Of one of the Triumphs of Cally's Life, and the Tête-à-tête
following, which vaguely depresses her; of the Little
Work-Girl who brought the Note that Sunday, oddly remet at
Gentlemen's Furnishings.
Canning was absent more than two weeks. His attorney's business had
brought entanglements before and behind; he was by no means a free man
even now. Not all the powers of government could have detained him, we
may be sure, had he considered such detention hurtful to the dearest
matter in the world. But Canning, in the peculiar circumstances, had
concluded that a period of meditation was well, that absence made the
heart grow fonder; and, if human calculations are worth anything at all,
his conclusions were amply justified. Through the days of their
separation his chosen had constantly felt upon her the weight of that
vast intangible pressure which pins each mortal of us, except the
strong, to his own predestined groove. Chiefly mamma, but many other
things, too, had been pressing Cally steadily from thoughts of useful
deeds, of which she knew so little, toward thoughts of Mrs. Hugo
Canning, of which she knew so much. For sixteen days, time and
circumstance had played straight into her lover's hands....
Hugo paused to be welcomed, on his way from the train, Olympian of mien,
and beautifully dressed, he looked indeed exactly the sort of man who
would shortly have use for the contents of the little velvet box, at
this moment reposing snugly in his waistcoat pocket. Still, he had
turned up the collar of his big travelling-coat, and a slight hoarseness
indicated that the throat trouble which had sent him south last year had
returned with the first frost.
"I can draw on it for another six months' furlough," said he, meeting
Cally's eyes with gay meaning, "just as soon as I have need for such
a thing."
He had come this time as the open gallant, Lochinvar in all men's sight.
If his lady desired ceremonies all in order, in sooth she should have
them. For the first week of his absence, he had strategically allowed
himself to be lost in silence. And then the postman and expressman had
suddenly begun to bring reminders of him, letters, bon-bons, books even,
flowers every day, and every day a different sort. Cally greeted him
wearing out-of-season violets from his own florist. And by telegraph to
the faithful Willie Kerr, the gifted wooer had arranged a little dinner
for his first evening, to give his official courtship a background which
in other days it had sometimes lacked....
"To my mind it's a bore," said he, as they parted. "Please expect to
give me a little time of my own afterwards."
The occasion was no bore to Carlisle. She recognized it as one of the
triumphs of her life. The material dinner could of course be no better
than the New Arlington could make it; but then the New Arlington was a
hotel which supercilious tourists always mentioned with pleased surprise
in their letters home; that is, if they had any homes and ever thought
of writing to them. And Cousin Willie Kerr, having got "off" at
three-thirty with _carte blanche _for the arrangements, that night
proved that the world of Epicurus had lost an artist when he had turned
his talents to commerce. But of course Carlisle's triumph lay not in
glowing candle-shades or masses of red and pink roses, not in delicate
viands or vintages, however costly. She read her brilliance in the eyes
and bearing of Hugo Canning's guests.
They sat down twelve at table. Beside Carlisle's own little coterie,
there were present Mr. and Mrs. Allison Payne, who, before they had
retired to the country to bring up their children, had been conspicuous
in that little old-school set which included Mrs. Berkeley Page:
simple-mannered, agreeable people these were, who were always very
pleasant when you met them, but whom you never really seemed to know any
better. And Mrs. Payne, who was Hugo's first cousin, had kissed Carlisle
when they met in the tiring-room, and hoped very prettily that they
were going to be friends. Still more open was the gratulation of the
somewhat less exclusive. Papa had been detained by business, and J.
Forsythe Avery, having been asked at the last moment to fill his place,
had broken up another dinner-table to be seen at Canning's.
Unquestionably he must have recognized a doughty rival, but Carlisle,
who sat next him, easily saw how high she had shot up in his pink
imagination. As for dear Mats Allen, her late funeral note had quite
vanished in loving rapture, with just that undercurrent of honest envy
so dear to the heart of woman.
