Willie's cipher (he liked to write as if he lived in Russia, with the
postal spies after him like hawks) was no mystery to Mrs. Heth, she
being, in a certain measure, its inventor. Having taken the telegraphic
brevity upstairs to show to Carlisle, she disappeared into the telephone
booth, to rearrange her afternoon. If all subscribers to the telephonic
system were as tireless users as she, probably fewer people would have
made large fortunes by the timely purchase of forty dollars worth
of stock.
This was a Wednesday morning in mid-December. Carlisle, recuperating
from a gay debutante rout on the evening preceding, remained in bed. By
this time the "season" was well under way: all signs promised an
exceptionally gay winter, and Carlisle was, as ever, in constant demand.
She had meant to spend the morning in bed anyway, and then besides her
mother had pointed out the necessity of being fresh for the
afternoon....
From the moment of their abrupt parting at the Beach, Carlisle had not
set eyes upon Mr. Canning, though he was known to have lingered as a
house-guest all through the following week. The circumstance had
surprised her considerably at the time, until she had thought out some
satisfactory explanations for it. To-day her maidenly thoughts assumed a
wholly prospective character, very agreeable and cheery. Mr. Canning,
having arrived yesterday from some southerly resort of his choice, was
again staying at the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road, his reported
design being to ride a few times with the Cold Run hounds, otherwise
barricading himself as unsocially as before. Still, he expected to
remain for a week at least, which was very nice; and under these
circumstances it was as natural as possible that his connoisseurship
should be asked to pass judgment on the new little bachelor apartment in
Bellingham Court, where his friend Kerr was just comfortably
installed.... Where, also, no impossible stranger could intrude himself
upon the company of his betters, with revivalist vocabulary and
killjoy face.
The clock stood at eleven. The drawn shades imparted a restful dimness
to the bedroom, but the reliable maid Flora had been in to shut the
windows and start a merry fire in the grate. This room had been done
over last year in gray and old rose, with the "suit" in Circassian
walnut, and wainscoted walls which harmonized admirably. It was a
charming cloister, all most captivating to the eye, with the possible
exception of the dressing-table, which rather bristled with implements
and looked just a thought too businesslike.
Carlisle loafed and invited her soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose
habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries
of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, charmingly framing
her face....
While the Beach episode itself was now long since closed and done with,
it was not unnatural that the memory of Dalhousie's friend, the Mr.
Vivian, should have remained in Carlisle's mind, for Mr. Vivian had
addressed such words to her as had never before sounded upon her ears.
These words had clung by their sheer astounding novelty. To have God
petitioned to pity you by a shabby nobody in a pictorial tie: here was
an experience that invited some elucidation. For a time the girl's
thoughts had attacked the nobody's sincerity: he was merely failure
pretending to despise success. But, not ungifted at self-suasion though
she was, she had not seemed to find solid footing here; and she had
early been driven irresistibly to quite a different conclusion.
Evidently this man Mr. Vivian was a queer kind of street-preacher type,
victim of a pious mania which rendered him dangerously unsound in the
head. This, obviously, was the truth of the matter. On no other theory
could his pitying her be satisfactorily explained.
It was true that, with the dying down of her own sense of vague ambient
perils, she herself had come once more to feel dreadfully sorry for Jack
Dalhousie, and even to admit in her meditations that she could have
afforded to be more magnanimous in defending him from gossip. But then
that did not at all change the fact that Dalhousie deserved the severest
punishment for all the trouble and worry he had brought her. It clearly
was not right, was not moral, to make things too easy for wrongdoers.
She had gradually come to see herself as a custodian of the moral law in
this quarter, a tribunal of justice which, while upholding the
salubriousness of punition, yet strives to keep as large and generous
as it can.
Therefore it followed as the night the day that Mr. Vivian, who could
work himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she
discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a
sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious
fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling
dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of sane,
wholesome people.
Still, in lengthening retrospect, Carlisle had become quite dissatisfied
with the manner in which she had permitted the summer-house interview to
terminate. It was somewhat galling to recall the tameness with which she
had allowed a Shouting Methodist such a last word as that, entirely
unreproved. Because unreproved, the staggering word had stuck fast; in
spite of all efforts, it remained as a considerable irritation in the
background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever
saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to
have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty
sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the
opinions of such as he. And then, at other times, she decided that it
might be best simply to ignore the man altogether, turning her back with
dignity, after perhaps one look such as would completely show him up.
Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say....
She rose, in excellent spirits, shortly after noon, and began an
unhurried toilet. The toilet was so unhurried, indeed, that she had
hardly finished and descended to the family sitting-room on the second
floor when her father's latch-key was heard clicking in the front door.
This sound was the unofficial luncheon-gong. The House of Heth proceeded
to the dining-room, where Mr. Heth kissed his daughter's cheek in
jocund greeting.
"Good-_afternoon_, Cally! And you just up--well, well! Times have
changed--
"'Early to bed, early to rise--
That makes us all healthy,
Wise and wealthy--'
"That was my father's rule, and Lord, he kept us to it...."
Mrs. Heth, already seated, bit her lip slightly, which seemed to confer
prominence upon her little mustache. Her consort's habit of quoting, and
especially of misquoting, was trying to her, but she now knew it to be
incurable, like her daughter's occasional mannerism. She sat as usual
rather silent, plotting out the next few hours of her busy time, her
remarks being chiefly of a superfluous managerial nature to that
thoroughly competent African, Moses Bruce.
Carlisle, having so lately risen, ate but a _déjeuner_. Mr. Heth, on the
contrary, attacked the viands with relish, restoring waste tissues from
two directors' meetings, a meeting of the Convention Committee of the
Chamber of Commerce, and an hour in his office at the bank. He was a
full-bodied, good-looking, amiable-mannered man, of sound stock and
excellent digestion, and wore white waistcoats the year round, and fine
blond mustaches, also the year round. He certainly did not look to the
casual eye like a shameless homicide, but rather like an English country
gentleman given to dogs. He was fifty-four years old, a hard worker for
all his indolent eye, and his favorite diversion was about twelve holes
of golf on Sunday morning, and his next favorite one table of bridge by
night in the library across the hall.
Greetings over, Mr. Heth said "Catch!" to his wife and daughter,
referring to the ten-dollar goldpieces from the directors, and remarked
that he hadn't been near the Works for two mornings, and that money made
the mare go. A sober look touched his fresh-colored face as he voiced
these observations, but then he was tired and hungry, and nobody noticed
the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the
earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths
to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old
poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their
grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the
afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time régime,
dispatched the exotic meal with the cheerfulness of Property.
"Effete, Cally,--that's what this age is," said Mr. Heth, pushing back
his chair, and producing his gold toothpick. "Everybody looking for
somebody else's neck to hang on to. And makin' a lot of grafters out of
our poor class. Look at this Labor Commissioner and his new-fangled
nonsense. Nagging me to spend Lord knows how many thousands, making the
plant pretty and attractive for the hands. Voted for the fellow, too."
"I never heard of such a thing. What sort of things does he want you to
do, papa?"
"Turkish baths and manicures and chicken sandwiches, I guess. I don't
listen to his rot. Law's good enough for me. Point I make is that's the
spirit of the poor nowadays. I pay 'em wages that would have been
thought enormous a hundred years ago, but are they satisfied? Not on
your life!..."
Winter sunshine, filtering in through cream-colored curtains, touched
upon those refinements with which the prosperous civilize and decorate
the brutal need: upon silver, growing flowers, glittering glass,
agreeable open spaces, and fine old mahogany. It was an exceptionally
pleasant room. The Heths might be "improbable people," as Mrs. Berkeley
Page was known to have said on a certain occasion and gone unrebuked,
but their material taste was clearly above reproach. And all this was to
their credit, proving efficiency in the supreme art, that of living. For
the Heths, of course, were not rich at all as the word means nowadays:
they were far indeed from being the richest people in that town. Their
merit it was that they spent all they had, and sometimes a little more;
and few persons lived who could surpass Mrs. Heth in getting a dollar's
worth of results for each dollar expended....
Carlisle and her father chatted pleasantly about the remarkable spirit
of the poor, and the world's maudlin sentiment towards it and them. The
lovely maid professed herself completely puzzled by these problems.
"We're always giving them money," she pointed out, spooning a light
dessert in a tall glass, "or getting up bazaars for them, or sending
them clothes that have lots more wear in them. And what do they do in
return, besides grumble and riot and strike and always ask for more? And
they stay poor just the same. What is going to happen, papa?"
