Cally crosses the Great Gulf; and it isn't quite Clear how
she will ever cross back again.
Baffling questions these, even to young philosophers. Dismissing them as
foolish, Cally Heth turned from the rain-swept window, designing to rest
awhile in her own room, before dressing for a little dinner at Evey
McVey's. Forsaken as she felt, she was yet not unconscious of a certain
remote desirability in being alone; that is, in having a little time to
herself now. It occurred to her that perhaps she and Hugo had been
together rather too constantly in these weeks, going forward just a
little too fast....
In the hall she encountered her mother, descending the stairs in
mackintosh, hat, and veil. Carlisle looked surprised, but mamma's look
under the veil was roguishly dolorous, in reference to the
recent farewell.
"Why, mamma, where are you going in all the rain?"
Mrs. Heth replied: "What, no tears!... I'm off to the old Dabney House,
my dear--the first time in twenty years--"
"Oh!... The Settlement!"
"I promised Mr. Dayne I would go," said the capable little lady, eyeing
her daughter expectantly--"it's the organization meeting and election of
officers. The man has got together some excellent people for his
committee. And, by the way, Cally--"
"But they haven't raised all the money already!"
At this Mrs. Heth looked still more knowing. "Confess, Cally--didn't
Hugo do it? Didn't he make another big subscription after his thousand?"
Cally, arrested at the foot of the steps, stared at her mother.
"Why--not that I know of. What do you mean?"
Now her mother looked somewhat disappointed, but said, snapping a glove
button: "It would be like him to do it, and say not a word to anybody.
Why, there's a foolish story Mrs. Wayne told me this morning that the
whole thing had fallen through, when Mrs. Berkeley Page came forward
anonymously with a gift of twenty-five thousand--simply buying the
building outright, in fact. I don't, of course, believe a word of it.
She's exactly the kind to let her right hand know what her left was
doing. Still, I did think perhaps Hugo might possibly have done
something of the sort. He was so interested--he spoke of the Settlement
to me only yesterday...."
The girl gazed at her mother, and a sudden light broke into her eyes.
Across her memory there flashed Canning's cryptic remark, only the other
night: "We'll show him something about giving away money some day."...
This, then, was what he had meant: perhaps he had already done it that
night. She knew that Hugo had curiously disliked Dr. Vivian at sight,
and that, by the bond between her and him, he had somehow entered into
her own feminine feeling that to give handsomely to the fellow's own
charity (to which he himself gave nothing at all) was to show him up
completely in the interest of public morals. The gift of such a sum as
twenty-five thousand dollars simply exploded him off the horizon....
Her heart glowing toward her understanding lover, she clapped her small
hands and cried: "He did!--I remember something he said about it now.
Oh, I _know_ he did!"
"I felt morally certain of it," said mamma, calmly, peering through the
plate glass of the door. "Don't tell me Mary Page would do a thing like
that. Ah, here is the car at last...."
Carlisle said with sudden eagerness: "Do wait a minute for me, mamma! I
believe I'll go to the meeting, too."
Naturally some discussion followed this whimsical request. The upshot
was that Mrs. Heth, being late already, promised to send the car back.
Cally, gloom banished, ran up the stairs, her mother's voice following
behind like a trade-wind.
"It's to be in the office of that Dr. Vivian--you know?... one flight
up. No difficulty in finding ... Sure to put on rubbers...."
The last words to be distinctly heard were: "Look for me right up at
the front."
In her own room Carlisle flew about quite blithely, making ready for the
unexpected excursion with odd anticipations beyond mamma's guessing. She
felt grateful to Hugo, attached to him by a new tie; for he, however
clearly he had understood it himself, had beautifully put her in just
that position toward the religious fellow which she had so long desired
to occupy: the position, in short, of overwhelming moral superiority.
How easy now, choosing her own moment, to say what would dispel forever
the man's odd little power of causing her to worry....
The streets were slippery, the journey was from pole to pole of the town
and yet five minutes sufficed for it, bringing Settlementers to their
destination. So easily does forty horse-power traverse the mile between
Houses of Heth and Houses of Dabney. Cally Heth rolled up to the door of
the abandoned hotel. Large and dismal it looked in the slanting rain.
Archaic, too, so the modern of the moderns thought, glancing upward over
the face of the shabby pile as the car halted, and William, who was ever
attentive to his young mistress, sprang out with the umbrellas. It was
an odd place for anybody to live, certainly; an even odder place to draw
in storm the world of fashion foregathering to its bosom. Yet this
indubitably was the spot. There was the little procession of motor-cars,
lined against the broken sidewalk in the wet, to prove it. The girl's
upward eye fell, too, upon a name, inscribed in white paint upon a
window directly above the decayed grand entrance: