"It is not a question of what _I_ want in this house any longer, it
seems.... I am pointing out to you, Carlisle, that the independence of
action you have lately taken upon yourself is a serious matter, to be
looked at from more than one side. It is not becoming," said Mrs. Heth,
watching her daughter's face closely, "to bite the hand that feeds you."
To this the girl had no reply. Beneath her mother's somewhat vivid
metaphor, she perceived a truth, and that truth the tragic weakness of
her position. But she did not know now that large books had been written
about this weakness, and many more would be....
Mrs. Heth having allowed the silence to continue a moment,
educationally, drew a handkerchief across her upper lip, with its
strange little downy mustache, and resumed:
"With no plans of your own, you have lately thrown away the best
opportunity you will ever have in your life. Now there are only two
theories on which I can explain this conduct--so totally unlike your
usual good sense. One is that you have permitted yourself, without my
knowledge, to become interested in somebody else.... Have you?"
"No--oh, no!... No, of course not."
"That I felt confident of," said mamma, though not without a certain
note of relief. "Confident.... Yet--to touch the second point,--as you
look toward the future, you do expect to marry some day, do you not?"
The daughter seemed restive under this cross-examination. She turned
away from the maternal scrutiny, and, resting her arm upon her
chair-back, looked toward the shaded window.
"Yes--I suppose so.... That seems to be all I'm fit for.... But--since
you ask me, mamma--I _would_ like, in the meantime, not to be so ... so
plainly labelled _waiting_.... I'd like," she said, hesitatingly, "to
have _one_ man I meet--see me in some other light than as a candidate
for matrimony."
"That," said Mrs. Heth, firmly, "will never be, so long as you retain
your youth and beauty, and men retain their nature....
"And why should you wish it otherwise?" continued the dominant little
lady. "Despite all the loose, unwomanly talk in the air, you do realize,
I see, that marriage will always remain the noblest possible career
for a woman."
Cally remembered a converse of this proposition she had heard one day at
the Woman's Club. She answered with light bitterness:
"When I said just now that I was fit for marriage, I meant marriage,
mamma--a wedding. Of course, I'm not fit to be anybody's wife...." She
paused, and added in a voice from which the bitterness had all gone out:
"I'm not fit to be anybody's mother."
"There, there!" riposted mamma, briskly. "I think that's enough of poor
Henrietta Cooney, and her wild, unsuccessful notions."
There was another brief silence; the silence of the death of talk.
"You're in a dangerously unsettled state of mind, my
daughter--dangerously. But you will find, as other women have found,
that marriage will relieve all these discontents. I myself," said mamma,
with a considerable stretching of the truth, "went through the same
stages in my youth--though, of course, I was married much younger than
you.... Now, Carlisle, I have refused to believe that your quarrel with
Hugo is irreparable."
Carlisle started as if slapped. Had mamma jerked her by a string, she
could not have turned more sharply. The little general, leaning forward,
swept on with hurried firmness.
"I see, of course, that you have taken your quarrel very seriously, very
hard. You feel that in your anger you both said terrible things which
can't possibly be overlooked. But, my child, remember that the course of
true love never did run smooth. There have been few engagements which
weren't broken off at least once, few marriages when the wife didn't
make up her mind--"
"Mamma!" said Cally, rousing herself as from a cataleptic sleep. "You
can't have understood what I told you that night. This was not a quarrel
at all, in any sense--"
"I know! I understand! I withdraw the word cheerfully," said mamma, in
just that tone and manner which made the strange similarity between her
and Hugo. "But what I want to say, Cally, is this. Hugo is still in
Washington. Willie Kerr, to whom I talked by telephone last night, had a
telegram from him yesterday. Now, my child, men do not take women's
angry speeches quite as seriously as you think. Hugo is mad about you.
All he wants is _you_--"
"Oh, please--_please_! Don't say any more. You don't--"
"No, hear me out! See for yourself if my plan is not diplomatic and
feasible, and involves no surrender of pride. I shall send Willie Kerr
on to Washington this afternoon. He will go ostensibly on private
business with one of the Departments,--though I will, of course, pay all
expenses,--and putting up at Hugo's hotel, will meet him as if by
accident. In their talk Willie, who is tact and loyalty itself, will
perhaps mention your sickness, though without comment. Gradually the
impression will come to Hugo that if he returns, with, of course,
suitable apologies--"
"Mamma," said Cally, starting up, very white, "if you do any such thing
as that I'll go away somewhere. I _will_ go and earn my own living....
I'll go _and live with the Cooneys_!"
The two women gazed at each other. Over the mother's face there spread a
slow flush; the round, purple birthmark darkened. Cally spoke again,
with deadly earnestness.
"I _did_ think you understood about this.... If you persuade Hugo to
walk down from Washington on his knees.... I'll not see him."
Mrs. Heth, curiously, had been brought down in full flight: perhaps by
the force of that wild upstarting, perhaps by the grisly threat about
the Cooneys. Carlisle in a flare-up had always required a certain
handling. The worst of the mad girl was that she was really capable of
doing these unspeakable things she mentioned.
"So you refuse pointblank," said Mrs. Heth, in a muffled sort of voice,
"to carry out your parents' wishes."
"About this--I _must_. I'll do anything else you want me to,
anything.... And, mamma, this isn't papa's wish," said the girl, with
some emotion. "He told me--the other night--that I mustn't think of
marrying anybody I didn't care for. He said he had never thought the
same of Hugo--"
Then mamma smote the flat arm of her morris-chair, and sprang up,
exploding.
"_That's it_! Shove it off on your poor, generous father!... How
characteristic of your whole behavior! Why, you ought to be _ashamed_ to
mention your father's name!" cried mamma; and, indeed, Cally was, though
for reasons not known to her mother....
Mrs. Heth walked the floor, in the grip of those agonies which the
defeat of her will brought her in poignant measure. It may be that her
faith in her diplomatic plan had never been triumphantly strong. Now,
certainly, her purposes were punitive only, and her flowing sentences
well turned to her desire....
"You suppose your father's overjoyed to have his delightfully
_independent_ daughter thrown back on his hands--of course!" she was
remarking. "True, you've heard him say a thousand times that he was
going to sell his business as soon as you married and buy himself a
place in the country and begin to have some pleasure of his own. But, of
course, that was only his little joke! Yes, yes!" said mamma,
brandishing her arms. "What he really wants is to go on slaving and
toiling and worrying his heart out to keep you in pampered idleness and
luxury, indulging your lightest whim without regard--"
"Mamma, mamma!--do, please!" the girl broke in. "If papa has been
working so hard on my account--and I didn't know that--then I don't want
him to do it any more. I wish he would sell--"
"Oh, I've no patience with your deathbed repentances! Don't you know
your father's involved in serious worries at this moment, entirely on
your account? Do you think a few dramatic speeches from you can undo--"
"Worries on my account? No, I didn't know of any.... What worries?"
Cally had stood listening with a kind of numbed listlessness, ready to
go at the first opportunity, now that the real purpose of the interview
was discharged. But suddenly she perceived a new pointedness in her
mother's biting summaries; and she turned, with a slightly startled look
in her eyes.
Her mother returned the gaze with savage sarcasm.
"Oh! You never heard of the Labor Commissioner and his hired
character-assassin, I suppose! Never--"
"Yes, but I didn't know any of that was on my account."
"No, no, indeed! You thought it was just a little whim of your father's
to keep his factory in a condition that's been a scandal in the
community. Fighting off legislation--bribing inspectors--just his little
bits of eccentric self-indulgence. You thought that ten thousand dollars
I gave to the Settlement grew on a tree, I suppose. You--"
"Mamma," said Cally, in a strained voice, "what on earth are you talking
about? I want to understand. What did that money you gave to the
Settlement have to do--"
"Don't you _know_ he needed it for his business?" cried mamma,
advancing menacingly. "I tell you he'd put it by to spend it on the
Works this fall, and stop these attacks on him. And why did I have to
take it from him, but on _your_ account, miss?--to try to clear the
family name from the scandal you brought upon us--"
"_What_?"
"A scandal," continued mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid
my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father
his presidency at the bank."
The good lady easily saw that she had struck the right punitive note at
last. Indeed, the question now, Cally's peculiarities being considered,
was whether she had not struck it rather too hard. The girl's face had
suddenly become the color of paper. The intense concentration of her
gaze was painful in its way, slightly disconcerting to mamma.
"Do you mean," said Cally, in quite a shaky voice--"do you say that
papa--meant to improve the Works _this fall_--and that you--that I--"
"I mean exactly what I say," said Mrs. Heth, resolutely. "And I say it's
high time you were beginning to understand your position in this family,
as a guide to your strange behavior. Do you suppose your father enjoys
being under attack all the time? Haven't you heard him say a hundred
times, that it was bad business to let things go at the Works? Where
were you six years ago when he said we'd have to economize and put up a
new building, and I prevented him for your sake, arguing that you were
just coming out and were entitled to--"
"_Six years_!... Why ... why, then I'm responsible for it _all_!...
Why--_I've been on his back all the time_!"
"I'm glad you realize it at last.... Oh, well!" said her mother,
throwing out both hands and speaking with a kind of gruff
tolerance,--"there's no use to _cry_ about it."
"I'm not crying," said Cally.
She was, indeed, not crying as her mother had usually seen her cry; not
with storm and racking. Nevertheless, two indubitable drops suddenly
glittered upon the gay lashes, and now fell silently as Cally spoke.
"But I could cry," said she, "I'm so happy ... I'm so glad, to know
it's all been my fault.... You don't know ... I went to the Works the
other day--"
"Oh, you did!" said her mother, bitterly, but enlightened a little. "And
have been criticizing your father, I suppose, the father who has
sacrificed--"
"He'll forgive me.... He _must_. I'll find a way."
Mrs. Heth, flinging herself down in her chair again, said in a voice
full of sudden depression: "I should say you owed him apologies, for
that among other things.... Well, I give you up."
Cally stood unmoving, slim hands locked behind her head, staring toward
the window. Gone was the albatross from her young neck, melted the cloud
from the azure round. Wisdom had come with such startling unexpectedness
that she could not take in all that had happened to her just now. But
all that mattered was as plain and bright as the sunshine waiting for
her out there. She, and not papa whom she had so wronged in her
thoughts, had made the bunching-room what it was; she, and nobody else,
should make it better after this. And through the splendid confusion of
sensations that, mounting within, seemed to float her away from this
solid floor, she heard one clear voice sounding ever louder and louder.
It was the voice of the prodigal, chastened and penitent: _"I will arise
and go to my father."_
Cally turned toward the door.
Her mother, stirring from her heavy rebuking apathy, said: "Oh, there's
no use bothering him now to say you're sorry. You've not thought of him
all these years ..."
"That's why I can't wait--now," said Cally. "And besides, there's
something else I want to speak to him about.... A--a business matter."
Mamma demanded an explanation. And Cally, pausing briefly at the door,
turned upon that censorious gaze a face radiant as the morning.
"I'm going to give him my fifty thousand dollars to build a new Works
with.... Won't you please help me make him take it?"
But what her mother may have replied to this request failed to overtake
Cally, flying down the hall to the telephone....
* * * * *
The bedroom conference, it was seen, had not been wholly fruitless,
after all. Mrs. Heth's last stand for Hugo--like Hugo's last
afternoon--had taken a slant not anticipated by her, but at least
wholesome and moral in its effects. Cally's dreaded accusing interview
in the study gave place, beyond all imagining, to an unpremeditated
outpouring by telephone, in which her chief fear was only of making a
perfect little silly of herself. And lastly, Mr. Heth, called summarily
from a directors' meeting at the Fourth National Bank, was overflowed
with such a wave of feminine incoherence and emotionalism as he found
great difficulty in associating with his usually self-contained little
daughter....
