How the Best People came to the Old Hotel again; how Cally
is Ornamental, maybe, but hardly a Useful Person; how she
encounters Three Surprises from Three Various Men, all
disagreeable but the Last.
To the Dabney House, it was like old times come back. Not in forty years
had the ancient hostelry so resounded with the steps of the best people.
Without, there stood lines of motor-cars in the shabby and unaccustomed
street, ten times as many as there had been in May. Within--to prove at
a stroke the tone of the gathering--J. Forsythe Avery himself stood
conspicuously at the very door: not merely stood, but labored behind a
deal table for the cause, distributing Settlement pamphlets, brochures
or treatises, to all comers. He irresistibly reminded Carlisle of one of
those lordly men in gold-lace outside a painless dentist's parlors. Many
others of the conquering order there were observed also, almost in the
first glance; chiefly congregating in the new assembly room, where the
"opening reception" was under way, but also deploying in numbers all
over the lower floor and the remodeled basement beneath.
It was the Heths' first public appearance since their home-coming, and
perhaps even mamma felt a little bit self-conscious. But Carlisle had
come with serious intentions, and a manner of determined vivacity. Let
people find anything to gloat over in her appearance, if they could.
Glancing about as they left Mr. Avery, she saw that the old court or
lobby, where she had stood and talked once on a rainy May day, had been
left intact, only renovated somewhat as to floor and walls. On one side
of it now ran down a row of offices with new glass doors, the first of
them, marked "Mr. Pond." On the other side, a great arched doorway led
into the large meeting-room, formed by the demolition of many
partitions. Changed indeed it all was: yet Cally found it quite
disturbingly familiar too....
Beyond the arched doorway stood a little group of the best men and
women: a reception committee clearly, and Mrs. Heth had not been asked
to serve upon it, as she was instantly and indignantly conscious.
However, she was one to bear martyrdom nobly, knowing that truth would
prevail in the end; and accordingly she greeted Byrds, Daynes, and
others with marked and lingering cordiality. Carlisle, passing down the
receiving line more quickly, soon found herself introduced to Pond, the
imported Director, according to her plan. The phrase is accurate, for
Mr. Pond appeared to be panjandrum here, and people of all degree were
presented to him, as to royalty. Frequent hearing of the man's name in
the last few days had suggested nothing to Carlisle, but the moment she
caught sight of his keen face with the powerful blue-tinged jaw, she
recalled that she had seen Mr. Pond in the Dabney House before now.
The Director had turned with businesslike indifference as Mr. Dayne
spoke her name, but his expression as he looked at her took on a sudden
half-surprised intentness which Carlisle had seen upon the faces of
strangers before now. His reply to her commonplaces of greeting was:
"Where have I met you before?"
"Nowhere, I think."
Bored with the tenor of his speech, she looked at him steadily yet
negligently for a moment; and then, releasing her gaze, continued: "This
is the assembly room, isn't it? What sort of meetings are to held here?"
A faintly quizzical look came into the man's incisive stare. "Do you
really think it worth while for me to explain, when--"
He left this beginning hanging in midair, while he turned, without
apology, to accept the humble duties of three new arrivals. Cally waited
patiently. Mrs. Berkeley Page had left her possessed of an impulse,
which she took to be almost tantamount to a resolution. She would give
at least part of her time to doing something solid....
Director Pond, turning back to her, concluded:
"When we are both well aware that you don't care a continental what
sort of meetings are going to be held here?"
"Oh, but I do, you see," replied Cally, distinctly irritated. "I'm very
much interested. One of the reasons I'm here this afternoon," she
explained, not without an under-feeling of sad nobility, "is that I am
thinking of offering myself as--as a worker."
"Oh!--As a worker."
"Yes."
"A worker. You mean it?"
She said, glancing indifferently away: "But probably Mr. Dayne is the
person I should speak to about it.... Or--perhaps Dr. Vivian...."
"What's Dayne or Vivian got to do with it? Walk a little away from the
door with me--there! Thank the Lord when this mob clears out.... So you
want to offer as a worker," said Director Pond, his face gravely
authoritative. "Good. We need workers more than money now, which is
putting it somewhat strongly. I am pleased that you will join us. When
can you move in?"
"Move in?"
"You understand, of course, that resident workers are the only ones good
for anything. You will want to live here, for a year or so at least.
Naturally the sooner you can come the better."
"Live here? Here in the Dabney House? Well, no," said Carlisle, with
open amusement, "I could hardly do that."
