For a half-moment after Carmencita left the room Frances Barbour stood
in the middle of the floor and stared at the door, still open, then
went over and closed it. Coming back to the table at which she had
been writing, she sat down and took up her pen and made large circles
on the sheet of paper before her. Slowly the color in her face cooled
and left it white.
Carmencita was by nature cyclonic. Her buoyancy and bubbling spirits,
her enthusiasms and intensities, were well understood, but how could
she possibly know Stephen Van Landing? All day he had been strangely
on her mind, always he was in her heart, but thought of him was forced
to be subconscious, for none other was allowed. Of late, however,
crowd it back as she would, a haunting sense of his presence had been
with her, and under the busy and absorbed air with which she had gone
about the day's demands there had been sharp surge of unpermitted
memories of which she was impatient and ashamed.
Also there had been disquieting questions, questions to which she had
long refused to listen, and in the crush and crowd they had pursued
her, peered at her in unexpected places, and faced her in the quiet of
her room, and from them she was making effort to escape when
Carmencita burst in upon her. The latter was too excited, too full of
some new adventure, to talk clearly or coherently. Always Carmencita
was adventuring, but what could she mean by demanding to know the name
of her sweetheart, and by saying she had found him and then lost him?
And why had she, Frances Barbour, told her as obediently as if their
positions were reversed and she the child instead of Carmencita?
Elbow on the table and chin in the palm of her hand, she tapped the
desk-pad with her pen and made small dots in the large circles she had
drawn on the paper, and slowly she wrote a name upon it.
What could Stephen Van Landing be doing in this part of the town? He
was one of the city's successful men, but he did not know his city.
Disagreeable sights and sounds had by him been hitherto avoided, and
in this section they were chiefly what was found. Why should he have
come to it? That he was selfish and absorbed in his own affairs, that
he was conventional and tradition--trained, was as true to-day,
perhaps, as when she had told him so three years ago, but had they
taught him nothing, these three years that were past? Did he still
think, still believe--
With a restless movement she turned in her chair, and her hands
twisted in her lap. Was she not still as stubborn as of old, still as
proud and impatient of restraint where her sense of freedom and
independence of action were in question, still as self-willed? And was
it true, what Carmencita had said--was she giving herself to others
and refusing herself to the only one who had the right to claim her,
the royal right of love?
But how did she know he still needed her, wanted her? When she had
returned to her own city after long absence she had told of her
present place of residence to but few of her old friends. Her own
sorrow, her own sudden facing of the inevitable and unescapable, had
brought her sharply to a realization of how little she was doing with
the time that was hers, and she had been honest and sincere when she
had come to Mother McNeil's and asked to be shown the side of life she
had hitherto known but little--the sordid, sinful, struggling side in
which children especially had so small a chance. In these years of
absence he had made no sign. Even if it were true, what Carmencita had
said, that he--that is, a man named Van Something--was looking for
her, until he found her she could not tell him where she was.
She had not wished her friends to know. Settlements and society were
as oil and water, and for the present the work she had undertaken
needed all her time and thought. If only people knew, if only people
understood, the things that she now knew and had come to understand,
the inequalities and injustices of life would no longer sting and
darken and embitter as they stung and darkened and embittered now, and
if she and Stephen could work together--
He was living in the same place, his offices were in the same place,
and he worked relentlessly, she was told. Although he did not know she
was in the city, she knew much of him, knew of his practical
withdrawal from the old life, knew of a certain cynicism that was
becoming settled; and a thousand times she had blamed herself for the
unhappiness that was his as well as hers. She loved her work, would
always be glad that she had lived among the people who were so
singularly like those other people who thought themselves so
different, but if he still needed her, wanted her, was it not her
duty--
With an impatient movement of her hands she got up and went over to
the window. There was no duty about it. It was love that called him to
her. She should not have let Carmencita go without finding from her
how it happened that she had met Stephen Van Landing on Custer Street.
She must go to Carmencita and ask her. If he were really looking for
her they might spend Christmas together. The blood surged hotly to her
face, and the beating of her heart made her hands unsteady. If
together--
A noise behind made her turn. Hand on the door-knob, Carmencita was
standing in the hall, her head inside the room. All glow was gone, and
hope and excitement had yielded to dejection and despair.
"I just came to beg your pardon for--for stamping my foot, and I'm
sorry I said what I did." The big blue eyes looked down on the floor
and one foot twisted around the other. "It isn't any use to forgive
me. I'm not worth forgiving. I'm not worth--"
The door was slammed violently, and before Miss Barbour could reach
the hall Carmencita was down the steps and out into the street, where
the Damanarkist was waiting.