She noted this information carefully on one of her sheets of paper, thus
proving that she was right to go and get them, all the time.
"I thought," said she, "I might see if Saltman had it. Then I could
begin to cram to-night."
But no, he said that Saltman hadn't it, but would order it, of course.
And then the scraping of a chair-leg advised all listeners that Mr. V.V.
was violating that injunction laid upon him as to not getting up....
He advanced round the table-end, his hand raised in his nervous and
characteristic gesture. So anyone who wished could see that deficiency
at his elbow, about which he himself seemed so splendidly indifferent.
He was as tall as Hugo; but Hugo, with his lordly good looks and
beautiful clothes, was certainly a much more eye-catching figure. And
yet, as she straightened now and looked, the knowledge shot suddenly
through Cally that this doctor in his patches somehow looked, that he
had always looked, rather the finer gentleman of the two....
"Johnson's the publisher," said V.V., coming to a halt in front of her.
And then, taking the sheets of note-paper unconsciously from her
unresisting hands, he added, looking down:
"But--how'd you mean just now ... that I--I've accomplished so--so
much?"
By now Cally could smile, in quite a natural-seeming way; and this she
did, full under the prophetic gaze, revealing shining white teeth and
glimpses of a rose-lined mouth. And if "he was a Hun, she had always
been the loveliest of them, God wot....
"I'm beginning to believe," said she, "that you're not such a very
strange man, after...."
So she ended; her gaze shifting, the smile dying on her lip. For the
door of the library had opened authoritatively, and that difficulty
which had embarrassed her all through the afternoon suddenly confronted
her upon the threshold.
Mr. Heth, of the Works, en route to his study, was briefly surprised by
the little tableau he had stumbled upon. But seeing young men about the
house at all hours wan no nine days' wonder for him; and he came on in
with quite his usual air.
"Ah, Cally! Didn't know anybody was in here," said papa; and he glanced
from her, with amiable expectancy, toward the stranger. "What's this
confabulation about?"
Cally felt herself turning white. She steadied herself with one hand on
the writing-leaf of the desk.
"We were talking about the new Works," said she.... "Papa--I want to
introduce a good friend of mine--Dr. Vivian."
"Oh, Mr. Heth!... I'm so glad to know you, sir."
Thus the fearless young voice at her side. But Cally was gazing,
transfixed, at her father, on whose face the friendly greeting air was
giving place to astonished displeasure, not untouched with indignation.
He had stopped short in the middle of the floor, and the hand he had
been automatically putting out fell dead at his side.
"Oh!--Ah!--Dr. Vivian!" said Mr. Heth, with the stiffest inclination.
And then, his look going from one to the other of the two young people,
he added, as if involuntarily: "_Vivian_?... Ah! I'd--have expected a
different-looking man!"
The pause then, the suspense of all action from the world, was
infinitesimal. But it seemed long to Cally. And she thought she could
never forgive her father if he turned away, leaving this slight upon
her friend.
"Papa," she began, unsteadily, "I don't think...."
But once again her sentence hung unended. V.V., advancing, came then
into her line of vision; and Cally saw that he had no thought for the
cover of her skirt. Her father's forbidding deportment had not escaped
the young man; there were both a diffidence and a dignity in his
bearing. And yet she saw that his face wore like a flower that guileless
and confiding look he had, the look of a man who cannot doubt that, in
their hearts, all mean as kindly as he himself. He moved upon her silent
father as if singing aloud an immortal faith in the goodness of his
fellows: _Though he slay me, yet will I trust him_....
But what his audible voice was saying was very simple, and a little
embarrassed:
"I've felt that I've just come to know you to-day, Mr. Heth ... to
understand things better. I suppose it's too much to hope that you can
forget what's past, all at once. But I'd be mortified to feel.... Ah,
sir!--I've felt honored by your House to-day...."
That was all; the mists lifted. He saw no difficulties, and so there
were none. Papa's face was thawing back, through several surprised
looks, to its natural kindliness; he had taken the offered hand, in the
middle of the little speech; and then, within a minute, he was saying,
quite amiably, that well, well, we'd say no more about it ... s'posed
the thing to do was to let bygones be bygones....
And papa's daughter, Cally, turned away quickly from that spectacle,
winking furiously, and wondering when she had got to be such a baby....
* * * * *
[Illustration: PAPA--I WANT TO INTRODUCE A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE--DR.
VIVIAN]
Strange things had been happening of late, it seemed; strange memories
gathering for backward thought hereafter; novel pictures ranging in
the immaterial storehouse that opens down the years. But in all Cally's
invisible collection, then or thenceforward, there was never a scene
that she saw so vividly as this: herself standing silent by the
newel-post in the wide hall; her father, distinct and genial in the
light through the open door, observing to Mr. V.V. that hard words
buttered no parsnips, as the fellow said; and V.V., half-smiling at her
over papa's broad shoulder, and saying to her with his eyes that of
course this was the way it was meant to be, all along.