"Ah?" said he, without the slightest change of expression. "Well, that's
a pity.... Allow me to raise my hand and point at this wall, so; and now
people will understand that I'm explaining important points to a worker,
and will not interrupt. Of course there is something for the
non-residents to do, too. Let us see now. You can sew, I suppose?"
"Sew?... Well--not really well at all."
"Too bad," said he, keeping his broad back to the lively groups about
them and pointing steadily at the wall. "However--I'm thinking of
putting in a woman's infirmary. Can you recommend yourself as
reasonably fitted for an assistant amateur nurse?"
"Oh, no! No, I couldn't do that, I'm afraid. I can't bear sickness."
"Indeed? A great many people enjoy it.... Well!--district visitor it is,
then, while we're getting acquainted with the neighborhood. But it means
business, you know--six days a week visiting in the homes of the
poorest, dirtiest and meanest, investigating, collecting facts under
instructions you will get from me--"
"Oh! Well, no--not that. I--I'm afraid my mother wouldn't care to have
me do that."
The man's pointing hand, which was large and strong-looking, fell at his
side, and he gazed at her with a sarcasm which he no longer troubled
to conceal.
"May I ask what under the sun you can do?"
"What I can do?..."
Under his hard and frankly belittling stare, Carlisle began to feel
rather small, despite her firm resolves to feel nothing of the sort. She
had heard something of this Mr. Pond in the past week: a person of some
consequence in the world, it was said, several kinds of Doctor, and the
author of a work on The Settlement which was considered "standard" and
which Cally had meant (since last night) to purchase at Saltman's
bookstore. Report made him also a man of some independent means and
position, and certainly he had come with excellent letters and
credentials. But Cally did not consider that these things justified
anybody in being so thoroughly hateful, particularly when you could see
that it was only an eccentric pose....
"That," said she, with dignity, "is what I am now considering--"
"But you've already offered to help! I merely request you, in a polite
manner, to state how you can help me, in my big, serious and important
work.... Doesn't it occur to you, in fact, that you are somewhat
helpless?"
"Does it occur to you that you are being somewhat rude?"
"Does it occur to _you_ that what you call rudeness may be exactly the
sort of wholesome irritant needed by people of your class?"
"What do you mean by people of my class?"
Cally raised a white-gloved hand and put back a tendril of her gay hair.
She looked at him level-eyed. The man's constant and cocksure "I," "me,"
"mine," rubbed her strongly the wrong way. This was Dr. Vivian's
Settlement, and nobody else's. She was convinced that Vivian would have
made a far better Director anyway....
Mr. Pond, however, smiled suddenly. The smile largely transformed his
dark face, making it look for the first time quite agreeable, and
even kind.
"I mean," said he, "those who are highly ornamental, but cannot candidly
be described as generally useful."
The reply, for some reason, silenced her. She thought of Mrs. Page. The
man's smile faded.
"Not," said he, "that I don't consider ornaments of use. I do, in their
place. Now I must get back to the firing-line. I can only add that if
you are serious about wanting to help me, Miss--I'm afraid I didn't
catch your name--you will lose no time in qualifying yourself to be of
service. Obviously you are not so qualified at present."
He nodded curtly, and turned away. The admiring populace swallowed him
up....
Cally felt as if she had received a severe drubbing. She felt rebuffed,
defeated, depressed, and at the same time vaguely stimulated. However,
the moment for introspective analysis was not now....
"Well, Cally," said motherly Mrs. McVey, drifting by, "you must feel
sort of lonesome--such a turn-out of old folks I never saw. I wanted
Evey to come, but she said she 'd as soon go to a tea at the Needy
Ladies' Home."
On the heels of Evey's mother came Cally's own, whose watchful eye had
been felt from a distance before now. Possibly mamma had not forgotten
what happened the last time Cally came to the Dabney House....
"I saw you talking with Mr. Pond," said Mrs. Heth, a little aside. "How
did he impress you?"
"He's the most conceited human being I ever saw," said Cally. "I believe
he said one or two fairly interesting things."
"Well--that's not a bad recommendation. I like an important man to think
well of himself. I'll ask him for my Settlement dinner Saturday, when
those Cheritons stop nagging at him."
Mamma looked slightly flushed beneath her fixed smile; a look which her
daughter had no difficulty in understanding. More than once this
afternoon, Cally had encountered significant stares upon herself,
instantly removed, which showed with amusing candour that she was the
subject of conversation in those quarters. No more could she assume that
this conversation and those stares were but the involuntary offerings of
the multitude to beauty and brilliant success. And yet she did not seem
to mind so very much....