Papa indeed, knowing nothing of any conference or of any dark cloud
either, was treated to the astonishment of his life. When he finally
understood that the house was not in flames, or his wife stricken with a
deadly malady, when he began to get some notion of what all the strange
pother was about, his replies, for the most part, took the following
general directions: (1) that little Callipers was out of her mind with
her sickness, didn't know what she was talking about, crazy, and the
greatest little goose that ever was; (2) that she had no business ever
going to the Works, but that was all right now, and he didn't want to
hear another word about it; (3) that he couldn't stop to talk such
foolishness in business hours, and she'd better go and lie down and rest
and get her senses back; (4) that he gave her that money for herself,
and when he got dependent on his little daughter, he'd let her know; (5)
and that there, there, not to bother him now, we'd see, after lunch....
Sufficiently vague replies these; yet they seemed to leave the daughter
in no doubt whatever that the matter which had all in a moment become
dear to her heart was as good as settled. For when papa terminated the
conversation by smartly ringing off, she immediately called another
number: Jefferson 4127, this one was, which, as the book shows (only she
did not look at the book) is the number assigned to Meeghan's Grocery,
down by the old Dabney House....
However the untutored voice at Meeghan's reported that Doctor was out on
his rounds and not to be reached before one o'clock. So Cally had to
defer for a little while the happiness she would have in telling the
lame wanderer across her path that, after all, his eyes had not put
their trust in her in vain.
Later she sat again on a revolving seat at Gentlemen's Furnishings,
eagerly purchasing shirts, cost not exceeding one dollar each, for James
Thompson, aged thirteen, of up-country. It happened to be her work to do
in the world, and she was doing it.
She was waited upon at the popular counter by Miss Whirtle herself, whom
Cally remembered by figure if not by name; and she was so extremely
agreeable and mollifying in her manner that the Saleslady's arrogance
thawed away, and they were soon discussing questions of neck-sizes and
sleeve-lengths in the friendliest intimacy. There were collars and
neckties purchased, too,--these items Cally added on her own account,
being in the vein of making presents to people to-day,--and here Miss
Whirtle's taste was invaluable in assisting one to decide which were the
nobby shapes and swell patterns and which the contrary. The robust one
patted her transformation many times at Miss Heth, invited her at
parting to call again; and later on--that night, it was--reported the
whole conversation in detail in the Garland dining-room, imparting, we
need not doubt, her own witty flavor to it all.
In Baird & Himmel's Cally met several other acquaintances, and finally
Evey McVey, who was delighted to see her out again, but seemed to be
examining her rather curiously, doubtless with reference to Hugo and
what had happened in that quarter. Evey herself complained of being
tired; so Cally drove her second-best friend to the McVey residence in
the car, but pleaded duties at home against getting out for a
little visit.
And then, bowling homeward in the brisk airs, she could return to her
own thoughts again, which, as by the rubbing of an Aladdin's lamp, had
suddenly become so happy and so absorbing. Later, she must think about
mamma, and with what time and solaces she could close that breach. But
in these hours her thought was all for her father, whom she seemed just
to be beginning to understand for the first time in her life....
Now all the imaginative dreads and nightmare terrors were faded away,
and she felt beneath her feet the solid sanity of Hugo's self. She had
seen the Works on an exceptionally bad day; she had gone there,
overdrawn and ignorant, looking for horrors; what she had actually seen
and felt had been mysteriously intensified a hundredfold by her violent
encounter with Colonel Dalhousie. For all that she knew, to this very
moment, the Works might be, indeed (as the beautifully tactful girl
Corinne had said), the best place to work in town.
But what Cally was thinking now was that, in sitting in judgment on her
father, she had blindly judged him as if he were a free man--she, of all
people, who had felt so poignantly the imprisoning powers of a groove.
Now it appeared, as by a sudden light upon him, that papa had always
been clamped fast in a groove of his own, exactly as she had been; a
groove fixed for him by his place in society, by the way other men ran
their cheroot factories,--for, of course, papa must do as his
competitors did, or be crowded out, and the hardest-driving, meanest man
set the pace for the kind ones, like papa,--and last and chiefly by the
extravagances of a wife and daughter who always cried "give, give," and
didn't care at all where the gifts came from. How could papa possibly be
free with two costly women on his back all the time?... Strange that she
hadn't grasped all this clearly, the minute she had recognized herself
as a horse-leech's daughter....
