In which Catty tells a Certain Person that she isn't
Happy--very.
The question recurred next day. The strange ubiquity of the nephew
persisted. When Carlisle called about noon to "inquire" after her
respected neighbor, who had lain four weeks in mysterious coma, her ring
was answered and the door opened by young Dr. Vivian. He had seen her
coming, through the window.
"Oh!--good-morning, Miss Heth!" said he, in a manner indicating the
experiment of pleased surprise, tempered with a certain
embarrassment.... "What a glorious day outdoors, isn't it?--almost
spring.... Won't you come in?"
Miss Heth replied, as she would have replied to the housemaid (who,
indeed, could herself be spied just then, pausing, down the dimness of
the hall):
"Good-morning. No, I stopped to ask how Mr. Beirne is to-day. We hope
there is better news?"
The young man stepped at once out into the vestibule.
"Oh! That's kind of you," said he, his pleasure gaining strength. "I'm
happy to say that there _is_,--the best news. He's going to get well."
"I'm so glad to hear it," replied Miss Heth....
If, in despite of herself, there was a trace of stiff self-consciousness
in her voice and air, how was she to be blamed for that? There is a
breaking-point for even the most "finished" manner, and the sight of
this man to-day was like a rough hand on a new wound. A great wave of
helplessness had broken over her, as the opening door revealed his face:
how could you possibly avoid the unavoidable, how destroy the
indestructible? And it seemed that, since yesterday, he had robbed her
of her one reliable weapon....
The tall young man pushed back his light hair. He was smiling. The mild
winter sun streamed down upon him, and his face looked worn, as if he
wanted sleep.
"We had a consultation this morning--three doctors," he went on, in the
friendliest way. "They're sure they've found out where the trouble is. A
little operation, of no difficulty at all--I've done it myself, once in
the hospital!--and he'll be walking the street in a fortnight."
"That is good news, indeed. We have been so--sorry about his illness."
"Thank you--it's a tremendous relief to me, of course. He seemed so very
ill last night...."
Standing under his eye in the tiled vestibule, Carlisle produced, from
her swinging gold case, not her card, but those of Mr. and Mrs. B.
Thornton Heth, and extended them in a gloved hand.
"May I leave these?" she said, with the reemergence of "manner." "My
mother and father will be delighted to learn that Mr. Beirne is soon to
be well again."
"That's very kind. I know my uncle would be--_will_ be--much gratified
by your interest and sympathy."
Who shall know the heart of a woman? The thing was done, the inquiry
over. The most punctilious inquirer could have bowed now, and walked
away down the steps. Cally imperceptibly hesitated.
She had four times met this man, and he had three times (at the lowest
computation) driven her from his presence. That thought, unsettling in
its way, had leapt at her somewhere in the night: she had sought to
drape it, but it had persisted somewhat stark. And now had not he
himself taught her, by that hateful apology which seemed to have settled
nothing, that there were subtler requitals than by buffets upon
the front?...
The pause was psychological purely, well covered by the card-giving.
Words rose to Cally's tongue's tip, gracious words which would show in
the neatest way how unjust were this man's opinions of her and her
family. However, the adversary spoke first.
"I'm so glad to--to see you again, Miss Heth," he began, with a loss of
ease, twirling the B. Thornton Heth cards between long thin fingers--"to
have the opportunity to say.... That is--perhaps you'll let me say--you
mustn't think the Works are so--so disappointing as perhaps they may
seem, just at first sight. You know--"
Her flushing cheeks stopped him abruptly; and she had not usually found
him easy to stop.
"But I didn't think they were disappointing at _all_! Not in the
_least_!"
The young man's eyes fell.
"Oh!" he said, with noticeable embarrassment. "I--only thought that
possibly--as you--you had not happened to be in the factory district
for--for some time,--that possibly you might be just a little surprised
that things weren't--well, prettier. You know, business--"
"But I wasn't surprised at all, I've said! I knew exactly what it was
like, of course. Just exactly. And I consider the Works--_very
pretty_ ... for a factory."
She gazed up at him indignantly from beneath a little mushroom hat lined
with pink, challenging him to contradict her by look or word. But he
swallowed her dare without a quiver.... Good heavens, what girl worth
her salt would endure apologies on behalf of her own father, from one so
much, much worse than a stranger to her? It may be that V. Vivian liked
the lovely Hun the better for that lie.