"I just gave my Settlement check to Mr. Byrd," added mamma. "He was very
grateful, but not as grateful as he ought to have been."
She glided back to her position near the door. Mrs. McVey, chatting on,
observed that the Pond man hadn't seemed impatient to make her
acquaintance, though she had waited round some time to give him the
pleasure; also that there were no refreshments but ice-water from the
new ten-gallon cooler in the hall. Then she, in her turn, passed on, as
J. Forsythe Avery was discerned steering in a fixed direction through
the crowd.
"Are your labors ended so soon?"
Mr. Avery bowed pluperfectly, and Cally smiled suddenly. He was a pink,
slightly bald young man, and had once been described by Mr. Berkeley
Page as very gentlemanly.
"What are you laughing at?" inquired he, somewhat lugubriously.
"Only at something funny Mrs. McVey just said. You know how witty she
is.... Have you handed them all out?"
"I appointed a deputy," confessed Mr. Avery, "but I labored hard for a
time. Am I not entitled to--er--the rewards of labor now?"
Cally glanced away, with no more desire to smile. The look in his pink
eyes had arrested her attention, and she wondered whether she could
possibly bring herself to take him. She was not wanted as a Settlement
worker; and he would be colossally wealthy some day. Perhaps he lacked
an indefinable something that comes from grandfathers, but he had never
committed a social fault in his life, unless you would hold up against
him an incurable fondness for just one tiny little drop of cologne on a
pure linen handkerchief. Mamma would be rather pleased, poor dear.
Then her mind's eye gave her a flashing memory-picture of Canning, the
matchless, and Mr. Avery became unimaginable....
"Such as what?" said she, listlessly, to his roguish hints of reward.
"I should offer my escortage for--er--a small tour over the premises,
and so forth. Why not?"
"No reason in the world, except that I may not go over the prem ..."
That word the speaker left forever unfinished. And her next remark was:
"What did you say?"
Obviously there was an interlude here; and in it Cally Heth had seen,
and recovered from the sudden sight of, the strange young man Mr. V.V.,
upon whom her eyes had not fallen since a sunny May morning when she had
sat and wept before him. He stood quite near, the founder of the
Settlement, though in an obscure corner: backed there, it seemed, by a
fat conversationalist in a purple bonnet. But there must have been
telepathy in Cally's gaze for her one confidant; for she had no sooner
descried his tall figure through the fuss and feathers than he turned
his eyes and looked at her.
She had considered with mingled feelings the prospect of meeting this
man again to-day; and now the sight of his face and lucid gaze brought
something of that sense of shock which had attended these encounters in
other days. Only now, twined with the painfulness of many associations
which his look aroused, there was a sort of welcome, odd and unexpected;
she felt a little start of gladness, as at the unlooked-for appearance
of something trusted and familiar. How was it that she had thought so
little of him in these months, through which it had seemed that there
was nobody who understood?...
She bowed, in quite a bright and friendly way, putting down her inward
disquiet; and then it was that, turning hastily again to the faithful
Avery, Cally inquired:
"What did you say?"
"I suggested," said the pink and pluperfect one, "that you ought to see
the gymnasium and swimming-pool at any rate. I'm informed that the pool
is the largest in the State, and ..."
But Cally had seen that the man from another world was stepping out from
his obscurity; and now there sounded above the Avery periods the vivid
voice first heard in the summer-house.
"Miss Heth!--may I say how-do-you-do?... I hadn't seen you till that
moment. In fact, I had no idea you were here ..."
"Oh, yes, indeed. I'm a Life Member, if you please," said Cally turning,
looking again at the owner of that voice. "How do you do? Do you know
Mr. Avery, Dr. Vivian?"
The two men bowed. Young Mr. V.V. had not long retained the slim hand
which--such was his lot--had been offered to him for the first time
in his life.
"Oh, Miss Kemper!" added Cally. "Do forgive me--I didn't recognize your
back at all. May I introduce Mr. Avery?..."
And then, while Mr. Avery paid reluctant devoirs to the lady in the
purple bonnet, Cally said quite easily to Dr. Vivian:
"I was just debating whether or not to make an exploring expedition over
the whole Settlement. Is there much to see?--or is it mostly rooms?"
"Oh, mostly rooms," said Mr. V.V.