"He's simply mad about you, Cally! The way he looked and looked at
you!... And he never even listened to poor little me, chatting away
beside him, and frightened out of my wits all the time, he's so lordly."
This was when dinner was over, and the guests were strolling from the
little dining-room for coffee in the winter garden. Cally smiled. She
had observed that most of her best friend's time had gone, not to
chatting to Hugo, but to lavishing her delicious ignorance and working
her telling optic system on J. Forsythe Avery, who was so evidently now
to be released for general circulation....
Mats seized the moment to inquire, simply, whether she or Evey was to be
maid of honor; and Cally then laughed merrily.
"Perhaps we shall have it done by a justice of the peace.... Mats,
you're the greatest little romancer I ever saw. How you got it into your
pretty noddle that Mr. Canning has the faintest interest in me I can't
imagine...."
Willie Kerr, too, paid his tribute, having momentarily withdrawn himself
from mamma, whose loyal escort he was once more. Willie was a shade
balder than last year, when he had played his great part in Cally's life
and then sunk below her horizon; a shade more rotund; a shade rosier in
the face. But he was as genial as ever, being well lined now with a menu
to his own taste and an exceptionally good champagne.
"Knew he'd come back, Carlisle," said Willie, standing before a florid
oil-painting he had lured her into a parlor to look at. "Said to Eva
Payne in September--no, August, one Sunday it was--'Canning'll be back
soon as she gets home,' s'I. 'Don't know what happened, that trouble in
the spring. Don't want to know--none of my business. But mark my words,
Eva Payne,' s'I, 'Hugo Canning'll be back.' Fact," said Willie, grinning
cordially. "Funny how I knew. And don't forget, Carlisle, m'dear, 'twas
your Uncle Cosmo did it all! Hey? Remember that tea in my apartments?
Always keep a spare room ready for Uncle Cosmo, and, by gad, I'll come
and spend my summers with you."
And later, Eva Payne, the once far unattainable, asked Mrs. Heth and her
daughter for luncheon on Friday--"with a few of our friends." Mamma
received the invitation like an accolade. Truly that ten thousand
dollars might well have remained in bank, subject to personal check....
The little dinner, with its air of everything being all settled, was a
huge success; a bit too huge to Hugo's way of thinking. It was eleven
o'clock before he really had a word with Carlisle.
"It began to look like a house-party," said he....
They were alone now in the drawing-room at home, a room whose dim
beautiful lights made it look always at its best at night. Mamma had
just gone up. Cally stood in front of a small plaque-mirror; she had
taken off her wraps, and was now fluffing up her fine ash-gold hair
where the scarf over her head had pressed it down. The pose, with
upraised arms, was an alluring one; she was lithe, with a charming
figure. And she still looked very young, as fresh as a rose, as new as
spring and first love.
"Cally," said Canning, behind her--"I've fallen in love with your little
name, you see, and I'm always going to call you by it after this--Cally,
did I ever mention to you that you're the prettiest girl I ever saw.
Only pretty is not the word...."
Cally laughed at her reflection in the glass.
"You could never have fallen in love with me--or my name--unless you'd
thought so.... Could you?"
"I've never asked myself. But I could fall in love with everything else
about you, too, because I've gone and done it."
"I wonder ... Anyhow none of the other things matter much, do they? I
can't imagine your falling in love with a hideosity, no matter how worth
loving she might be."
"Under the circumstances, why bother to try?"
"It's no bother, and it's intensely interesting...."
Canning advanced a step. Carlisle's gaze moved a little and encountered
his in the glass. In his eyes lay his whole opinion of one half the
human world....
"_Don't_ look at me in that proprietary way...."
Canning laughed softly. He was fully prepared for coquetry.
"Proprietary! It's the last way, my dear, I should venture to look at
_you_."
She had allowed him to linger, certainly with no blindness as to what he
desired to say to her. She had stood there with no ignorance that the
moment was favorable. But now something seemed to have gone amiss, and
she turned suddenly, frustrating whatever loverly intention he may
have had.
Carlisle sat down in a circular brocaded chair, in which gold back and
gold arms were one; a sufficiently decorative background for her shining
_décolleté_. Hugo, standing and fingering his white tie, looked down at
her with no loss of confidence in his handsome eyes.
"You've changed somehow," said he. "I haven't quite placed it yet.
Still, I can feel it there."
"I'm older, my friend, years older than when you used to know me. And
then I'm suffering from a serious bereavement, too. I've lost my good
opinion of myself."
"Perhaps I can be of some help in restoring it to you."
"That is the question.... Besides ageing immensely, I'm also getting
frightfully modern, you see...."
And pursuing this latter thought a little, she presently replied to him:
"Oh, no--sociology, not politics.... I've been thinking for some time of
inspecting the Works, to see if it needed repairs. How horrid of you to
laugh! Don't you think a woman should take some interest in how the
money is made that she lives on?..."
She said this smiling, in the lightest way imaginable. Small wonder if
Hugo didn't guess that she had thought twenty times in two weeks of
actually doing this thing she spoke of. Still less if it never occurred
to him that he here confronted again the footprint of the condemned
revivalist fellow, lately become his beloved's sworn friend....
"Have you asked your father that question yet?"
"I thought I'd better get the advice of a prominent lawyer first. Tell
me what you think?"
"The point would early arise as to how you would know, on visiting the
Works, whether or not it needed repairs. You've inspected many
factories, of course?"
"That's true!--I know nothing in the world about it. Of course not!"
She spoke with a sort of eagerness; but went on presently in another
tone: "Do you know, I really don't know anything ...? I've never thought
of it specially before, but all at once I'm constantly being impressed
with my ignorance...."
And Hugo, with all his accomplishment and skill, could not thenceforward
bring the conversation back where it belonged. Only the time and the
place were his to-night, it seemed....
"I," said the girl, "belong to the useless classes. I don't pay my way.
I'm a social deadbeat. So Mr. Pond told me the other night. You must
meet Mr. Pond, Hugo, the Director of the Settlement you gave all that
money to last year. He can be as horrid as anybody on earth, but is
really nice in a rude interesting way. He's packed full of quarrelsome
ideas. You know, he doesn't believe in giving money to the poor under
any circumstances. Harmful temporizing, he calls it ..." A rather wide
sweep here gave Mr. Pond's views on poor relief in detail ... "Are you
listening, Hugo? This information is being given for your benefit. And
oh, he wants me to learn millinery from Mme. Smythe (Jennie T. Smith,
_née_) and help him start a class in hat-trimming, to train girls for
shop assistants. Or perhaps I'll learn cooking instead...."
"He seems to have aired his views to you pretty thoroughly," said
Canning, dryly.
He rose to go, a little later, rather amused by the skill with which he
had been held off. He admired the piquancy of spirit with which she took
advantage of the altered positions. For him tameness was the great
disillusionizer; his undefined ideal was a woman who must be won anew
every day. Still, he had been rubbed a little the wrong way by the
new-woman catch-phrases she had picked up somewhere, by the faintly
argumentative note in her conversation....
"Plans for to-morrow!... By the way," said Cally, glancing away to
conceal a smile as she rose, "how long shall you be in town?"
"Just as long, Miss Heth, as my business here makes necessary."
"What can I say to that?... If I say I hope you won't be with us long,
it sounds quite rude. And if I say I hope it will be very, very
long ..."
But he would not follow that lead now. His instinct, her expression
warned him; and he was fully resolved that when he spoke again, it would
be to land this "wild sweet thing" fluttering safe in his net. However,
his laugh was not quite natural.
"I may," said he, "get a telegram calling me off, at almost any minute.
Let every one be kind to the stranger within the gates. May I nominate
myself for luncheon?"
He was unanimously elected. This time, at parting, he did not touch his
former betrothed's hand. His bow was accompanied by a slightly ironic
smile; it seemed to say: "Since you prefer it this way, my dear ... But
really--what's the use?"
Cally, snapping out the lights, felt vaguely depressed.
* * * * *
Next day, half an hour after luncheon, Hugo said to the greatest admirer
he had on earth:
"Where did Carlisle get the notion that she wanted to go in for
Settlement work?"
Mrs. Heth's reply, delivered with a beam, was masterly in its way.
"Why, my dear Hugo! Don't you know the sorry little makeshifts women go
to, waiting for love to come to them?"
Hugo's comment intimated that he had fancied it was something of the
sort. He then went out, to his future mother-in-law's regret; she often
wondered how it was that she and Hugo had so few good talks.
Her two young people, as the good lady loved to call them once more, had
separated almost from the table, but soon to re-meet. Carlisle, having
spent "the morning" shopping,--that is from twelve o'clock to
one-fifteen,--had departed to finish her commissions. Canning had a
regretted engagement with Allison Payne, downtown, to advise Mr. Payne
touching some of his investments. But he was to pick Carlisle up at
Morland's establishment at four o'clock, with the car he had hired by
the week; and the remainder of the afternoon would belong to him alone.
He was to have the evening, too, at the House, following a large
dinner-party of the elders arranged by Mrs. Heth before she knew the
date of his return. And these two occasions, the lover resolved, should
suffice his need....
Cally had her hour in the shops, enjoying herself considerably. Her
purchases this afternoon were partly utilitarian, it was true, concerned
with Mrs. Heth's annual box to her poor Thompson kin in Prince William
County. But she took more than one little flyer on her own account.
Nothing more had Cally said to her father as to giving him back the
fifteen hundred dollars, dividend on her stock. Consequently she
bristled with money nowadays, and had been splurging largely on highly
desirable little "extras." And mamma, usually quite strict in her
accounts, thought of trousseaux, and only smiled at these extravagances.
Cally moved in her destined orbit. From shop to shop, she pleasurably
pursued the material. Nevertheless, she cogitated problems as she
bought; chiefly with reference to Hugo, and the two or three hours'
_tête-à-tête_ that waited just ahead.... At just what point should the
needs of discipline be regarded as satisfied? That was the question, as
she had remarked last night.
At Baird & Himmel's these knotty reflections were interrupted for a
space. In this spreading mart Cally chanced to fall in with an
acquaintance.
Baird & Himmel's was the great popular department store of the town,
just now rapidly flowing over its whole block, and building all around
the usual drug-store which declined to sell. Here rich and poor rubbed
elbows with something like that human equality so lauded by Mr. V.V. and
others. And here Cally had pushed her way to Gentlemen's Furnishings,
her purpose being to buy two shirts for James Thompson, Jr., neck size
13, and not to cost over one dollar each, as mamma had duly noted on the
memorandum.
It was ten minutes to four o'clock, as a glance at her watch now showed.
Cally swung a little on her circular seat, and encountered the full
stare of a girl of the lower orders, seated next her. Her own glance,
which had been casual, suddenly became intent: the girl's face, an
unusual one in its way, touched a chord somewhere. In a second Cally
remembered the little factory hand who had brought her the note from Dr.
Vivian, that fateful Sunday afternoon in May ...
The little creature bobbed her head at her, with the beginnings of an
eager smile, which did not change her wide fixed stare.
"Good evenin', ma'am--Miss Heth."
"Good afternoon ..."
No more talk there had been about the Works at home, other than as to
papa's plan to have Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill to dinner, to talk over matters
in a friendly way. But if Cally had desired a sign of how much this
subject had been on her mind since her talk with Vivian she could have
found it in the mingling sensations that rose in her now. For this
little apparition at her elbow--so she had learned incidentally through
Hen Cooney, who knew everything--was the connecting link in the whole
argument. Here, on the next seat, sat that "strong necessity" which had
impelled Vivian to attack Mr. Heth in the papers.
