How it is One Thing to run away from yourself, and another
to escape; how Cally orders the Best Cocktails, and gazes at
her Mother asleep; also of Jefferson 4127, and why Mamma left
the Table in a hurry at the Café des Ambassadeurs.
Mamma arranged it, by Amazonian effort. New York, the colossal, received
the runaway with an anonymous roar, asking no questions. Here, in the
late afternoon of the first day, safe forever in a well-furnished room
on a seventeenth floor, Cally Heth made her answer to Dalhousie's
letter. She formally cremated the scrawl in a pink saucer which had
previously been doing nothing more useful in the world than holding up a
toothbrush mug.
The cremation was a rite in its way, yet required only the saucer and
two matches. The letter, when well torn, flamed nicely, only a few
scraps holding out against immediate combustion. There was one little
fragment on top, observable from the beginning; it read:
or night
fferson 4127
These topmost bits refused to respond to poking with the burnt match,
and finally demanded a new match all to themselves. Within two minutes
all were reduced to fine ashes, which the priestess of the rite duly
took to the window, and scattered down into the "court." Then she washed
her hands, put the saucer back under the mug, and raised another window
to let out the smell.
This business completed, Carlisle glanced at her watch. It was ten
minutes past six, or nearly time to begin to dress. The moment was an
interlude in a day which had been full of exciting activity, keyed with
the joy of journey's end and lovers' meeting. An evening in similar
titillating vein waited just ahead. At this moment, Canning, bidden _an
revoir_ some ten minutes ago, was doubtless dressing at his club, seven
blocks away. Mrs. Heth, left to her own resources all afternoon, had
fallen asleep in her chair, and still slept. Even the maid Flora was
absent, having been given the afternoon off, after unpacking two trunks,
to "git to see" her uncle, a personage of authority who served his
country well by sorting letters in the New York Post-Office.
Alone in the hotel bedroom, Carlisle looked in the mirror of the
mahoganized "dresser," occupied in taking off her veil and hat, and
thought that Flora ought to be coming back now. Then she sniffed a
little and was aware of a memorial smell from the rite. After that her
mind appeared to float away for a time, and when she caught up with it
again, it was thinking:
Nothing so much could really have happened, if I _had_ told.
It was an academic thought for a mind which must have known very well
that everything was settled now. Carlisle, assuming charge herself,
promptly turned it out. Having put her hat on the bed, she began to busy
herself with preparations for the evening. Flora lingering at her
avuncular pleasures, she herself went to the closet and took down a
dress. A capable girl she was, who could easily get out her own clothes
when absolutely necessary.
Canning was dining the two ladies at the resplendent establishment of
his choice, at seven-thirty o'clock; he was due to return in an hour
now. All day he had been in attendance, and all day he had been the very
prince of lovers. Having lunched with Mrs. Heth and Carlisle at their
hotel, he and his betrothed had spent the whole afternoon together
jogging about the May-time park in a hansom-cab,--such was her
whim,--with late tea at the Inn of renown upon the Drive: and through
all, such talk as sped the hours on wings. How fascinating he was, she
seemed to have forgotten, in these days of absence and worry. And how
strong and all-conquering!--a man of such natural lordliness of mien
that cabmen and policemen, proud men and strangers as they were, spoke
to him with something akin to respect.
Yes, Hugo was, indeed, a rock and tower of strength. With him behind
her, she had the world at her feet.... Heavens! What could gossip
possibly do to Mrs. Hugo Canning?
Outside was the roar of conglomerate humanity. Up here in this strange
bedroom, indifferent host to a thousand transient souls, it was quiet
and even a little lonely. Once more Carlisle caught her mind at its
retrospective misbehavior, and once more turned the key on it. Having
laid out her dress on the bed, she stood and looked down into the
cheerless light-well a minute, and then decided to wake up her mother.
But she stopped on the way and turned back. Why wake up mamma half an
hour too soon, just to hear the sound of one's own voice?
She took off her watch, and raised her hands to begin unfastening her
waist. But she became engrossed in staring back at her reflection in the
mirror, and presently her hands dropped.
Face and form, background and destiny, she was possessed of blessings
many and obvious: all crowned now, sealed and stamped, with the love of
Hugo Canning, which, he had pledged himself, was a love which should not
die. What girl so entirely successful as she? Convincingly the excellent
glass gave back the presentment of loveliness endowed with all the gifts
of Fortune.
And yet she had run away: there was no evading that. An insignificant
boy thousands of miles away had sent out a cry for help, and she, the
proud and blessed, who had always considered herself quite as spunky as
another person, had bolted in a panic. And she had bolted too fast, it
seemed, to consider even that, with that cry, there had come a new
element into the situation, disturbing to the old argument. The full
reach and meaning of Jack Dalhousie's letter seemed to be coming upon
her now for the first time, just when she had ritually cremated it. Out
of the pink saucer had mysteriously blown the knowledge that the author
of that poor composition could no more be pictured as doing splendidly
down in Texas....
For a third time her over-mind spied upon and detected the nether's
treason; and this time Cally, turning abruptly from the mirror, was
troubled. Having run away, could she not at least enjoy a runaway's
peace? Why backward glances now? She had escaped Dalhousie. She had
escaped Dalhousie's friend. She stood in this room the safest person in
the world. No one on earth could betray her except herself.
The watch ticked loud, steadily drawing Hugo, and mamma and Flora. Up
through the windows came the twilight and the rumble of the vast
heedless city. Carlisle snapped on the lights. And then all at once,
without warning, there closed down upon her an enormous depression, a
sense as of standing on the brink of irretrievable disaster. Or it was
as if she had run away, indeed, but had not escaped. Or as if, in
cutting herself off from the past, she had cut away something important,
which something here gave notice that it would not be peacefully
abandoned. And mixed with this there was again that sense of large
pressure upon her, so tangible that it was almost like a person in the
room with her, sharing, dominating her councils....
She was far from understanding these feelings, but she did understand
that she felt suddenly sickish and quite faint; and she thought
practically of mamma's little flask of brandy in her bag somewhere, if
only she could find it. Then speculations on this point vanished with
the recollection that she stood in the modern Arabian Nights, all the
resources of the world at her beck.
Cally stepped to the telephone and called down in a small but
authoritative voice:
"Send me up a cocktail at once, please. Room 1704."
"Yes, mum," replied the experienced voice far below. "What kind would
you wish?"
"Oh ... the best," said she, less authoritatively; and then, rang off
hurriedly, thinking how funny it was that she couldn't produce the name
of a cocktail when needed, since papa shook one up for himself nearly
every evening, and Hugo always ordered them when they dined together,
and laughed at the little faces she made....
The cocktail came, on rubber heels, and she sipped it, walking about the
room and not thinking at all about dressing. A spoonful or so of the
yellow concoction, and the sickish feeling vanished, and she felt
instead rather devilish and fast, like the blondined villainess in a
play. She was a daring woman of the new school, a Woman with a Past, who
rang up hotel bars and ordered the best cocktails sent up at once....
Possibly the cocktail had this moral reaction, that she no longer
sought to discipline her mind. She sipped the drink gingerly, and her
thought fluttered backward and forward, full of contradictions and
repetitions, as thought is in life, but now free.... Suppose, after all,
that her past was not escaped? It wasn't such an easy thing to do, it
seemed. Dalhousie thought he had escaped his, but it had run him down at
last, way off in Texas. Suppose Dr. Vivian now decided (in view of her
being a fugitive) that it was his duty to lay the matter before Colonel
Dalhousie, and the tempestuous Colonel took the next train....