"Well," he said, compounding the felony with a gallant gulp, "I--I'm
glad you weren't disappointed--"
She could certainly have retired upon that with all the honors, but the
fact was that the thought of doing so did not at the moment cross her
mind. She found the conversation interesting to a somewhat
perilous degree.
"I suppose _your_ idea is," she said, and it showed her courage that she
could say it, "that a factory ought to be a--a sort of _marble palace_!"
"No. Oh, no. No--"
"But it _is_ your idea, is it not, that it's my father's duty to take
his money and build a perfectly gorgeous _new_ factory, full of all
sorts of comforts and luxuries for his work-girls? That _is_ your idea
of his duty to the poor, is it not?..."
There it was, the true call: what ear could fail to catch it? Out they
came running from the city again, the old scribes with new faces;
pouring and tumbling into the wilderness to ask a lashing from the grim
voice there.... Only, to-day, it must have been that he did not hear
their clamors. Surely there was no abhorrence in these eager
young eyes....
"Well--personally, I don't think of any of those things just as a--a
duty to the poor--exactly."
"Oh! You mean it's his duty to himself, or something of that sort? That
sounds like the catechism.... That _is_ what you meant, is it not?"
"Well, I only meant that--I think we might all be happier--if ..."
An uproar punctuated the strange sentence. Mr. Beirne's butler had
chosen to-day to take in coal, it seemed; a great wagon discharged with
violence at precisely this moment. Two shovelers fell to work, and an
old negro who was washing the basement windows at the house next door,
the Carmichaels', desisted from his labors and strolled out to watch. It
was the most interesting thing happening on the block at the moment, and
of course he wanted to see it.
Carlisle stared at Mr. Beirne's nephew, caught by his word.
"Oh!..." said she. "So you think my father would be much happier if he
stripped himself and his family to provide Turkish baths and--and
Turkish _rooms_ for his work-girls? I must say I don't understand that
kind of happiness. But then I'm not a _Socialist_!"
She said Socialist as she might have said imp of darkness. However, the
young man seemed unaware of her bitter taunt. He leaned the hand which
did not hold the cards against a pilaster in the vestibule-side, and
spoke with hurried eagerness:
"I don't mean that exactly, and I--I _really_ don't mean to apply
anything to your father, of course. I only mean--to--to speak quite
impersonally--that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so
hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along
it's going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all--isn't it
rather hard ever to get happiness that way? Perhaps we might find that
the real way to be happy was just in the other direction. That was all I
meant.... Don't you think, really," the queer man hurried on, as if
fearing an interruption, "it stands to reason it's not possible to be
happy through money? It's so _segregating_, it seems to me--it _must_ be
that way. And isn't that really just what we all want it for?--to make
a--a sort of little class to ourselves, to wall ourselves off from the
rest--from what seems to be--life. It elevates in a sense, of
course--but don't you think it often elevates to a--a sort of rocky
little island?"
They seemed to be personal words, in despite of his exordium, and V.
Vivian boggled a little over the last of them, doubtless perceiving that
he was yielding fast to his old enemy (as indicated to O'Neill) and once
more being too severe with these people, who after all had never had a
chance....
Cally looked briefly away, up the sunny street. She raised a
white-gloved hand and touched her gay hair, which showed that, though
she hesitated, she was perfectly at ease. She had just been struck with
that look suggestive of something like sadness upon the man's face,
which she had noticed that night in the summer-house. She herself was
inclined to connect this look with his religiosity, associating
religion, as she did, exclusively with the sad things of life. Or did it
come somehow from the contrast between his shabby exterior and that
rather shining look of his, his hopefulness incurable?...
She replied, in her modulated and fashionable voice: "I don't agree with
you at all. I'm afraid your ideas are too extraordinary"--she pronounced
it extrord'n'ry, after Mr. Canning--"for me to follow. But before
I go--"
"They do seem extraordinary, I know," broke from him, as if he could not
bear to leave the subject--"but at least they're not original, you
know.... I think that must be just the meaning of the parable of the
rich young man.--Don't you, yourself?"
"The parable of the rich young man?"
She looked at him with dead blankness. Passers-by hopped over the
coal-hole and glanced up at the pair standing engrossed upon the
doorstep. Such as knew either of them concluded from their air that Mr.
Beirne was worse again this morning.