Now the first thing to do, obviously, was to get off papa's back at
once. Her fifty thousand dollars would be a sound starter there; of
course papa would take it, since she wanted him to so much. And her
mind, as she drove, kept recurring to this symbol, kept bringing up
pictures of the new Works that would be, built perfect with her money.
She saw it considerably like the beautiful marble palace of her
childhood's thought, the pride of Canal Street without, and within
wonderfully clean, spacious and airy, and most marvellously fragrant. In
this new palace of labor, faints and swoons were things undreamed of.
Trim, smiling, pretty girls, all looking rather like French maids in a
play, happily plied their light agreeable tasks; and, in especial, the
cheeks of poor Miller (who had stoutened gratifyingly) were observed to
blossom like the rose.
Yet the creator of all these wonders was well aware that she was not
giving her dowry to Miller, exactly....
Descending from the car at her own door, Cally encountered Mr. Pond, of
the Settlement. The dark-faced Director was loafing, oddly enough, on
Mrs. Mason's steps, which had once been Mr. Beirne's, four doors from
home. He raised his hat about two inches at the sight of her, returned
his watch and some typewritten papers to his pocket, and came forward.
"Don't run," said he, unsmiling. "I want to know plainly whether or not
you are coming to my meeting to-morrow. Yes or no."
Cally laughed gaily. There was a radiance within her, and she liked this
man increasingly. Several times they had met, since their antagonistic
talk at the Settlement; and in the blunt Director's manner she had
lately observed that creeping change which she had witnessed in men as
stalwart, before now....
"Don't look so fierce," said she, "for I'll not be bullied. Or at least
not till you explain why you're hanging around in front of the
neighbors' at twelve o'clock in the morning--you who always pretend to
be so frightfully busy."
"Waiting for Vivian. And I am busy, confound him.... Not too busy, as
you see, to take a kind interest in your welfare--"
"Oh!... Is Dr. Vivian _there_--at the Masons'? Why, what are _you_
waiting for him for?"
"Seems to me you ask a good many questions for an idler."
He stood on the sidewalk, looking up at her with his hawk-eyes, a man
yet in the early thirties, but of obvious power.
"We're going to buy second-hand benches, if you must know," continued
he. "He says he can show me where to get 'em cheap. Anything else?"
"No-o--except ... How much will the benches cost? Perhaps I--might be
able to contribute something--"
"I don't want your old money," said Pond. "When are you going to be
serious about serious things?"
"I think now," said Cally ... "Only, you see, I don't know anything at
all."
"I'll teach you," said the Director.
Cally, standing on the broad white slab before her own door, did not
answer. Her glance had turned down the street: and at this moment there
emerged from the Masons' door the tall figure of V. Vivian, the
article-writer, who would never have to put anything in the papers about
papa now. He saw her instantly, and over his somehow strange and
old-fashioned face there broke a beautiful smile. He lifted his hat
high, and, so holding it at height, posed as if for a picture, gave it
something like a wave, as in double measure of greeting and good-will. A
proper salutation from friend to friend; and the sunlight gleamed on his
crisp fair hair....
Cally's return greeting was somewhat less finished. She gave the lame
doctor one look of brilliant sweetness; and then she said to him, "Oh,
how do you do?"--in a voice that he could not possibly have heard. Next
she said, "Yes, I'll be at the meeting to-morrow," with her back turned
squarely toward Mr. Pond. And then she opened her door and went in quite
quickly, leaving the Director staring intently at a crack in the
sidewalk....
Within, Cally perceived that she had acted rather unreasonably, missing
the opportunity to tell Mr. V.V. that she desired to speak with him: but
that, of course, was only because she had not wanted to interrupt and
detain two busy men at their labors. The oversight, besides, was easily
to be remedied; though she did not again send the clear call for
Meeghan's. She decided to write a brief note instead, and did, asking
her friend if he could come and give her his help about a matter--say at
four o'clock that afternoon. The note was dispatched, not by old Moses
this time, but by the hand of an urchin in a blue uniform, who was deep
in "Lady Helen, the Fair Ghoul," as he bicycled, but apparently reached
his destination in due course.
And V. Vivian, once again, was not disobedient to the heavenly summons.