"I remember you," said Carlisle, slowly. "I understood from Miss Cooney
that you had been very sick. You don't look sick--especially."
"I been away, ma'am. On a Trip," explained the pale operative with a
kind of eagerness. "Dr. Vivian he sent me off to Atlantic City, in New
Jersey, and then to a hotel in the Adriondacts. I conv'lessed,
ma'am, y'know?"
"I see. Now you are going back to the Works, I suppose?"
It was not a question easy to answer with delicacy, to answer and avoid
all risk of hurting a lady's feelings. How explain that the Works were
expressly prohibited by doctor's orders, though you yourself knew that
you ought to go back? How tell of special lessons at a Writing Desk
every night, such as prepared people to be Authors, when anybody could
see by looking at you that you were only a work-girl, and you yourself
felt that it was all wrong someway?...
Kern spoke timidly, though her wide eyes did not falter.
"Well--not just to-reckly, ma'am. The plan was, till I got my strength
back, that I might lay off a little and go--go to School."
"I see."
The tone was cool, and the girl added with a little gasp:
"And then go back to bunchin' again,--yes, ma'am. It's--it's my
trade...."
Many feelings moved in Cally, and it might be that the best of them were
not uppermost. Perhaps the glittering material possessed her blood, even
more than of habit. Perhaps it was only her instinct warning her to take
her stand now with her father, where was safety and her ordered course.
Or at least it was hardly a pure impulse of generosity that made her
open the plump little gold bag at her side, and produce a bill with a
yellow back.
"I'm very sorry you've been ill," she said, in her pretty modulated
voice. "As you probably feel that you got your illness in the Works, I
should like you to take this. Please consider it as coming from my
father--and buy yourself something--"
All the blood in the little creature's body seemed to rush headlong to
her face. She shrank away as from something more painful than a blow.
But all that she said was:
"_Oh!... Ma'am!_"
It was Miss Heth's turn to show a red flag in her cheek.
"You don't want it?"
"I--why ma'am,--I _couldn't_ ..."
"As you like, of course."
She dropped the spurned gift back into her bag, with studied
leisureliness, and rose at once, though she had made no purchase.
Standing, she made a slight inclination of her prettily-set head. And
then Miss Heth was walking away through the crowded aisle with a
somewhat proud bearing and a very silken swish.
And Kern Garland swung round on her seat at Gentlemen's Furnishings,
staring wide-eyed after her, her finger at her lip ...
No fairy coming-true here, indeed, of that gorgeous fever-dream in which
Miss Heth with lovely courtesy informed Miss Garland that she had been a
lady all the time. But consider the Dream-Maker's difficulties with such
far-flown fancies as this: difficulties the more perplexing in a world
where men's opinions differ, and some do say that she in the finest
skirt is not always the finest lady ...
Yet times change, and we with them. It is a beautiful thing to believe
in fairies. In the valley, men have met angels. Kern sat staring at Miss
Heth's retreating back: and lo, a miracle. When the lovely lady had gone
perhaps ten steps down the aisle, her pace seemed to slacken all at
once, and she suddenly glanced back over her shoulder. And then--oh,
wonder of wonders!--Miss Heth stopped, turned around, and came swishing
straight back to the seat beside Kern Garland.
"That was silly of me," said the pretty voice. "You were quite right not
to take it if you didn't want it ..."
Kern desired to cry. But that would be very ridiculous, in a store, and
doubtless annoying to Others. So the little girl began to wink hard,
while staring fixedly at a given point. You could often pass it off that
way, and nobody a whit the wiser.
"I've happened to have the Works on my mind a little of late," added
Carlisle, almost as if in apology. "But I--I'm really glad to see
you again."
She perceived the signs of agitation in the little work-girl, and
attributing it all to the twenty-dollar bill, saw that she must pave the
way to a conversation. And conversation, now that the ice was broken,
she eagerly desired, fascinated by the thought that this girl knew at
first-hand everything about the Works.
