In which the Name of Heth is lifted beyond the Reach of
Hateful Malice, and Mamma wishes that she had the Ten
Thousand back again.
Mrs. Heth returned from the Settlement "opening" a full hour behind
Carlisle, and in a victorious glow such as she had not known since May.
Doing good for cause, she was not one to blush too much to find it fame.
Having notified Mr. Byrd of her ten thousand dollar gift to the
Foundation Fund, she had proceeded with her tidings to others of the
authorities, and presently met with appreciation in proportion to the
funds involved. Director Pond, a decisive and forthright man, had stood
upon a chair and cried the splendid donation to the assembled company,
his obvious moral being that others similarly prospered by the Lord
should go and do likewise. So had come vindicatory advertisement
gorgeous beyond the little lady's dreams.
It was well that the world should mark this gift, for it had not been
made by the mere scratching of a signature. And the colloquies preceding
it had been of a thoroughly typical sort, compressing in a nutshell a
whole history, in fact the whole history, of the domestico-commerical
relationships of rising Houses. Settlementers might have applauded more
heartily had they understood just what a deep-cutting business they were
witnessing. However, they did not understand this, and Mrs. Heth, for
her part, was the last person in the world to moralize upon the
non-essential. Returning homeward through the night, rolling éclat
beneath her tongue, she frankly reflected that it was worth the money.
The envious would hardly be able to conceive that people who gave so
magnificently to charity could have done anything really deserving of
censure; no, no. Or, if such people imaginably had, then certainly the
only thing to do was to forget all about it as quickly as possible....
So agreeably musing, Mrs. Heth arrived at the door of the House, and
received upon the threshold the great surprise of her life.
It was almost seven o'clock, so long had she lingered to enjoy and
capitalize the reverberations of her triumph. Yet Carlisle, singularly
enough, was discovered standing in the hall, still in her hat and
gloves, just as she had left the reception an hour earlier.
Full as Mrs. Heth was of her own engrossing thoughts, her daughter's
expression at once notified her that she, too, had news of some sort to
communicate.
"Well, Carlisle? What're you.... Why, what's happened?"
"You've just missed Hugo, mamma."
"_Hugo!_" said mamma, paling and almost falling backward. "He's _been_
here?"
In her daughter's blue eyes there lingered that gleaming exultation, not
completely softened as yet by the sweeter and now due love-light.
"He wants me to marry him next month."
"Oh, _Cally!_..."
Fairly tumbling forward from the door, Mrs. Heth gathered her daughter
in a convulsive bear-hug, murmuring ecstatic nothings. Little she
thought of Settlements or picayunish donations now.
"Oh, Cally!... Mamma's so happy for you, dear child!... And me never
dreaming he was within a thousand miles! All's well that ends well, _I_
say!... When'd he come? I'm wild to see him. Where's he staying? Will he
be back this evening?"
She drew away from her unwonted demonstration, leaving her hands on
Cally's shoulders, and the two women looked at each other, both a little
flushed with excitement.
"He's at the Arlington, to stay only till to-morrow," said she, "and
he's coming in after dinner to see you and papa."
"Oh!... He insists on not seeing you, I suppose?" fleered mamma, with
enormous archness.
"I won't be here, you see. I'm going to the theatre--Mr. Avery's
getting up a party."
Mrs. Heth showed as much surprise as the jubilation of her countenance
could accommodate.
"Why, my dear child! Break it, of course! I'll telephone him myself--a
friend from out of town--"
"But I don't want to break it, you see!" said Carlisle, laughing
brightly. "He can't expect to drop in after months and months and find
us all twirling our thumbs on the doorstep, you know!"
"But you're _engaged to him.'_"
"I should hope _not!_... Why, _mamma!_ You must think I'm
frightfully--die-away!... I'm _disciplining_ him, don't you see? I'm not
going to make it too easy for him!"
"Oh!... I see!"
