Carlisle became conscious of a certain excitement. She hoped very much
that they hadn't read out the names of subscribers yet.
She was late, so there was nobody to show her in. From the sidewalk she
stepped under a queer little portico, which seemed to waft one back to a
previous century. Here, at the vestibule step, she was obliged to move
carefully to avoid treading on two dirty little denizens of the
neighborhood, who knew no better than to block the way of the quality.
They were little Jew girls,--little Goldnagels, in short,--and while one
of them sat and played at jackstones with a flat-looking rubber ball,
the other and smaller lay prone upon her stomach, weeping with
passionate abandon.
Her agonized wails indicated the end of the world, and worse. Carlisle
said kindly:
"What's the matter, little girl?"
The lamenting one, who was about four years old, rolled around and
regarded the lady with a contorted face. Her wails died to a whimper:
but then, curiosity satisfied and no solace offering, she burst forth as
with an access of mysterious pain.
"Did she hurt herself?" said Carlisle, third-personally, to the elder
girl, who had suspended her game to stare wide-eyed. "What on earth is
the matter?"
The reply was tragically simple:
"_A Lady stepped on her Junebug_."
Sure enough, full on the vestibule floor lay the murdered slumbug, who
had too hardily ventured to cross a wealthy benevolent's path. The
string was yet tied to the now futile hind-leg. Carlisle, lingering,
repressed her desire to laugh.
"Oh!... Well, don't you think you could catch her a new one, perhaps?"
"Bopper he mout ketch her a new one mebbe to-morrow, mom.... _Hiesh_,
Rebecca!"
Moved by some impulse in her own buoyant mood, Carlisle touched the
littlest girl on the shoulder with a well-gloved finger.
"Here--Rebecca, poor child!... You can buy yourself something better
than Junebugs."
The proprietor of the deceased bug, having raised her damp dark face,
ceased crying instantly. Over the astounding windfall the chubby fingers
closed with a gesture suggesting generations of acquisitiveness.
"Is it hers to keep?" spoke her aged sister, in a scared voice. "That
there's a _dollar_, mom."
"Hers to keep ..." replied the goddess, smiling.
But her speech stopped there, shorn of a donator's gracious frills, and
the smile became somewhat fixed upon the lovely lip....
There had appeared a man's face at the glass of the old doors, and the
lady, straightening benignantly to sweep on to her triumph upstairs, had
run suddenly upon his fixed gaze. Nothing, of course, could have been
more natural than this man's appearance there: who upon earth more
suitable for door-keeper to the distinguished visitors than he, who had
given his office to the Settlement to-day, in lieu of more expensive
gifts? Yet by some flashing trick of Carlisle's imagination, or of his
air of immobility, seen darkly through the glass, it was almost as if he
might have, been waiting there for her alone....
But the meeting of eyes was over as soon as it began. With so prompt a
courtesy did the Dabney House physician swing open the door that it was
as if he had been opening it all along, as if she hadn't caught him
looking at her....
"How do you do, Miss Heth?... Such a dreadful day!--you were brave to
venture out."
"How d'you do?" said Carlisle, in the voice of "manner," a rising voice,
modulated, distant and superior. And over her shoulder, she addressed
the little Jew girls, with an air of more than perfect ease:
"Well, then, good-bye! Be sure to catch her the new one to-morrow...."
She had seen that the strange young man was smiling. And by that she
knew that he remembered their last meeting, and wanted to trade upon her
queer weakness at that time, pretending that he and she were pleasant
acquaintances together. Presently she should inform him better as to
that. But why, oh, why, that small flinching at the sight of him, the
very man she had fared into the downpour to explode, not pausing even to
mourn her lover's going?...
"I'm a search-party of one," said Dr. Vivian, throwing wider the door,
"for Mr. Pond. I wondered if he could have got lost, somewhere down
here--he's never turned up yet."
"Mr. Pond?"
"The director of the Settlement, you know, when it opens for business
in the fall. He happened to be in Washington, and was good enough to run
down to-day to make us a little address."
"Oh."
Carlisle found herself, beyond the door, in a quaint high-ceiled court,
enfolded with peristyles in two long rows, and paved with discolored
tiles loose under the foot. At the farther end of the court there ran
away a broad corridor into the dusk, and here also, full fifty feet
distant, rose the grand stairway with ornate sweeping balustrade ending
in a tall carved newel-post. Obsolete and ruined and queer the whole
placed looked, indeed....
"Luckily," added Dr. Vivian, "I'm in good time to serve as a guide."
