"That's cheerful ... When there's not been an hour for me, all summer,
I swear it, that hasn't been singing with thoughts of you."
"You might have run up from Trouville, in July, and called on us in
Paris."
His reply indicated that running, whether up or down, involved a
considerable conquest of pride. And Cally understood that.
"I," said she, tranquilly, "have been growing weary of society. Perhaps
that is your doing...."
She told him of her experience at the Settlement yesterday, of her
rebuff at the hands of Mr. Pond. Canning thanked heaven that she need
not bother herself with such dreary faddisms of the day.
"You can safely leave all that," said he, "to the women who have failed
in their own careers."
"And what career is that?"
"The career of being a woman. Need you ask?"
Carlisle, drawing on her gloves, observed: "That would bring up the
question, wouldn't it, of what your ideal of a woman is."
"For five cents," said Hugo, "I will tell you her name."
She was pleased with the evidences of her mastery over him. The day of
intimacy brought its reactions, automatically creating romantic airs.
When the time came for him to go, she was sorry; and perhaps just a
little uncertain in her own mind. For the re-engagement had still not
taken place. The most that could be said was that an "understanding"
existed, to the effect that it would take place on his return. And
Canning, for his part, was not dissatisfied with this arrangement. In
ten days he would come again, and take the wavering outposts by storm.
They said good-bye in the drawing-room at home, at quarter before five.
Cally held out her slender little hand. Hugo smiled down at it: surely,
between him and her, an odd farewell. But then, as his clasp tightened,
the man's smile became a little twisted on his handsome lip.
"When I part from you again, my dear," said he, with sudden huskiness,
"I swear it won't be like this."
The girl looked up at him. He raised the hand, palm-upward, with a sort
of jerk, kissed it, dropped it abruptly, and was gone.
Cally remained standing where he had left her; this time she did not run
to the window. She glanced at the hand which her lover had just saluted,
and was conscious of a subtle want in their reunion....
Hugo's presence in the body had brought up vividly that matter upon
which they had broken in May. Of that matter he had said nothing, either
yesterday or to-day. His manner and bearing took the clear position that
he and she had simply had a lovers' quarrel, in which both had said and
done things that they did not mean. But Jack Dalhousie had stood in the
background of Carlisle's mind all day, and her feeling was that
something rather definite should have been said about him. Possibly Mrs.
Berkeley Page had something to do with this; that lady had left behind
her an indefinable suggestion of invisible standards, of appraisements
differing from mamma's, say. Measuring herself unconsciously with Hugo
to-day, Cally had become aware that in carrying out her will in
opposition to his last year, she had derived, not merely strategic, but
in some way personal, strength. The old inequality had mysteriously
disappeared....
Mrs. Heth came gliding through the portières from the hall. Her face was
one vast inquiry, lit by beams; it made an uproarious demand such as a
child of three could have understood. Still, to avoid any possibility of
misunderstanding, mamma briefly gave voice:
"Well?"
Cally laughed, and held up her betrothal finger, which was unadorned.
"I'm not," said she.
Mamma's face fell.
"Don't look so blank!" said the daughter, with a little laugh and shrug.
"It's all going to happen next week, by the book.... Don't you know I'm
perfectly safe?"
* * * * *
Mr. Heth heard Cally's business news with open indignation. She made her
report to him that night, just after dinner; and she saw her father's
business manner emerge sharply from beneath his genial domesticity.
The "new law" was an old story to the owner of the Cheroot Works. He
kept apprised of the signs of the times; and he happened to know in some
detail the provisions of the pernicious legislation the Labor
Commissioner was cooking up in secret,--"that'd confiscate two years'
profits from every near mill in town," said MacQueen. But the rest was
news, and highly unwelcome news. To fight blackmail legislation against
progressive business was comparatively simple; but a string of lies in
the newspapers made a more insidious assault, injuring a man's credit,
his standing as a conservative financier, his ability to inspire
"confidence": valuable possessions to the President of the Fourth
National Bank, and already indefinably impaired by the sensational
family matter last spring....
"Vivian!--That fellow!" he exclaimed, recalling not only the Severe
Arraignment, but the cataclysm in the House....
"Why, Cally! I thought you considered him sort of a friend of yours!"
"Not that, exactly," said Cally, at a considerable loss. "Still, I was
very much surprised.... Do you mind about the--the articles,
particularly, papa?"
"I do."
"Isn't there something you can do--to have it all stopped? Couldn't you
have a suit--or--?"
Her father exploded. She had touched a sore point.
"Sue! Sue a lot of paupers that haven't got a shirt to their backs! Put
'em in prison?--likely with a lot more paupers on the jury, thinkin' a
successful business man's anybody's meat. _Sue_!--and what'll you get?
I'll tell you! An impudent--offensive--malicious muckraking of your own
private business...."
Cally, looking at papa's indignant face, felt much drawn to him.
However, the business conversation was here interrupted, Cally being
called away to the telephone. She went, wondering intently if she could
not somehow help in this threatened trouble. She had felt an impulse
toward doing something useful. What more useful than assisting to
shield her father from undeserved abuse?...
"It's only me, Cally," said Henrietta Cooney's voice, "or I, as they've
got it in the grammars. I just called up to tell you not to forget the
meeting to-morrow."
"What meeting, Hen?"
"I see I did well to call," came over the wire, on the wings of the
Cooney laugh. "The Saturday meeting at the Woman's Club, cousin, that I
engaged you for the other day. I've just heard that V.V.'s going to
speak, too, which made me want you specially. Don't say no."
"Of course not. I want to go, very much."
The two girls lingered a moment to chat. Henrietta appeared
characteristically cheerful, though reporting half the family sick, and
Cousin Martha Heth quite low in mind with her flatfoot. And Cally's
manner to her poor relation was quite friendly to-night, without any
special effort. Her summer-time suspicion that Hen was actually trying
to "cheer her up" had by now become a certainty (Hen did not know about
Hugo, of course); and which of her own girlhood intimates had done as
much? Further, the words of comfort that the hard-worked stenographer
had said to her, the day she got home from Europe, had recently been
endorsed, as it were, in a most distinguished quarter. A strange thought
this, that there was a point of similarity between Hen Cooney and Mrs.
Berkeley Page....
But when Cally left the telephone she was not thinking of these things
at all. She was thinking that to-morrow she would both hear and see Dr.
Vivian, her father's enemy, the hard religious fellow who could so
easily forget the troubles of others. Her duty on the occasion seemed to
become quite clear to her. She must speak to him, try to induce him to
give up his newspaper articles, or at least to leave her father's name
out of them.
The day of lovers' reunion was somewhat blurred by ending with thoughts
such as these. Hugo, as Carlisle had said, could not pop back after
months, and repossess her mind and heart at a bound. He did it pretty
successfully during the evening, while she entertained Robert Tellford
and James Bogue, 2d, who cordially hated each other, in the
drawing-room. But before she fell asleep that night, Cally's thoughts
had turned more than once to, V. Vivian, of the old hotel which was now
a Settlement. Why had he asked her to go to the Works some day, and why
had he done it with that strange look?