There was a knock at the door, causing her to start violently, and spill
some of the cocktail. However, it was not Colonel Dalhousie, but only
the maid Flora, who entered with that air of eager hurry so
characteristic of an habitually tardy race. It appeared that the
infernal powers had conspired against her promptitude in the shape of a
blockade, not to mention losting her way through the malicious
misdirection of a white man selling little men that danced on a
string....
Having learned further that the postal uncle was poly las' month but
tollable now, Flora's young mistress said:
"We must dress in a hurry now, Flora. It's quarter to seven."
And then she went on through to the sitting-room of the suite, to wake
her mother, thinking: "I can't go on this way the rest of my life,
jumping out of my skin every time there's a knock.... What on earth have
I been so afraid of?..."
Mrs. Heth slept on in her deep-bosomed chair, undisturbed by the click
of switch or burst of light into her enveloping dusk. She had a
magazine, face downward, in her lap; also a one-pound box of mixed
chocolates, open. Her head had fallen upon her chair-back; a position
which brought the strange dark little mustache into prominence, and also
threw into relief the unexpected heaviness of the jaw and neck. The face
of an indomitable creature, certainly, of one of those fittest to
survive; but not exactly a spiritual face, perhaps, hardly a face finely
sensitive to immaterial values....
To gaze at a person who is unaware of being watched may be worse than
eavesdropping. Arrested in the act of waking her mother, Carlisle stood
for some moments looking down at her. What was there lacking in mamma
that you couldn't ever talk things over with her? Upon the unconscious
face it was plainly inscribed that this lady would stand against telling
to the last ditch. Somehow the knowledge brought the daughter no
comfort....
And now that she stopped to consider in calm security, what, really, if
she did send Vivian a little note just before she sailed, authorizing
him to tell? What had she, of all people, to fear from the clacking
tattle of a few old cats? Suppose, to-morrow, she calmly said to Hugo
and mamma, "I've felt all along that I did him an injustice, and now
that I know he's so unhappy, I want to set it straight." What, really,
could they say that would be so bad? If there was a price for telling,
it appeared now that there was a price also for not telling.
Minutes passed ...
And then at the shake, Mrs. Heth stirred, turned, rolled a little, and
opened her eyes with a start and a blink.
"I must have dropped asleep," said she.
"No!" said Cally; and she gave a sudden gay burst of laughter.
"I don't see anything so funny in that," said Mrs. Heth, yawning and
sitting up. "What time is it?"
"I think it's a perfect scream, and it's nearly seven, and Hugo will be
here at quarter past, punctually. _Now_ will you fly?"
"You might have waked me a little earlier. Good gracious!... How long
have you been in? Anything happen while I napped?"
"Not a single, solitary, blessed thing.... There you are!--Easy does
it!"
"I'll be dressed long before you are now," was the maternal retort,
accompanied by a long stretch.
And, though unchallenged, she was as good as her word. Highly efficient
at the toilet as elsewhere, she required small assistance from Flora,
whom she dispatched to tidy up the sitting-room instead. The good little
lady was armed cap-a-pie by seven-fifteen, at which time a glance into
Carlisle's room revealed much backwardness there, not concealed by the
appearances of haste. Hugo would have to wait, that was clear; and just
as it was clear, up Mr. Canning's name came skipping from the office.
In the tidied-up sitting-room Mrs. Heth entertained her distinguished
son-to-be, during the little delay. She always enjoyed a good talk with
Hugo. He was her pledge of a well-spent life, her Order of Merit, her
V.C. and Star and Garter, rolled together in a single godlike figure.
She beamed upon him, tugging at white gloves half a size too small.
Canning tapped a well-shod foot with his walking-stick, and wished
for his love.
The wish grew by what it fed on, and the banquet ran long. Half an hour
passed before the door from Mrs. Heth's bedroom opened and Carlisle
appeared. However, she looked worth waiting for. She shimmered a moment
from the threshold, and the two in the sitting-room thought together
that they had never seen her so radiantly lovely.
"I made her!" thought Mrs. Heth.
"Mine!" thought Canning.