But Miss Heth was already walking past him with an expensive rustle,
moving straight toward the stairway. For this, needless to say, was not
the moment to speak that pointed word or two which should unmask the
man; there would be an unavoidable vulgarity about it here, in this
solitude. And even if she should get no further opportunity
upstairs--well, after all, the situation spoke for itself; nay,
thundered. Had not Hugo--come to think of it--struck the note of the
subtler victory, he who had given magnificently and said nothing?
_Noblesse oblige_, as the Gauls say....
"Oh, no, that's not necessary," she replied, walking on. "There are the
stairs...."
The young man fell in behind her.
"The old house is really quite bewildering, upstairs. It happened that
my office was the only place available. Perhaps you will let me
show you--"
"Oh, I don't think I need trouble you, thank you."
"It is no trouble," said V. Vivian.
Good sentences these, and well pronounced. With them, conversation
seemed to languish. The processional pair moved across the shadowy court
in entire silence. The benevolent lady led, never so securely entrenched
in the victorious order, the beloved of prodigal Hugo Canning, to whom
no harm should befall. After her proceeded the slum doctor: the hard
marble betrayed the inequality of his footsteps. A minute more and they
would be upstairs, swallowed and dispersed in the publicity of the
meeting. Floor and ceiling above them brought down the sounds of a
company near at hand, the scraping of a chair-leg, the muffled echo of
voices. Carlisle's foot trod upon the bottom step of the broad stairway.
"I wonder if you would give me five minutes after the meeting, Miss
Heth?" said the young man's voice behind her. "There's a--a matter I've
wanted very much to speak to you about."
Cally's heart seemed to jump a little.
"What is it that you want to speak to me about?" she asked coolly, not
turning. And, to her own surprise, she brought her other foot up on
the stair.
"Well, it concerns the Works," said Vivian.
And he added at once, hastily: "Oh, nothing that you need object to at
all, I hope. Not at all...."
She had stopped short at the fighting-word, and turned, pink-cheeked.
Certes, there was a point at which _noblesse oblige_ becomes mere flabby
spinelessness.
And upstairs Mrs. Heth, complacent right up at the front, craned round
her neck, and thought that Cally was very long in coming....
"Yes? What about the Works?" said Cally, her breath quickening.
"Oh, I don't mean to detain you now, of course--"
"But now that you have detained me?" she pursued, with no great polish
of courtesy.
The young man raised a hand and pushed back his hair, which was short
but wavy. It was observed that he wore, doubtless in memory of his
uncle, a mourning tie of grosgrain silk, replacing the piquant
aquarium scene.
"I could hardly explain it all in just a few sentences," said he,
affecting reluctance, "and I--certainly don't want to give you a wrong
impression.... To begin quite at the end, I've been wondering if I--I
might be allowed to make one or two small improvements there, at the
Works, I mean,--in fact, out of a--a sort of fund I have."
Carlisle stared at him spellbound. She stood on the bottom step of the
old grand stairway, one gloved hand on the balustrade; and, as she so
stood, her eyes just came on a level with those of the tall doctor. His
hare-brained audacity almost took her breath away.
"Oh," said she. "Out of a fund you have."
And she thought wildly of accepting his offer at once, compelling him to
name a definite sum, just for the fun of seeing how he would wriggle out
of it afterwards.
"I'm tremendously interested in the Works, you know," the man rushed on,
quite as if he found encouragement in her reply, "because I have so many
friends who work there. It's to gratify my peace of mind, just to know
that they have--everything they need. As I say, I happen to--to have a
sort of fund--a little public fund, you might say--for--for purposes of
the kind. And the idea of outside coöperation in such a matter is a
perfectly sound one, as you doubtless know, a--a sound, advanced
socialistic idea. It's simply the community acknowledging some
responsibility where it already claims the right to regulate ..."
At this point her stare seemed to penetrate him with a doubt, and he
said, with the air of having skipped hastily and turned back:
"I mustn't detain you now to give the full argument, of course, but I
assure you the idea is sound and--mutually beneficial, as I believe.
Unfortunately," he added, with a certain embarrassment, "I don't know
your father."
"Tell me," said Carlisle, feeling an excitement mounting within her,
"how is it that you are always thinking up these plans for doing good to
other people?"
Before Dr. Vivian could meet this poser, the front door opened with a
bang, and a youngish man in a wet yellow raincoat came striding rapidly
across the court toward them. He was a powerfully built man with a
blue-tinged chin, and wore the air of a person of authority.
"Meeting not begun yet?" he demanded, without salutation, apparently
addressing Carlisle. "Thought I was late."
"Ah, Mr. Pond--glad to see you," said Vivian, stepping forward a little
to meet the newcomer. "They've just begun--you'll find an ovation
waiting for you."
"In your office? Aren't you going up, to lead the applause?"