"Just a--a little sort of story," he said, nervously--"you might call it
a little sort of--allegory, illustrating--in a way--how money tends
to--to cut a man off from his fellows.... This man, in the sort of--of
story, was told to give away all he had, not so much to help the poor,
so it seems to me, as to--"
"I see. And of course," she said, vexed anew--how did she seem _always_
to be put at a disadvantage by this man, she, who could put down a
Canning, alas, only too easily and well?--"of course that's just what
_you_ would do?"
"What I should do?"
"If _you_ had a lot of money, of course you would give it all away at
once, for fear you might be cut off--segregated--rocky island--and
so forth?"
To her surprise, he laughed in quite a natural way. "Uncle Armistead,
who's usually right, says I'd hang on to every cent I could get, and
turn away sorrowful.... Probably the only reason I talk this way is I
haven't got any.... That is--except just a--a little income I have, to
live on...."
No doubt he said this hypocritically, self-righteous beneath his
meekness, but Cally was prompt to pounce on it as a damning confession.
She flashed a brilliant smile upon him, saying, "Ah, yes!--it's so much
easier to preach than to practice, isn't it?"
And quite pleased with that, she proceeded to that despoiling of him she
had had in mind from the beginning:
"Before I go, I started to tell you just now, when you interrupted me,
that I was in rather a hurry yesterday, and didn't have time to--to say
to you what I meant to say, to answer your request--"
"Oh!" said he, rather long drawn-out; and she saw his smile fade. "Yes?"
"I meant to say to you," she went on, with the same "great lady"
graciousness, "that I shall of course speak to my father about the girl
you say was unjustly dismissed. It's a matter, naturally, with which
you have nothing to do. But if an injustice has been done by one of his
subordinates, my father would naturally wish to know of it, so that he
may set it right."
The little speech came off smoothly enough, having been prepared (on the
chance) last night. For the moment its effect seemed most gratifying.
The young man turned away from her, plainly discomfited. There was a
small callosity on the pilaster adjacent to his hand, and he scratched
at it intently with a long forefinger. Standing so, he murmured, in the
way he had of seeming to be talking to himself:
"I knew you would ... I _knew_!"
She disliked the reply, which seemed cowardly somehow, and said with
dignity: "It's purely a business matter, and of course I make no
promises about it at all. If there _has_ been any injustice, it was of
course done without my father's knowledge. I have no _idea_ what he will
do about it, but whatever he decides will of course be right."
The man turned back to her, hardly as if he had heard.
"The trouble is," he said, in an odd voice, harder than she had supposed
him to possess, "I didn't trust you. I--"
"Really that's of no consequence. I'm not concerned in it at--"
"I was sure all the time you would--be willing to do it," he went on, in
the same troubled way. "I was _sure_. And yet last night I went off and
spoke to somebody else about it--a man who has influence with
MacQueen--John Farley--a--a sort of saloonkeeper. Corinne is back at
work this morning."
The girl struggled against an absurd sense of defeat. She wished
now--oh, _how_ she wished!--that she had gone away immediately after
giving him mamma's and papa's cards....
"Oh!" she said, quite flatly.... "Well--in that case--there is no more
to be said."
But there he seemed to differ with her. "I'd give a good deal," he said
slowly, "if I'd only waited.... Could you let me say how sorry I am--"
"Please don't apologize to me! I've told you before that I--I _detest_
apologies...."
"I was not apologizing to you exactly," said V. Vivian, with a kind of
little falter.
"I--haven't anything to do with it, I've said! It's all purely a
business matter--purely!" And because, being a woman, she had been
interested in the personal side of all this from the beginning, she
could not forbear adding, with indignation: "I can't _imagine_ why you
ever thought of coming to me, in the first place."
"Why I ever thought of it?" he repeated, looking down at her as much as
to ask whom on earth should he come to then.
"If you had a complaint to make, why didn't you go direct to my father?"
"Ah, but I don't know your father, you see."
"Oh!... And you consider that you do know me?"
The man's right hand, which rested upon the pilaster, seemed to shake a
little.
"Well," he said, hesitatingly, "we've been through some trouble
together...."
Then was heard the loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the
old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did
not. Cally Heth's white glove rested on Mr. Beirne's polished
balustrade, and her piquant lashes fell.
She desired to go away now, but she could not go, on any such remark as
that. Staying, she desired to contradict what the alien had said, but
she could not do that either. The complete truth of his remark had come
upon her, indeed, with a sudden shock. This man _did_ know her. They
_had_ been through trouble together. Only, it seemed, you never really
got through trouble in this world: it always bobbed up again, waiting
for you, whichever way you turned....
And what did this lame stranger have to do with her, that, of all people
on earth, his eyes alone had twice seen into her heart?...
She looked suddenly up at him from under the engaging little hat, and
said with a smile that was meant to be quite easy and derisive, but
hardly managed to be that:
"Supposing that you do know me, as you say, and that I came to you to
prescribe for me--as a sort of happiness doctor.... Would you say that
to give away everything I had--or papa had--would be the one way for me
to be--happy?"
"Happy?..."
He curled and recurled the corners of the Heth cards, which did not
improve their appearance. He gazed down at the work of his hands, and
there seemed to be no color in his face.
"To be happy.... Oh, no, I shouldn't think that you--that any one--could
be happy just through an act, like that."
"I could hardly give away more than everything all of us had, could I?"
"Well, but don't you think of happiness as a frame of mind, a--a sort of
habit of the spirit? Don't you think it comes usually as a--a by-product
of other things?"
"Oh, but I'm asking you, you see.... What sort of things do you mean?"
He hesitated perceptibly, seeming to take her light derisive remarks
with a strange seriousness.
"Well, I think a--a good rule is to ... to cultivate the sympathies all
the time, and keep doing something useful."
Carlisle continued to look at his downcast face, with the translucent
eyes, and as she looked, the strangest thought shimmered through her,
with a turning of the heart new in her experience. She thought: "This
man is a good friend...."