She stood looking down at the ma.s.s of sere bloom, touched the withered tops lingeringly with her finger-tips. It was her tribute to the dead, no more. The departed knight had dropped backward out of her heart with a speed and smoothness which showed that he had, indeed, had small foothold there since May. Less and less had Cally felt any impulse to judge or blame Hugo, impute "badness" to him; it was she who had changed, and never he. But how, why?... "Was it something done, something said?" Strange to remember now the hurried journey to the Beach last year, that afternoon in Willie Kerr"s apartment....
"Throw out those flowers in the window, Flora.... They"ve been faded for days."
She went down the stairs in that inner state which her country had once found unendurable: she was half slave and half free. And on the stairs she forgot Hugo entirely. She was thinking, in her loneliness and depression, of Vivian, who had pledged his help to her; wondering if she could ask him to come and give her his help now,--at four o"clock this afternoon, perhaps, when the house would be quiet and her mother napping. Her wish was to talk with him, to show him all her difficulty, before she saw her father. She felt that she could tell anything to Mr.
V.V. now....
Cally tapped respectfully upon a closed door, and said "Mamma?" Bidden to enter by the strong voice within, she braced herself a little, and opened the door....
Mrs. Heth sat toward the bay-window of a s.p.a.cious bedroom, dignified by an alcove and bright but for the half-drawn shades. It was observed that she wore her second-best robe de chambre, and was otherwise not dressed for the inspection of the best people. So indifferently was her fine hair caught up atop her head that the round purplish spot on her temple was left plainly visible: always an ominous sign....
"Good morning, mamma. I hope you"re feeling better to-day?"
"Physically, I am quite well," said her mother, only half turning her head.
"Oh, I"m glad.... It"s such a beautiful day. I hoped you would feel like going out for a drive."
"I hardly feel like going out--as yet.... Sit down."
Cally sat in the chair prescribed by a gesture. The eyes of the two women met for the first time since they had parted in tears. And Cally, seeing her mother"s bereaved face, had to crush down a sudden almost overpowering impulse toward explanation, reconciliation at any cost.
However, she did crush it down. There was nothing to explain, as mamma had pointed out in the midnight.
Mrs. Heth cleared her throat, though her voice seemed sufficiently strong.
"I understood from Flora that you were getting up this morning," said she, "so this seemed the appropriate time for me to see you, and learn something about your plans, regarding your future."
"My plans?"
"As you have so completely overthrown your parents" plans for you, I can only a.s.sume that you have others of your own."
Cally sat with her hands folded in her lap. A look of curious wistfulness flitted across her face.
"No, I haven"t any special plans."
"I"m surprised to hear you say so. You surely do not expect to go on this way the rest of your natural life, do you?"
"I don"t understand, mamma. Go on in what way?"
"In this way. In occupying the central position in my home, in allowing your parents to sacrifice their lives to you, in receiving lavish evidences of regard and affection which you evidently have not the slightest wish to return."
There was a considerable silence.
"I have a sort of plan there," said the girl, slowly. "I don"t want you--and papa--to go on--giving me everything. I want," she said, with a slight tremor, "to take--to be just as little expense as I can after this."
"Oh!... Then what you want to do is to withdraw altogether from society--and go to work to earn your own living?"
Carlisle raised her eyes. "Is that what you want me to do, mamma?"
"It is not a question of what _I_ want in this house any longer, it seems.... I am pointing out to you, Carlisle, that the independence of action you have lately taken upon yourself is a serious matter, to be looked at from more than one side. It is not becoming," said Mrs. Heth, watching her daughter"s face closely, "to bite the hand that feeds you."
To this the girl had no reply. Beneath her mother"s somewhat vivid metaphor, she perceived a truth, and that truth the tragic weakness of her position. But she did not know now that large books had been written about this weakness, and many more would be....
Mrs. Heth having allowed the silence to continue a moment, educationally, drew a handkerchief across her upper lip, with its strange little downy mustache, and resumed:
"With no plans of your own, you have lately thrown away the best opportunity you will ever have in your life. Now there are only two theories on which I can explain this conduct--so totally unlike your usual good sense. One is that you have permitted yourself, without my knowledge, to become interested in somebody else.... Have you?"