"Let me see--your name is Corinne, isn't it?"
Kern's eyes, wider than ever, shot back to the lady's face. A new
wonder here!--Miss Heth said it just like in the Dream: _Co-rinne_.
"Yes, ma'am," said Co-rinne, with a little gulp and a sniff.
"And what are you doing at the Men's Furnishing counter, Corinne?" said
Carlisle, pleasantly but quite at random. "Buying a present for Mr.
V.V., I suppose?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Having taken Carlisle completely aback, she hesitated and then added
timidly:
"Only a fulldress-shirt protector--for his birthday, y' know?... All his
sick give him little presents now'n then, ma'am, find out his sizes and
all. You know how he is, spending all his money on them, and never
thinking about himself, and giving away the clo'es off his back."
"Yes, I know.... Find out his sizes?"
"Yes, ma'am. Like, say, 'Why, Mr.--why, Dr. Vivian, what small feet you
got, sir, for a gempman!' And he'll say, like, 'I don't call six and a
half C so small!' Yes, ma'am--just as innocent."
A block and a half away, Hugo Canning's car whirled to a standstill, and
Hugo sat gazing at the select door of Morland's. In Baird & Himmel's
vast commonwealth, Kern Garland sat beside Miss Carlisle Heth at
Gentlemen's Furnishings, and could not look at the lady's lovely clothes
since her eyes could not bear to leave the yet lovelier face. Kern had
not confided the secret of the protector without a turning of her heart,
but now at least the thrill in her rose above that.... She and Mr.
V.V.'s beautiful lady, side by side.... It was nearly as good as the
velvet settee in the Dream--only for the founting, and the boy with the
pink lamp on his head, and Mr. V.V....
An extremely full-busted Saleslady, with snapping black eyes, deposited
a lean bundle and a ten-cent piece before the work-girl, oddly murmured
something that sounded like 'Look who's ear,' and then said proudly
to Carlisle:
"What did you wish 'm?"
"Nothing just now, thank you."
The Saleslady gave her a glance of intense disapproval, pushed down her
generous waist-line, arrogantly patted a coal-black transformation, and
wheeled with open indignation.
"That's nice," said Carlisle, to the factory-girl. "Then the presents
come as a surprise to him."
"Surprise--no, ma'am. He don't never know. Take the tags off 'n 'em, and
slip 'em in his drawer, and he'll put 'em on and never notice nor
suspicion, shirts and such. It's like he thought raiment was brought him
by the crows,--like in the Bible, ma'am, y' know?"
There was a brief silence. Carlisle's sheltered life had not too often
touched the simple annals of the poor. She seemed to get a picture....
The little work-girl's face was not coarse, strangely enough, or even
common-looking; it was pleasing in an odd, elfin way. Her white dress
and black jacket were in good taste for her station, without vulgarity.
Such details Carlisle's feminine eye soon gathered in. The touch she
missed was that that cheap dress was an exact copy of one she herself
had worn one Sunday afternoon in May, as near as Kern Garland could
remember it.
"How long were you at the Works?" said the lady suddenly.
"At the Works? More'n three years, ma'am."
There was another silence amid the bustle of the people's emporium.
"Tell me," said Carlisle, with some effort, "do you--did you--looking at
it from a worker's point of view--find it such a very bad place
to work?"
"Oh, _no_, ma'am!" said Kern. "Bad--oh, no! It's--it's fine!"
Carlisle's gaze became wider than the little girl's own. "But--Mr. V.V.
says it's a terrible place...."
"It's only the beautiful way he talks," said Kern, eagerly. "I mean,
he's so, so sorry for the poor.... But lor, ma'am, we know how rich is
rich, and poor poor, and so it must always be this side o' the
pearly gates--"
She stopped short; and then added shyly, with a kind of anxiousness in
her wide dark gaze: "An expression, ma'am--for Heaven. I--I just
learned it."