He seemed to begin a smile at this point, and then to change his mind
about it. The smile, if such it was, ended short, as if clipped off.
"This door," he added turning to the fresh-painted portal at his elbow,
"leads to one of them.... A fair sample, I imagine. This one happens to
be a--ah--a sort of sewing-class room, I believe...."
"Oh, a sewing-class room! That must be where I was offered a position."
"Will you look at it?"
"I'd like to. Only I can't sew a bit, you see...."
She stepped exploringly through the open door, into the sort of
sewing-class room. V. Vivian walked after her; and behind him he
distinctly heard the surprised and somewhat offended voice of
the Kemper:
"Funny! I thought that was Mr. Pond I was talking to all the time."
"It's--it's a very nice place," said Cally, glancing about her as she
advanced.
Not that it mattered, but it really was not a particularly nice place,
only a rather dark and small chamber, smelling of paint and entirely
empty save for one bench.
"Not a great deal to see, as you notice," said the summer-house voice
behind her, sounding somehow changed since last year.... "Not much of a
class could sit on the bench, I fear. Or perhaps it's this next room
that's for sewing."
"Oh, I don't mind," said Cally.
And then she turned suddenly upon Mr. V.V., facing him, looking up with
a sweet, half-wistful smile such as her face had never worn before
for him.
"But tell me something about yourself.... What sort of summer have you
had?"
So he was brought to a halt, confronting in one of his donated rooms the
loveliest of the Huns; confronting, but not looking at her exactly....
"Well, it's been hot, as you know--in fact, the hottest summer since the
Weather Bureau began. That wasn't comfortable, of course. There was a
good deal of suffering, where people couldn't afford ice.... Personally,
I've happened to be so busy that the weather didn't matter--"
"That's quite ominous, isn't it, in a doctor? Has there been so much
sickness in this neighborhood?"
"Yes, there's been a lot of it. We had rather a bad typhoid epidemic,
beginning in July--not easy to check in this old district, standing
pretty much as it was before the war. I sometimes think there's no hope
of ever cleaning it out, short of a London fire.... I--I hope you've
been well?"
"Oh, yes, quite well, thank you. But is this district so bad--from a
health point of view?"
"You should see it," said he, rather drily. "Or rather, of course, you
shouldn't. It's more or less disturbing to one's peace of mind at
times...."
She was looking at him with an interested intentness of which she was
quite unconscious. Never before had she seen this man free of the
knowledge of menacing discussion ever pressing in the foreground; so now
it was a little as if she met for the first time some one whom she had
heard a great deal about from others. Her eye for externals had observed
his new suit at once; in this deceptive light she considered that it
looked quite nice, not suspecting that it was only the Prince, reduced;
and she was thinking, with a sense of discovery, that Mr. V.V. was
undoubtedly a good-looking man. A certain change in his manner she had
also noted; a new touch of force, it seemed, a somewhat stiffened
masculinity. What had become of that rather engaging hopeful look of
his, which was the second thing she had ever noticed about him?...
"Perhaps I shall see it some day," she answered. "If I ever become one
of your Mr. Pond's district visitors and investigators."
"Are you thinking of doing that?"
"Oh, I offered to try to do something, but Mr. Pond declined me, without
thanks. He said I was perfectly useless to him--in his big and serious
work. The worst of it was," she said, smiling rather ruefully, "he
proved it."
She was glancing toward the door, with the moving and humming groups
beyond, and so missed the sudden eagerness that briefly lit his face.
"What part of the work--if I might ask--were you--specially interested
in?"
"I suppose I'm not really interested in any part. That must be the
trouble. Probably it's just the usual dissatisfied feeling--when one is
a little tired of parties...."
Was that not yet another confidence, clearly calling for an
understanding listener, for sympathetic reassurance? Nothing of the sort
came to Cally; nothing of any sort. The brief pause, sharpened as it was
by Mr. V.V.'s oddly formal bearing, was rather like a cold douche. And
now it seemed that she must have been counting on this man somehow all
along, though it was not clear as to what....
"So you see my peace of mind is quite safe. Mr. Pond is right, of
course...." And then, thinking that this cool distance was rather absurd
under the circumstances, she added in a friendlier way: "But why aren't
you the Director here, instead of Mr. Pond? I should think you would be,
since it's your Settlement."
But the result of that was only to bring new stiffness into the strange
young man's manner.
"My Settlement!... Oh, I beg that you won't speak or think of it in that
way. I assure you I've nothing at all to do with it, other than as one
worker out of many."