To this stark inquiry all the girl's problem came down. Gone like a
fever-mist was the emotional flare-up (as mamma would have said) which
had tricked her into blurting out a secret scarcely even formulated
before in her own inmost soul. That mysterious moment remained merely as
an astonishment. It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to
her; she had simply been swept away by some unfathomable madness. And at
present Nature's first law was working in her with obliterating force.
_Would the man tell?_ Here in the sane and ordered surroundings, with
mamma sleeping and satisfied one floor below, and a long, long letter to
be written to her knight among men the first thing to-morrow, there was
nothing in the world that mattered but that. If Vivian would not tell,
then, indeed, all was well with her. If he did tell ...
He had said that he would not tell without first seeing her. But of
course there was nothing under heaven to prevent his seeing her, or
sending word to her, at any time, by day or by night. And then what?
Carlisle lay upon her back, rather small and frightened in the tall bed,
struggling to pluck away the veil from the face of the menacing future.
What would "telling" mean, exactly?...
There was a hopeful view. The whole thing was so confused, just as he
himself had admitted, more than once. It might all be put on the ground
of a mistake, a little misunderstanding, recently discovered. You could
tell, and not go into all the mixed-up details. Jack Dalhousie would
then gratefully return from Texas (where he was really getting on much
better than he had ever done at home--Dr. Vivian had practically said
so); his father would quietly take him back; and it would be generally
understood that Jack was not a coward now, and was greatly improved
morally by the disciplinary exile, and everything would be all right.
But of course the difficulty here was that somebody (like Colonel
Dalhousie, for instance) might think to ask why the discovery of the
little misunderstanding came now, instead of six months ago. You could
hardly reply to such an one that you had just discovered the mistake as
the result of a flare-up, caused by a slum doctor's giving twenty-five
thousand dollars to buy an old hotel. Who would understand that, when
you didn't yourself?...
Carlisle, indeed, being a practical girl, did not linger long on the
optimistic prospect. For to-night at least, "telling" seemed a matter
too dreadful to contemplate. Colonel Dalhousie was an irascible and
solitary widower with one son whom he had once been proud of; and this
son, having been strangely compelled to take a lady's word as to his own
conduct, had been disgraced by that word, cast out with his father's
curse upon his forehead. Was it likely that these two would take the
discovery of a little misunderstanding now with a charming quiet
courtesy?--that, shouting the discovery abroad to save their faces, they
would have due regard for careful qualifications and for striking the
right note? The reply was the negative: it was not at all likely.
Cally knew the world's rough judgments, where all is black or all is
white, and ifs and buts go overboard as spoiling the strong color
scheme. And well she knew the way of horrid gossip; none better. That
she, Carlisle Heth, had deliberately lied merely to save her name from
public association with young Dalhousie's, and by this lie had ruined a
boy who in his way had loved her well: such would be the story which the
angry Colonel (perhaps coming to shoot papa besides) would throw to the
four winds, to be rolled in the mouth of gossip forevermore. O what a
tasty morsel was here, my countrymen!...
Staring fearfully into the dusk, Carlisle pictured herself as hearing
such a story about Evey or Mattie: she perceived at once, with sickening
sensations, how intensely she would be interested in it. Yes; once
started, it would sweep through drawing-rooms and clubs like fire. With
what glee would the world's coarse tongue make its reprisals upon
brilliant success! Town-talk the lovely Miss Heth would be, spotted all
over with that horrid tattle from which she (and Hugo) had ever so
shuddered and shrunk....
And against this threatened avalanche, entailing who knew what
consequences, she had but the frail shield of the sense of honor--well,
then, say, the sense of chivalry--of a man far beneath her world, whom
she had frequently told herself that she disliked and despised.
A pale yellow ray of the moon, journeying upward over the coverlet, fell
across her face. She rose, pattered on slim bare feet over the chequered
floor, lowered the shade. Inside and out, all the world was still. Cally
dropped down on her chaise-longue by the window, very wide awake....
And, gradually, since she was practical, she formed a plan of action: a
plan so simple that she wondered she had not thought of it at once....
A long time she had spent in trying to think how she might compel,
cajole, or bribe the man at the Dabney House to pledge her his eternal
silence. But she had not been able to think of any promising way: each
time, she brought up confronting with painful fascination the conviction
that religious fellows were hard. And out of this conviction there grew,
in time, her own resolve. Well, then, she would be hard, too. She would
avoid seeing or having any communication with Dr. Vivian, and if he
dared to repeat _anything_, she would simply laugh it all aside. She
would deny that she ever said any such preposterous thing in her life.
She would _have_ to do that; her duty to others demanded it.... And what
could he do then? It would merely be his word against hers, Miss Heth's.
He would be left in a most unpleasant position....
In this position V. Vivian remained while Carlisle slept. However, the
new day, as it pleasantly proved, brought no need for such severe
measures. Many rings at doorbell and telephone Cally's strained ears
heard between getting up and bedtime, but the hard ring of Nemesis was
never among them. All day silence brooded unbroken in the direction of
the Dabney House. And when another morning wore to evening, and no heart
brake, and yet another and another, there descended again upon the girl
the peaceful sense of re-won security....
In these days the House of Heth was in a continual bustle. On Tuesday
next--a week to a day from the Settlement meeting--the ladies were to
depart for New York, Hugo, and Europe, the Trousseau and the
Announcement, to return no more till mid-September. On the same day the
titular master of the house was to go off for a five days' fishing
junket, thence flying to New York for the "seeing off," and soon
thereafter starting out for a three weeks' business trip to the Far
West. Along with the various domestic problems raised by this programme,
there were all the routine duties of the season to be attended to.
Cold-weather things must still be salted down with camphor balls and
packed away; costly pictures provided with muslin wrappers; drawing-room
furniture with linen slip-covers; rooms cleaned and locked up, doors and
windows screened and awninged. Mrs. Heth went dashing from one bit of
generalship to another, and telephoned ten thousand times a day.
Nevertheless she kept eyes in her head, and accordingly she observed to
Mr. Heth one starlit night, as they sat _a deux_ on the little front
balcony where flowering window-boxes so refinedly concealed one from the
public view:
"I never saw a girl so absolutely naive about showing her feelings. She
began to droop the minute he left the house, and hasn't been her natural
self since.... Irritable!--till you can't say good morning without her
snapping your head off."
"Maybe, it's the weather," suggested Mr. Heth, who wore a white flannel
suit and fanned himself with a dried palm-leaf. "And I reckon, too,
she's feeling sorry to leave her old father for such a long time. Four
months--hio!"
"Cally's not the girl to get black rings under her eyes for things like
that."
She added presently: "It's a pure love-match, which is naturally a
gratification to me, who brought the whole thing about. 'Thank God,
Cally, you've got a mother,' I said to her only the other day. But I do
say there's such a thing as carrying love just a little too far."
Cally, meantime, while affecting no interest in summer clothes for
chairs, kept as closely occupied with her own affairs, social activities
and preparations for the brilliant absence, as mamma did with hers. Much
time went, too, to her correspondence with Canning, who wrote her daily
fat delightful letters, all breathing ardent anticipation of her
approaching visit in his own city. And back to Canning, she wrote even
fatter letters every morning in mamma's sitting-room, dear letters (he
thought them) in which she told him every single thing except what she
was really thinking about....
And why shouldn't she tell Hugo that also? Once or twice she really came
very near doing it. For as her mind had become released from her first
acute apprehensions, it had seemed to insist on turning inward a little;
and there grew within her a sense of unhappiness, of loneliness, a
feeling of her poor little self against the world. She longed for some
one to explain it all to, to justify herself before; and who more
appropriate in this connection than her lover? That Hugo might have been
shocked, and perhaps disgusted, to have the misunderstanding discovered
to him by way of the Dalhousies' megaphone was, indeed, likely; but to
have her quietly tell it to him, as it really happened, with the proper
stress on circumstances and gossip, would be quite another matter. She
felt almost certain that he would agree with her; it once that it would
be a great mistake to rake up all this now, when it had all blown over
and Dalhousie was doing so splendidly down in Texas....