"No--oh, no!... No, of course not."
"That I felt confident of," said mamma, though not without a certain note of relief. "Confident.... Yet--to touch the second point,--as you look toward the future, you do expect to marry some day, do you not?"
The daughter seemed restive under this cross-examination. She turned away from the maternal scrutiny, and, resting her arm upon her chair-back, looked toward the shaded window.
"Yes--I suppose so.... That seems to be all I"m fit for.... But--since you ask me, mamma--I _would_ like, in the meantime, not to be so ... so plainly labelled _waiting_.... I"d like," she said, hesitatingly, "to have _one_ man I meet--see me in some other light than as a candidate for matrimony."
"That," said Mrs. Heth, firmly, "will never be, so long as you retain your youth and beauty, and men retain their nature....
"And why should you wish it otherwise?" continued the dominant little lady. "Despite all the loose, unwomanly talk in the air, you do realize, I see, that marriage will always remain the n.o.blest possible career for a woman."
Cally remembered a converse of this proposition she had heard one day at the Woman"s Club. She answered with light bitterness:
"When I said just now that I was fit for marriage, I meant marriage, mamma--a wedding. Of course, I"m not fit to be anybody"s wife...." She paused, and added in a voice from which the bitterness had all gone out: "I"m not fit to be anybody"s mother."
"There, there!" riposted mamma, briskly. "I think that"s enough of poor Henrietta c.o.o.ney, and her wild, unsuccessful notions."
There was another brief silence; the silence of the death of talk.
"You"re in a dangerously unsettled state of mind, my daughter--dangerously. But you will find, as other women have found, that marriage will relieve all these discontents. I myself," said mamma, with a considerable stretching of the truth, "went through the same stages in my youth--though, of course, I was married much younger than you.... Now, Carlisle, I have refused to believe that your quarrel with Hugo is irreparable."
Carlisle started as if slapped. Had mamma jerked her by a string, she could not have turned more sharply. The little general, leaning forward, swept on with hurried firmness.
"I see, of course, that you have taken your quarrel very seriously, very hard. You feel that in your anger you both said terrible things which can"t possibly be overlooked. But, my child, remember that the course of true love never did run smooth. There have been few engagements which weren"t broken off at least once, few marriages when the wife didn"t make up her mind--"
"Mamma!" said Cally, rousing herself as from a cataleptic sleep. "You can"t have understood what I told you that night. This was not a quarrel at all, in any sense--"
"I know! I understand! I withdraw the word cheerfully," said mamma, in just that tone and manner which made the strange similarity between her and Hugo. "But what I want to say, Cally, is this. Hugo is still in Washington. Willie Kerr, to whom I talked by telephone last night, had a telegram from him yesterday. Now, my child, men do not take women"s angry speeches quite as seriously as you think. Hugo is mad about you.
All he wants is _you_--"
"Oh, please--_please_! Don"t say any more. You don"t--"
"No, hear me out! See for yourself if my plan is not diplomatic and feasible, and involves no surrender of pride. I shall send Willie Kerr on to Washington this afternoon. He will go ostensibly on private business with one of the Departments,--though I will, of course, pay all expenses,--and putting up at Hugo"s hotel, will meet him as if by accident. In their talk Willie, who is tact and loyalty itself, will perhaps mention your sickness, though without comment. Gradually the impression will come to Hugo that if he returns, with, of course, suitable apologies--"
"Mamma," said Cally, starting up, very white, "if you do any such thing as that I"ll go away somewhere. I _will_ go and earn my own living....
I"ll go _and live with the c.o.o.neys_!"
The two women gazed at each other. Over the mother"s face there spread a slow flush; the round, purple birthmark darkened. Cally spoke again, with deadly earnestness.
"I _did_ think you understood about this.... If you persuade Hugo to walk down from Washington on his knees.... I"ll not see him."
Mrs. Heth, curiously, had been brought down in full flight: perhaps by the force of that wild upstarting, perhaps by the grisly threat about the c.o.o.neys. Carlisle in a flare-up had always required a certain handling. The worst of the mad girl was that she was really capable of doing these unspeakable things she mentioned.