Mr. Heth lit a cigar--not one of the famous Heth Plantation Cheroots.
He requested Cally not to ask _him_.
"Never be satisfied," said he, "till they strip us of everything we've
worked our lives away earning. They'll ride in our motor-cars and we'll
sit in their workhouse. That'll be nice, won't it? How'll plain little
girls like that, eh?"
She was the apple of papa's eye; and she rather enjoyed hearing him talk
of his manifold business activities, which was a thing he was not too
often encouraged to do. To-day the master of the Works was annoyed into
speech by recent nagging: not merely from the Commissioner of Labor, but
from the Building Inspector, who had informally stopped him on the
street that morning....
"Don't you think, papa," Carlisle said sweetly, "that it will all end in
something like the French Revolution?"
Mr. Heth thought it extremely likely.
"Well," said he, "I shan't be bothered by their college folderol.
O'Neill's easy enough managed. All I need to do is invite him and Missus
O. to dinner."
"Who's O'Neill?" demanded Mrs. Heth, gliding in.
For the second time during the meal, she had been absent from the table,
on a telephone call. She always answered these summonses personally,
regardless of when they came, appearing to fear that otherwise she might
miss something.
"And who," she added, "is going to invite him to dinner?"
Mr. Heth explained, and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the
possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely.
His wife was a climber--social bug, you know. "Pays to know your man,
eh, Cally?..."
"I should say! And O'Neill's wife manages him?"
"Don't they always?" said he, pinching her little pink ear. And
thereupon he bethought himself of a thoroughly characteristic quotation,
which he rendered right jovially:
"'Pins and needles, pins and needles,
When a man marries, his trouble begins,'
"As the fellow says," concluded Mr. Heth; and so departed for The
Fourth National Bank. Mrs. Heth, reminding her daughter about being
fresh for the afternoon, glided to her writing-desk in the library.
Carlisle confronted three hours of leisure before the prospective Great
Remeeting. She went to the telephone, and called up her second-best
girl-friend, Evelyn McVey. It developed that she had nothing special to
say to Evey, or Evey to her. However, they talked vivaciously for twenty
minutes, while operators reported both lines "busy" and distant people
were annoyed and skeptical.
That done, Carlisle went to the upstairs sitting-room, and sat by the
fire reading a Christmas magazine, which had come out on Guy Fawkes day,
the 5th of November. Presently she slipped off her pumps the better to
enjoy the heat: and assuredly there is nothing surprising in that. It is
moral certainty that Queens and Empresses (if we knew all) dearly love
to sit in their stocking-feet at times, and frequently do so when
certain that the princesses-in-waiting and lady companions of the bath
are not looking. The telephone interrupted Carlisle twice, but she
toasted her arched and silken little insteps well, read three stories,
and thought that one of them was quite sweet. Where she got her hands
and feet she often wondered. They were so clearly neither Heth nor
Thompson. By this time her unwearied mother had gone out to "get in"
three or four calls; also an important Charities engagement at Mrs.
Byrd's, where Carlisle was to call for her in the car at five o'clock
_sharp_, for their visit to the Bellingham. Carlisle now became
conscious of a void, and ate five chocolates from a large adjacent box
of them, the gift of J. Forsythe Avery. Then she yawned delicately, and
picked up "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (by Mrs. Browning); for she, it
must be remembered, had a well-rounded ideal, and believed that it was
your duty to cultivate your mind. Life isn't all parties and beaux, as
she sometimes remarked to Mattie Allen....
There came a knock upon the door, breaking the thread of culture. The
seneschal Moses entered, announcing callers, ladies, in the
drawing-room. Carlisle sighed; recalled herself to actuality. After
glancing at the cards, she conceded the injudiciousness of saying that
she was out, and told Moses to announce that she would be down in a
moment. She kept the callers waiting twenty moments, however, while, in
her own room, she made ready for the street. She was donning a hat which
in shape and size was not unlike a man's derby; it was of black velvet,
lined under the brim with old-blue, and edged with a piping of
dark-brown fur. At a certain point in or on it, there stuck up two stiff
straight blue plumes. The hat was simply absurd, wildly laughable and
ridiculous, up to the moment when she got it on; then it was seen that
it had a certain merit after all. It was a calling-costume (as one
believes) that Carlisle assumed for the Bellingham; a blue costume, of a
soft material which had been invented only about a month before, and
which was silk or satin, according as you looked at it, but certainly
did not shine much. The coat, or jacket or wrap, which completed the
suit was arresting in design, to say no more of it. Less original were
the muff and stole of darkest sable; but they were beautiful.