Perhaps she did not see exactly, and certainly she did not believe in
manufacturing sporting chances in the most momentous matter in the
world. But then neither did Cally, she well knew; and of her daughter's
victorious skill in the matter of managing men, she had had many proofs,
and now this crowning one. Lovers' coynesses mattered little in the face
of the supreme fact of Canning's return.
"Well! You'll give him the whole day to-morrow, of course!... And don't
you be too hard on the dear fellow, Cally. His coming back shows he's
been disciplined.... How the cats will open their eyes!"
"Probably.... But don't worry about Hugo, mamma. He'll do just what I
say after this."
Mamma laughed delightedly. She was of course in the woman's league for
the general putting down of the enemy, Man. The two women stood staring
at each other in the stately hall.
"_Next month!_" said mamma. "We can't do it, Cally! November would be
better--much better--just before Thanksgiving, don't you think?"
Cally laughed merrily, and extricated herself.
"We'll have plenty of time to decide about _that_.... Now, I must fly
and dress. I shan't have time for dinner, mamma. Will you send me up
something--just some soup and coffee?"
"Certainly, darling," said mamma.
Already there had crept a certain absentness into the campaigner's
voice. Her strong, constructive mind was slipping away from this
present, measuring over the triumphs that lay ahead. After her darling
vanished upstairs, she remained standing motionless by the newel-post,
in her fixed eyes the gleam of a brigadier-general who has pulled out
brilliant victory over overwhelming obstacles. The god in the machine
had, indeed, forever put the name of Heth beyond the reach of hateful
malice....
Suddenly mamma said aloud, rather indignantly: "I wish I had that ten
thousand back!"
In her own room, Cally bathed, dressed at some speed, and dined lightly
between whiles. She was in a state of inner exaltation, contrasting
oddly with her depression two hours earlier. Obliterated now was her
conviction of her own human uselessness in a world of sexes, though it
couldn't be said that anything had happened to disprove that conviction,
exactly. In this moment she was continuously elated by all that was
signified in the fact that Hugo Canning was to spend the evening
downstairs talking decorously with mamma and papa while she, Cally,
loved of him, was to go off to the theatre with J. Forsythe Avery....
If Canning had failed her in her greatest need, time, indeed, had
exquisitely avenged her. The Lord of the righteous had delivered the
prince of lovers into her hand. With his very first words in the dim
drawing-room, Hugo had admitted, for the second time in their somewhat
stormy courtship, his unconditional surrender. He made no mistake this
time about the nature of a woman's heart; he was not logical or
controversial or just; but advancing straight upon her over her
decidedly forbidding greeting, he had spoken out with evident emotion:
"Don't look at me that way--I can't bear it.... Don't you know _now_
that I love you? I love you so that I won't live without you."
Yes, Cally did know it now. She had clearly wronged both Hugo and
herself in ever thinking of him as a male flirt, a light-loving jilt who
too easily found balm for a heart not made for deep hurts. Busy and gay
with her dressing, Carlisle thought of the Honorable Kitty Belden, and
laughed musically to herself.
Yet how was it that, under so manly and sweet an appeal straight to her
woman's heart, she had not instantly subsided on the shoulder of her
contrite lover, with grateful tears? Cally herself hardly understood.
She was, truth to tell, secretly surprised and thrilled by her own
high-handedness. To what degree she and her former betrothed had remet
under permanently changed conditions, it was beyond her thought to try
to analyse now. Perhaps it was only the completeness of her triumph that
had so fired her feminine independence. Had she met Hugo by chance, and
found him lukewarm, doubt not that she would have striven to fan the
embers....
She had followed her intuitions, which never reason, and when she said
that she was now disciplining her prodigal, she spoke out her actual
feelings as far as she herself understood them; feelings, they were,
which had a deep root far back in all the summer's unhappiness. There
was a sentence of Hugo's last May: _"I asked one girl to be my wife;
have you the right to offer me another?"_ She would make Hugo pay a
little more for that remark, now that she could just as easily as not.
Like Aaron's rod, the return of Canning had swallowed up all other facts
of the girl's existence, or nearly all. She was lifted, as on wings, out
of the slough of her despond. Nevertheless, the news heard at the
Settlement recurred even now; and when Mrs. Heth appeared in the
bedroom, just after eight, Carlisle greeted her with:
"Has papa gone out, mamma?"
Mamma said no, papa was in the study, though Mr. MacQueen was with him
just at the moment. Something about installing some new machines at the
Works, she believed....
"That will do, Flora--Miss Carlisle has everything she needs...." And
then the good lady said, with a smile so knowing as to amount to a
tremendous wink: "You are going to tell your father to-night.... That's
right, my dear--"
Cally gave a burst of gay laughter, declaring that there was not one
earthly thing to tell.
"Of course, darling, mamma understands," said that lady, promptly, with
her unconquerable beam.
And a few moments later she added:
"Cally, I was just thinking--no harm in being forehanded, as I always
say!... Considering all the circumstances, what would you say to a
small, dignified home-wedding, with two or four bridesmaids, and a large
breakfast to the most intimate friends?"
Cally was even more amused....
There hovered over her in this moment, however clearly she knew it, an
immense pressure, born both within and without--pressure of her own
lifelong mental habits and ideals, of her parents' wishes, strengthened
by the family's late loss of prestige, pressure of public opinion, of
orthodox standards, of manifest destiny, of the whole air she
breathed--driving her, quite irrespective of the heart question,
straight to brilliant success in Hugo's waiting arms. The wing of this
vast body brushed Cally's cheek now, in mamma's cooing notes. She felt
it, but only smiled. A new strength possessed her; she was her own girl
now as never before.
"I'll give the suggestion due thought, mamma dear ... I've an engagement
now."
Annie knocked, announcing Mr. Avery. Cally was now fully accoutred, in a
small, queer hat, and a short queer wrap, draping in fantastically above
the knee and made of a strange filmy material which might have been
stamped chiffon. She turned, laughing, at the bedroom door, and her
mother, no sentimentalist, thought that she looked extraordinarily
pretty....
"Good-night, mamma.... _Be sure to remember me to Hugo._"
She went off to a merry evening in which her high spirits became a
matter of remark, and her friend Evey McVey considered that they were
the least bit out of taste--"so soon, you know." So Hugo Canning spent
the evening of his return formally reinstating himself in the good
graces of papa, who did not forget his daughter's unhappiness of the
summer quite so easily as mamma....
But next day Hugo had his innings, according to Mrs. Heth's desire.
He had been in Washington, and had come to Carlisle upon an irresistible
impulse. Steadily magnetized by the spirit of the "wild, sweet thing"
who had withstood him at the price of his hand, yearning had once more
conquered pride, and again he had returned, again an astonishment to
himself. In view of such abasement of his self-love, he had, truth to
tell, expected to find Carlisle fully ready for the immediate rejoining
of their lives. But perhaps there had lingered in him a doubt of the
quality of his reception, born of the manner of their parting; and her
hesitation, while it shook his vanity, by no means bade him despair.
After the first small shock, he had not failed to perceive the coyness
of her; and why not? If her maiden's whim demanded a brief ritual of
probationary wooing before verbally admitting him to her heart again,
never fear but he would go through his paces with a gallant's air....
The day was what photographers call cloudy-bright, turning toward
mid-afternoon into fitful sunshine. The young pair lunched _à deux_ at
the Country Club, nearly deserted at this hour on a week-day. Hugo had
stoutened the least bit under his sorrows; he was more masculine,
handsomer than ever; his manner did not want his old lordliness, even
now. He was not one to discuss business with a woman, but she learned of
the affair which was hurrying him back to Washington, nothing less than
rate-hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission, if you please.
The able young man was now assistant counsel for his father's railway.
However, he was to pass this way soon again, probably next week.
They sat for an hour on the club piazza looking out over smooth rolling
hills, now green, now wooded, all fair in the late September sunshine.
Away to the left there was the faint gleam of the river. All day
Canning, in his subtle way, made love to Cally, but he was too wise to
press hard upon her girlish hesitancy.
"I don't believe you've missed me much," he remarked, once, on the
wooing note. "Have you?"