"I'm right here.... What did you say?"
"You were picking flowers ten thousand miles away. 'Cause why? 'Not any,
thank you,' isn't the right reply to 'Please give me the salt.'"
"She's in love," said the Major, a gallant in his day.
Cally, handing the salt to Hen, said: "I am, indeed,--with Looloo. Don't
you notice that she's getting prettier every day?"
Looloo, fair as a lily, proved that blushes made her prettier still; the
Major said finely, "Praise from Sir Hubert"; and Aunt Molly, giving the
same truth a sound wholesome turn, observed that Loo needn't get set up,
for she'd never be as pretty as Cally, no matter how she improved.
Cousin Martha's remark was: "But to go back to what I was saying, Cally.
That Wednesday night was the worst I ever spent...."
And Cally felt apologetic to her poor relative to-day, a good deal
ashamed before her. Her sudden impulse had been to ask papa's old cousin
to come and stay in one of the four spare rooms at home (thus permitting
Chas to come down from the Cooney attic); but she had had to put that
impulse down. The Heths had not built walls around their little island
for nothing....
They were in the limousine, she and Hen, driving down to Saltman's. Hen
said she would be delighted to come in that evening, and play bridge
with Uncle Thornton. She was a player of known merits, rather famous for
successes with hare-brained no-trumpers. And Cally, thinking what man
she should ask for Hen, discovered suddenly that her thought was going
much beyond a table of bridge to-night; that what she was really
planning was to marry her cousin off this year. And she found herself
searching about for somebody very nice for Hen, very desirable.
"Oh, by the bye," she said, presently--"I was just thinking--do you
remember that corduroy suit I had last year--striped gray, with a
Russian blouse?"
Hen, it seemed, remembered this suit perfectly. And Cally said no
wonder, since she had worn it till she would be ashamed to be caught
in it again.
"I was wondering," said she, "if you could make it do for anything, Hen.
It would honestly be a favor if you'd take it off my hands."
Henrietta swept on her a look of incredulous delight.
"Cally!... Why, you good old bluffer! You know perfectly well that
suit's a beauty, as good as new--"
"No, oh, no! Indeed, it isn't," said Cally, quite eagerly. "You've
forgotten--it's worn, oh, quite badly worn. I'll show you to-night when
you come. And then you'd have to cut it down, too.... Only you mustn't
ever wear it around me, Hen, I'm really so sick of the sight of it...."
So Hen presently said: "There's no use my pretending or being coy,
Cally. Oh, I'd dearly love to have it. I've been wondering what on earth
I'd do for a nice suit this year.... Why, it's like an answer to
prayer...."
And what had she ever done in a human world to entitle her to be
bestowing last-year's suits upon Henrietta Cooney, the busy and useful?
"She's worth three of me," thought Cally, "and I've been looking down
on her all this time just because they're poor. I seem to be little and
mean clear through...."
And suddenly she saw that memories had been gathering here; that
Saltman's hard-worked stenographer had grown intimate and dear....
Her hand closed over Hen's, and she was speaking hurriedly:
"Hen, do you know you're a great old dear? Don't look.... I've never
told you how good you were to me this summer, when I was so unhappy, and
nobody else seemed to care.... And since I've been back, too, helping me
more than you know, perhaps. I didn't appreciate it all at the time,
quite, but I do now. And I won't forget what a good friend you've been
to me, what an old trump...."
Hen, taken quite by surprise, turned on her a somewhat misty gaze. She
answered that Cally was a darling goose; with other things solacing and
sweet. And then the two cousins were parting, the one to her typewriter,
the other to her ease: but both feeling that a new tie bound them which
would not loosen soon.
The car started from Saltman's door, and Cally glanced at her watch: it
was just three o'clock. Probably at this moment Dr. Vivian and papa were
shaking hands in the office at the Works. Why, oh, why, hadn't she said
that she would go, too, as she had so much wanted to do? Surely she
could not have harmed that meeting; she might even have helped a little.
About her were the bustle and clangor of busy Centre Street. People
hurrying upon a thousand errands, each intent upon his own business,
under the last wrapping each soul alone in the crowded world. And no one
knew of his brother's high adventures. Men walked brushing elbows with
angels, and unaware....
She had had a little sister named Rosemary, two years older than she,
and very lovely in the little picture of her that papa always carried in
the locket on his watch-chain. Often Cally had wished for her sister;
never so much as through this day. There was one, she liked to think,
whom she could have talked her heart out to, sure that she would
understand all, share all. But Rosemary had been dead these
twenty years....
"Drive me a little, William, please.... For half an hour, and then
home...."
The car went far over familiar streets that she had first seen from a
perambulator. She sat almost motionless, the tangible world faded out.
It was good to be alone; this was a solitude peopled with fancies. Her
mind dreamed back over the long strange year, while her steadfast face
was shining toward the Future.
* * * * *
Strange enough it seemed now; but till the other day Hugo and Dr. Vivian
had hardly once met in the thoughts of Cally Heth. They had hardly met
in life, never exchanged a word since the night in the summer-house: so
she, untrained to discernment, had supposed that they had nothing to do
with each other. Now, in the last few days, it had come to seem that
these two had, in her, been pitted against each other from the
beginning.
Forces not of her making had cut and patterned her life; and she, driven
on by feelings which she herself had hardly understood, had crumpled up
that pattern and seized the shears of destiny in her own hand. The
groove she had been set and clamped so fast into ran straight as a
string into Hugo Canning's arms; but she had broken out of her groove,
and Hugo was gone, to cross her path no more. And her mother thought,
and Hugo had said almost with his parting breath, that she had been
driven to these madnesses by mere foolish femininisms, new little ideas
picked up from Cooneys or elsewhere.
It was true that she had these ideas; true, too, that she was not alone
with them. She had been drilled from birth to the ranks of the beguilers
of men, their sirens but their inferiors; and something in her, even
before this year, had rebelled at that rating of herself, dimly
perceiving--as she had heard a man say once--that marriage was better
regarded as a career than as a means of livelihood. She had been drilled
again to believe that her happiness depended on money in quantities,
things had; but then, at the first pinch of real trouble, these things
had seemed to sag beneath her, and she perceived dimly, once more, that
she had built her house upon something like sand. And if her particular
experiences here had been unique, she had seen that her experience was,
after all, a common one. As if with eyes half-opened, she had divined
all about her other people making the discoveries she had made; or,
better yet, knowing these truths without having to discover them. She
was but one of a gathering company, men as well as women, old
with young....
Hugo had stood rock-like across the way she was moving. And so Hugo had
lost her.
But these things seemed hardly to matter now; it all went down so much
deeper. Surely it was over something bigger than her "little views" that
her story-book prince had locked arms with the lame slum doctor,
curiously recognized by him as an adversary at sight.
They had entered her life in almost the same hour, two men so different
that she had come at last to see them as full opposites. So entering
together, they had both become involved with her in the first moral
problem of her life, which also began in that hour. And upon that
problem each had been called, in turn, to ring his mettle. One, the fine
flower of her own world, with a high respect for that world's opinions
and on the whole a low esteem of the worth of a woman, had found her
completely satisfying as she was. The other, a wanderer from some other
planet, with his strange indifference to the world's values and his
extraordinary hope of everything human, had been so passionately
dissatisfied with her that he, a kind man surely, had broken out in
speech that had left a scar upon her memory. And upon the stranger's
shocking appraisement of her, there had, indeed, hung a tale.
There were times when it had seemed that everything she had done
afterwards had been but stages of an effort, months prolonged, to shake
herself free from that compassionate _God pity you_....
But no; she knew it was not that way exactly. Before that night she had
felt vague reachings and had put them down; and similarly afterwards.
Buttressed about with her island's social security, strong in her
woman's faculty for believing what she needed to believe, she could
easily persuade herself, or almost, that there had been only an
unfortunate misunderstanding about Jack Dalhousie, that she personally
hadn't done anything at all. She remembered that she had all but put the
matter where it would trouble her no more. And then there had come a
night when she saw that the stranger, by a certain gentleness and trust
there were in him, had not been able to believe his own hard words of
her. This man believed that she was good; believed it because he himself
was good. And the moment of that revelation had been terrible to her.
She had felt in Hen's parlor the smart of coals of fire, the strange,
new shame of being trusted, but untrustworthy. So there had entered her
a guilty disquiet: and afterwards, however she had struggled, however
Hugo's protecting strength had compassed her about, that novel sense had
kept growing through the months, steadily gathering momentum....
All this was quite clear to her now. Nothing had made her tell the truth
about Jack Dalhousie except that one man had expected her to. Of all
that had happened to her, here was the beating heart.
No one in her life had met her on this ground before. She had been
expected to be a charming woman if she could, a woman as ornamental as
possible. He only had expected her to be a good woman; and something in
her had found the strange call irresistible. He, by the trusting eyes he
had, had put her upon her honor; not her "woman's honor," but her honor;
and she, who had never had an honor before, had grown one, all for him.
As long as she could remember, men had paid tribute to her in all the
ways of men with maids. But he alone had put any trust in her as a free
and moral being; and she had bent the high heavens and all but broken
her mother's heart that he should not have trusted her in vain.
She was far, far from being a good woman. Hugo certainly was anything
but a bad man. Yet, when all was said, it was her expanding desire to be
good that Hugo had stood against. And the collision had destroyed him.
Was this the great mystery then, the world's secret? Was this the wish
that each human being had, planted away in the deeps, overlaid and
choked, forgotten, yet charged with omnipotence: _the wish to be good_?
Were they all waiting for somebody to pass by, sounding the secret call,
to drop all and follow?...
Oh, wonder, wonder, that the simple faith of one good man should have
power to overthrow princes and powers!...
The car rolled swiftly, its windows open to the sunny day. All about
were the sights and noises of city streets. But the flying panorama
brought no distraction: out there, men walked as trees. There blew a
light autumn wind, gently kicking at Cally's veil, waving tendrils of
fine hair about her face. Unaware, suffering had laid its touch upon
her; this face was lovely with a deeper meaning: and yet the young
girl's April-freshness clung to her still. She was in the first
exquisite bloom of her womanhood. And she sat very still in the rolling
car, full of a breathless wonder at the miracle of life.
It had been the year of her spirit's Odyssey. And now, when she came at
last to fair haven, marvel fell upon marvel: and the quest of her heart
stood saluting her from the shore. What need had she to ponder or to
justify, she who, setting out to find happiness upon the shining earth,
had so strangely found it among the yet more shining stars?
Very slowly, very delicately, had knowledge unfolded within her. On a
day there had been pain, and nothing. On a day there had been thrilling
peace, and luminous wings beating so strong, so sure....
To love; to love unasked....
She knew that women thought this a shame to them; she had thought it so
herself. Yet could it be? Had he not taught her this, or nothing, that
to give was ever a finer thing than to take? Was it a shame to love what
was lovable, and fine and beautiful and sweet? Ah, no; surely the shame
for her would be, knowing these things now at their value, not to love
them, to hold back thriftily for the striking of a bargain. Was not
here, and no otherwhere, the true badge of the inferior, to measure the
dearest beats of one's heart as a prudent trader measures?
So Cally Heth, the often loved and lovely, was strong to feel on her
wonderful day. Beneath the maiden's invincible reserve, under the mad
sweetness of this unrest, clear upon that Future which was so enveloped
in a golden haze, she felt a pride in her own human worthiness, as one
who now does the best thing of her life. She had always wanted to love
above her: how time and this man had invested her ideal with a richer
meaning!... Was not this the touchstone of that change within herself
she had sought, that day when Colonel Dalhousie's rod had chastened her?
Many symbols of happiness had shone and beckoned about her, and she had
turned her back on all of them to follow a man in a patched coat whose
power was only that he spoke simply of God, and believed in the goodness
of his fellows. Over the gulf that lay between their worlds, this man
had called to her: and now she had made him her last full response,
which was herself. He was the saint in her life; and she had found him
beneath all disguises, and laid her heart at his feet.
* * * * *
Home again; dreams laid by. There was action for a space. Anticipation
painted the world in rose.
It was after four; by the clock on the mantel. Cally stood at the
window, dressed, waiting. She was bound for a workers' meeting in a
somewhat dilapidated Settlement House in the slums, which only the other
day had been an abandoned hotel, for cause. And never in her vivid life
had she dressed with greater care....
She gazed down, upon a street which she did not see. Ten minutes past
four: but twenty minutes more, out of the long day. By now, he had
already left the Works for the Dabney House.... And she was thinking
that never but once had he made a personal remark to her: when he had
thought, among the hard things, that she was lovely to the eye. But all
that was a long, long time ago....
From the door below there issued her mother's guests, departing. Two
strolled away up the afternoon street; one drove off in an open car; two
stepped into an old-fashioned family carriage. Then, after a little
interval, Mrs. Heth herself came out with two more women; and these
three drove away in the Byrd car, which had been observed waiting
down there.
Cally was alone in the house. And it was good to be alone.
There whizzed up, from the opposite direction, yet another car, jerking
to a standstill at the door. It caught the girl's notice; her vague
thought was that it was William, come a little early. But she saw at
once that this was a strange vehicle, a hired one by the look of it, and
consciousness dreamed out of her eyes again....