However, Cally procrastinated. And then, Sunday morning in church, as
she sat pensively wishing for a confidant, it came upon her somewhat
startlingly that she already had one: Dr. Vivian was her confidant. Did
he not know more about her than anybody else in the world?...
The simple thought seemed to cure her instantly of her wish. She had
tried having a confidant and it had brought her to this; henceforward
let her keep her own counsel. (So she mused, walking homeward in the
brilliant sunshine and light airs with J. Forsythe Avery, who had just
conquered his pique over his rejection last January.) That her one
confidant's honorable silence expressed his trust that she herself would
"tell" was possibly true; but that, in this no-quarter conflict between
them, was merely so much the worse for him. She would not think of him
at all. She had run away from him every time she had seen him; now she
had but to do it once more, and all would be as if it had never been....
At the Sabbath dinner-table, which was to-day uninvaded by guests, the
Heths' talk was animated. The imminent separation brought a certain
softness into the family atmosphere; papa basked in it. He had spent his
Sunday morning playing sixteen holes of golf at the Country Club, and
would have easily made the full round but for slicing three new balls
into the pond on the annoying seventeenth drive. This had provoked him
into smashing his driver, as he had a score of only eighty-eight at that
point, which was well below his personal bogey. Even mamma affected
interest in her spouse's explanations of how it all happened.
"Of course the caddy simply slipped the balls in his pockets the minute
your back was turned--they're all thieves, the little ragamuffins," said
she. "And, by the way, I haven't telephoned the bank about the silver."
Encouraged by his ladies' consideration, Mr. Heth proposed a little
afternoon jaunt with Cally.
"It's too pretty a day to stay in," said he. "Let's take the car, eh,
and run down and look at that new cantilever bridge at Apsworth?"
"Oh, papa!" said Cally, regretfully. "I promised Mr. Avery I'd take a
walk with him. He looked so fat and forlorn I didn't have the heart to
refuse. I'm so sorry."
Mr. Heth started to quote something about your daughter's being your
daughter, but when Cally added, "You know I'd lots rather go with you,
papa," he changed his mind, and went off to his nap instead.
Mamma similarly departed. Cally, not feeling nappy, sat in the library
and wrote to her lover the last letter but one she would write before
seeing him in New York. Her eager pen flew: but so did the minutes also,
or did the impetuous Avery anticipate the moment of his engagement? His
tender ring broke unexpectedly across her betrothal thoughts, and Cally
returned to earth with a start ... Good _heavens!_ Four o'clock
already!--and she with twenty minutes' getting ready to do!
She caught up the pages of the unfinished letter, and skipped for the
stairs. In the hall there was unbroken quiet, with no sound of a servant
coming. Cally paused, listening, and then remembered that it was Sunday
afternoon, when even the best Africans are so very likely to have "just
stepped out." Why wait? The girl went and opened the door herself, a
smile of greeting in her eye, a lively apology for her obvious
unreadiness upon her lip.
However, it was not, after all, the amorous Mr. Avery who confronted
her. The vestibule held only an ill-dressed young girl, in a gaudy red
hat, the sort of looking person who should at most have rung the
basement bell, if that: and she herself seemed to realize this by the
guilty little start and tremble she gave when the stately door swung
open upon her. The young mistress of the house eyed her doubtfully.
"Good afternoon."
"G-good evenin', ma'am!..."
As she seemed at a loss how to proceed, Carlisle said: "Yes? What is
it?"
The young person raised a bare hand and brushed it, with a strange
gesture, before her eyes.
"Dr. Vivian he told me to give you this note, ma'am."
She added, as if suddenly moved to destroy a possible impression of Dr.
Vivian as a slave-driver, flinging orders this way and that:
"He'd of brung it himself, on'y I was going walkin' myself, ma'am, and
asked him to leave me take it."
If the fall was from the height of the securest moment Carlisle had
known since her self-betrayal, the more stunning was the impact. Her
heart appeared to abdicate its duties, with one kick; all her being drew
together in a knot within her. It had come, after all. To run away was
well, but she had not run soon enough....