods the vivid voice first heard in the summer-house.
"Miss Heth!--may I say how-do-you-do?... I hadn"t seen you till that moment. In fact, I had no idea you were here ..."
"Oh, yes, indeed. I"m a Life Member, if you please," said Cally turning, looking again at the owner of that voice. "How do you do? Do you know Mr. Avery, Dr. Vivian?"
The two men bowed. Young Mr. V.V. had not long retained the slim hand which--such was his lot--had been offered to him for the first time in his life.
"Oh, Miss Kemper!" added Cally. "Do forgive me--I didn"t recognize your back at all. May I introduce Mr. Avery?..."
And then, while Mr. Avery paid reluctant devoirs to the lady in the purple bonnet, Cally said quite easily to Dr. Vivian:
"I was just debating whether or not to make an exploring expedition over the whole Settlement. Is there much to see?--or is it mostly rooms?"
"Oh, mostly rooms," said Mr. V.V.
He seemed to begin a smile at this point, and then to change his mind about it. The smile, if such it was, ended short, as if clipped off.
"This door," he added turning to the fresh-painted portal at his elbow, "leads to one of them.... A fair sample, I imagine. This one happens to be a--ah--a sort of sewing-cla.s.s room, I believe...."
"Oh, a sewing-cla.s.s room! That must be where I was offered a position."
"Will you look at it?"
"I"d like to. Only I can"t sew a bit, you see...."
She stepped exploringly through the open door, into the sort of sewing-cla.s.s room. V. Vivian walked after her; and behind him he distinctly heard the surprised and somewhat offended voice of the Kemper:
"Funny! I thought that was Mr. Pond I was talking to all the time."
"It"s--it"s a very nice place," said Cally, glancing about her as she advanced.
Not that it mattered, but it really was not a particularly nice place, only a rather dark and small chamber, smelling of paint and entirely empty save for one bench.
"Not a great deal to see, as you notice," said the summer-house voice behind her, sounding somehow changed since last year.... "Not much of a cla.s.s could sit on the bench, I fear. Or perhaps it"s this next room that"s for sewing."
"Oh, I don"t mind," said Cally.
And then she turned suddenly upon Mr. V.V., facing him, looking up with a sweet, half-wistful smile such as her face had never worn before for him.
"But tell me something about yourself.... What sort of summer have you had?"
So he was brought to a halt, confronting in one of his donated rooms the loveliest of the Huns; confronting, but not looking at her exactly....
"Well, it"s been hot, as you know--in fact, the hottest summer since the Weather Bureau began. That wasn"t comfortable, of course. There was a good deal of suffering, where people couldn"t afford ice.... Personally, I"ve happened to be so busy that the weather didn"t matter--"
"That"s quite ominous, isn"t it, in a doctor? Has there been so much sickness in this neighborhood?"
"Yes, there"s been a lot of it. We had rather a bad typhoid epidemic, beginning in July--not easy to check in this old district, standing pretty much as it was before the war. I sometimes think there"s no hope of ever cleaning it out, short of a London fire.... I--I hope you"ve been well?"
"Oh, yes, quite well, thank you. But is this district so bad--from a health point of view?"
"You should see it," said he, rather drily. "Or rather, of course, you shouldn"t. It"s more or less disturbing to one"s peace of mind at times...."