The tide of her being pulsed strong within her now. All day her strange
feeling was as if an enveloping shell had, somewhere lately, been
chipped from about her, revealing to her half-startled gaze a horizon
far wider than any guessed before. By the new summonings that made music
in her heart, by these undreamed aspirations and reaching affections,
there was the thrilling seeming that always heretofore she had lived in
some dull half-deadness. And she could not doubt that this port where
she had arrived at last was no other than the gate of Life....
"Why, that's Chas Cooney!" said Cally, suddenly, gazing down.
From the cab below there had stepped a tall young man, out upon her
sidewalk. She recognized her cousin with instant surprise; and
consciousness, returning to her again, set a little frown between her
level brows. Chas made her think at once of the Works. How was it that
he, so busy that he could not even stop for dinner, came driving up here
in the middle of the afternoon? Above all, who was it that he was
helping, so slowly and carefully, from his hired car?
The girl gazed with growing tensity; her hat-brim pressed the window.
The downward view was unimpeded, all clear; only, things moved so
slowly. However, a little at a time, the second person in the car came
emerging into the sunshine.
And Cally's heart lifted with an appalling wrench as she saw that it was
her father.
There had been an accident at the Works: that was clear in one
eye-sweep. Her father had been hurt. He was bareheaded; a long splotch
ran up his cheek, into his hair. He was dragging over the sidewalk,
leaning heavily upon Chas's arm. One of his own arms hung unnaturally
still at his side. More horrible than any of these things was his face,
so ghastly green in the light.
And in the watcher at the window, life shocked instantly to death. For
in the flash in which she saw her father's face, she knew. No need of
speech; no more news to break. Had she not felt that something terrible
would happen at the Works some day? There had happened a thing more
terrible than all her nightmares had devised....
She did not remember going downstairs at all. But she must have gone
down very fast, for when she opened the door the two men were just
stepping into the vestibule, Chas's hand reaching out toward
the bell....
One look went between her and papa. Did he see death in her face?
"You heard ..." he said, standing there, his voice so curious. And she
could have screamed for that look in his eyes.
"No," said Cally. Yet surely she had heard.
He was limping through the door toward her; dirt on his clothes; dark
stains on his fine snowy waistcoat. And then his arm was hard round her
neck; papa's head buried upon her breast, like a sorry boy's.
"My poor little girl."
So there had been a glimmer within, after all. It went out, with a
mortal throe. All was black.
But surely this was quite, quite unreal; but one more horror of the
night, the last and the worst. Ah, surely, surely, she had but to make
one great effort to find herself sitting up in the dark; trembling,
but alive.
"How badly are you hurt?"
"Nothing.... Arm's broke.... No one else."
Then they were standing in the wide dim hall. The door was shut, and she
was holding by the knob. And she heard a voice, so small, so
strangely calm.
"How did it happen, papa?"
Papa had his sound arm raised, his hand rubbing vaguely at his lips.
But it was not his own pain and shock that had bleached those lips
so white.
"Floor crashed in--without warning ... broke through. He'd made a
suggestion--some braces. So I took him up to look. We were standing
there ... standing underneath. Standing there, talking. And the floor
gave way ... cracked ... caved in on us. One machine came down...."
The voice, too, seemed to cave in. And some one was squeezing her hand,
very hard.
So nothing was wanting from the finished picture, not the last exquisite
stroke. He, the believer, had believed even in her father's floors. It
was she who had doubted, she who had asked the help that never failed.
Had he not told her not to worry?...
But if only she hadn't stopped going inside. If only her heart would
soon begin to beat again....
Chas Cooney was winking his keen eyes.
"He'd got clear--there was plenty of time.... One of the negro women was
knocked over by a flying splinter.... Things were falling all around. So
he stopped for her.... She wasn't hurt at all, when we pulled her
out.... Of course Uncle Thornton was back in it all. A beam knocked him
senseless...."
"Surgeon said it was instantaneous," came papa's shadowy voice.
"Well.... It's on my head. I'm responsible. I know that."
And he sat down uncertainly, and somewhat pitifully, on the tall
hall-chair....
Then nobody said anything more. There would never be anything more to
say. Time would go on a long while yet, but no one would ever add
another touch here. This was the end of the world.
He had trusted the Heths too far.
And how strange and void it was at the world's end, how deadly still but
for the faint roarings of waters far off.
She was walking toward her father. Through the roaring there came a
voice, so little and so remote.
"Papa, you must come up to bed.... I'll telephone for the doctor."
But she did not go to the telephone; not even to her father. She
brushed her hand upward vaguely, fending away the advancing blackness.
And then it would have been with her as with poor Miller that day at the
Works, but that Charles Cooney, who had been watching her closely, was
quick and strong.