Carlisle, it need hardly be said, went downstairs in her hat. "Oh," the
visiting ladies would say, "but you are going out." "Oh, not for half an
hour yet," she would protest. "I'm _so_ glad you came."
About 4.30, J. Forsythe Avery, who had no office hours, was ushered into
the stately Heth drawing-room. The lady callers withdrew promptly, but
not so promptly as to make it too pointed. It was generally believed at
this time that Miss Heth "had an understanding" with Mr. Avery, though
it was quite well known that she, personally, much preferred young
Robert Tellford. The figure, however, at which a famous life insurance
company commanded Robert's undivided services made him a purely academic
interest. With J. Forsythe the case was totally different: from the
environs of his native Mauch Chunk the Avery forbears had dug principal
and interest in enormous quantities.
J. Forsythe remained for twenty minutes, the period named when he had
telephoned. Having failed to secure any extension of time, he went away,
and Carlisle skipped upstairs to look in the mirror, and put on the
concluding touches indicated above. Descending and emerging into the
winter sunset, she sent the waiting car on ahead to the Byrds', and set
out to do the five blocks afoot. Exercise makes pink cheeks.
It was a splendid afternoon, sharp and clear as a silver bell. Carlisle
walked well, especially when one considers the sort of shoes she wore:
she had the good free stride of one who walks for the joy of it and not
because that is the only conceivable way to get somewhere. Nevertheless,
just as she reached the Byrd doorstep, she was overhauled by the
Cooneys, her poor but long-stepping relatives. There were only two of
them this time, Henrietta and Charles, better known, from one end of the
town to the other, as Hen and Chas.
The Cooneys, who were young people of about her own age, greeted
Carlisle with their customary simple gaiety. Both exclaimed over her
striking attire, Charles adding to his sister:
"Let Uncle Dudley stand next to Cally there, Hen--I'm better-looking
than you, anyway."
"I'd like to see a vote on that first. Recognize _mine_, Cally?" cried
Hen--"the brown you gave me last fall? First appearance since I steamed
and turned it. It'll stand a dye next year, too. But we haven't seen you
for a long time, my dear. Did you know Aunt Rose Hopwood's staying
with us now?"
"Oh, is she? I hadn't heard, Hen. How is she?"
"She's bad off," said Chas, cheerfully. "Deaf, lame, and cruel poverty's
hit her right at her old home address. I guess she'll come live with us
later on. Come walk out to King's Bridge for an appetite."
Carlisle, with an impatient foot on the Byrds' bottom step, glanced from
Chas to Hen, smiling a little. Her cousins were well-meaning young
people, and she liked them in a way, but she often found their breezy
assurance somewhat amusing.
"Thank you, Chas," said she, "but I've an engagement with mamma. I'm to
pick her up here now. I hope Aunt Molly's well?"
"Fine," said Hen. "Come and see us, Cally. Why don't you come to supper
to-morrow night?"
The lovely cousin obviously hesitated.
"Aw, Cally doesn't want to come yell in Aunt Rose Hopwood's trumpet,
Hen--"
"Aunt Rose Hopwood's going home to-morrow."
"First I've heard of it. Frankly I doubt your word."
For that Hen idly smote Chas's shins with her silver-handled umbrella
(Carlisle's gift three Christmases before), at which Chas cried _ouch_
in such a manner as to attract the attention of bystanders. Henrietta
liked this umbrella very much and commonly carried it, like a cane,
through all droughts.
"But," said she, reconsidering, "I think Hortense'll be off to-morrow,
that's so. Well, come the first soon night you feel like it--"
Carlisle had been doing some considering also, her conscience pricking
her on account of the cousinly duty, long overdue.
"I've an engagement to-morrow--so sorry," she said, rather hastily. "But
how about one night early next week, say--Thursday, if that
would suit--?"
Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry
she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And
so forth....
Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that
this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds'
vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys'
lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as
a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's _tête-à-tête_ with
Hugo Canning!