IV

It was not Charles's fault that he did not see Miss Angela, to-day, as

she saw him; the sight of her would have been agreeable to him, at that

moment particularly. But the window from which the pretty cousin looked

out happened to be a considerable distance away; and she gathered

nothing of his sentiments.

Dr. Flower's house, indeed, was not on Washington Street at all, but on

Center, a very different street. Center, however, had this merit, that

it stood back to back with Washington, and as the Washington Street

residences were mostly "detached" at this point, the rear of the Flower

house commanded a certain view of that handsome thoroughfare; not much

of it, of course,--an oblique slice cut in between houses. The distance,

as has been said, was rather great for eyes less keen than the lynx's.

But a pair of opera-glasses at the parted curtain discreetly bridged the

space, and brought a few feet of the Street of the Rich under the

legitimate observation of the less materially successful.

Now, when she had leveled her glasses upon the three figures--for

Charles, at this trying moment, was escorting _two_ ladies down the

promenade--Miss Angela felt, to say truth, a little lonely and out of

things. Not only was Mr. Garrott the first man she had met in the new

city, but she had met him only, as it must now have seemed to her, like

ships passing in the night. Not dreaming how she had been figuring in

his thought, the girl felt, humanly and femininely, a little depressed.

And when she presently reflected, "I suppose this is the time he goes

down to lunch every day!"--the small thought was actually a cheering one

to her, presenting, as it were, some point of contact with Washington

Street and the pleasant happenings that seemed to go on over there.

Such, in fine, was the sheer enchantment of distance. To Mr. Garrott

himself, this public promenade was as far from a pleasant happening as

could well have been conceived.

When he had looked over the street just now, and seen who his old

friend's companion was, Charles had, indeed, experienced a decided

shock. On the heels of that, he had had a moment of distinct

uncertainty. Ought he to cross and join this remarkable pair, or should

he avert his eyes? The etiquette here was unknown to him, the business

without precedent in his experience.

There was more than etiquette involved, of course. While this particular

city was alive to contemporary currents, and even had its little

Redmantle Club, it still considered the Church of England marriage

service a sound start for a union, and associated contrary theories

exclusively with inferior morals. To walk Washington Street with Miss

Trevenna was, as it were, to wound and rebuke the city's old-fashioned

prejudices. But that, without doubt, was the very reason Mary Wing was

doing it.

Charles had crossed the street. Mary Wing saw him, half-way over. Not

suspecting how his unfavorable scrutiny had been upon her for some time

past, she smiled a bright welcome.

He was presented to Miss Trevenna. She acknowledged his greeting in an

absent, fluty voice, and turned on him briefly a face of almost nun-like

serenity, palely lit by a pair of starry eyes. He found her altogether a

mystic-looking creature, not easily associated with things wild and

gay.

"I was just telling Flora about the Education Reform League," continued

Mary, in her calm tones.

But Charles, after all, had no great chance that day to show his

fearlessness of mere public opinion. Hardly had he passed out of Miss

Angela Flower's range of vision, when the walk of three ended, if the

episode did not. It was Miss Trevenna's corner, it seemed; she could not

be persuaded to go farther.

[Illustration: CHARLES HAD NO GREAT CHANCE TO SHOW HIS FEARLESSNESS OF

PUBLIC OPINION]

"I'd turn with you, but I have a class," said Mary, disappointed, and a

little surprised, it seemed. "I wish you'd stroll on with me!"

"I've something to do at my room--some business to attend to, really."

"Then let's walk this afternoon, do! Shall I come for you?"

"How nice of you! I'd like to so much."

On which the girl was gone, stepping on light feet down the side street.

In the momentary lapse of talk, Charles's eye went after her. He saw

something mysteriously withdrawn in that gray figure, something set

forever apart.

And then, while he and his friend walked on six steps in silence, the

young man wondered, with a sudden fierce annoyance, what Mary thought

she was doing exactly.

Of Miss Trevenna he knew only what the world knew, which was little

enough. One of several daughters of a prosperous family, she had been

known as a reserved, and somewhat dreamy girl, indifferent to social

life, and much addicted to curling up at home with books of poetry;

Shelley's poetry or some such bewildering stuff; altogether a queer

person. She even wrote poetry herself, it was damagingly alleged after

the crash, and it was recalled that in women's meetings she had

sometimes risen and expressed, in the quietest sort of way, ideas which

disconcerted even the Hodgers of her day. Duly there had come to town

the entirely typical dashing stranger: Robert McKittrick, this one was,

an architect in government employ, who came with excellent letters. Mr.

McKittrick was seen in public, a time or two, with Mr. Trevenna's

quietly peculiar daughter; it was known that a sane and sound Mrs.

McKittrick existed in Philadelphia, or some such place; there may have

been a little mild talk, but it was very little and very mild. And then

one fine day, the town was startled with the news that these two had

taken the great jump together, by the last night mail train north.

It was the sort of thing you read about in every novel nowadays,

especially if written by an Englishman. But this time, unluckily, it had

really happened, and in a community not too large for a homogeneous

public opinion. Moreover, life does differ just a little from the

novels, in that it possesses no invisible author to shut the book

splendidly, the moment the case is proved. Life did not leave Mr.

McKittrick and Miss Trevenna forever singing in the honeymoon heyday. It

merely kept them in the back of the town's mind for two years, a tidbit

or a terrible warning, according as you looked at it, and then it

brought Miss Trevenna back to us again, alone.

It might have seemed the oldest and the vulgarest story in the world.

The weak, trusting maiden, the handsome, promissory villain, the flight,

the rude awakening and Conviction of Sin, and then the piteous Return

(Act III, Curtain) to Forgiveness, a black shawl, Quick Decline, and

Death: these things have wrung the gallery's scalding tears from farther

back than we can remember. But well Charles Garrott understood that Miss

Trevenna's "case" had nothing to do with this cheap business. He thought

it right enough, of course (theoretically speaking), that Mary Wing

should sympathize with a sister in distress. And yet.... Well, no one,

certainly, had "deceived" or "betrayed" Miss Trevenna. Quite probably

she had proposed the excursion herself, like one of the glorious

heroines at the moment educating British maidenhood. Miss Trevenna had

gone with her lover because she had a Right to Her Happiness; she had

gone to fulfil the Unwritten Law of Her Being; she had gone to Strike a

Blow for Freedom. It was absurd to look for remorse in a black shawl

here.

And still, glancing after that oddly cloistral figure, the young man

felt that the net effect was not so different from the sorry old

melodrama, after all.

He spoke suddenly, with a manner proving that he did not pride himself

on wearing a mask for nothing:--

"Did you know that a woman's occipital condyles are less voluminous than

a man's,--yes, considerably so,--while her zygomatic arches are more

regular? Well, then, take my word for it, for they are."

Miss Wing rewarded him by coming out of her abstraction with a laugh.

She asked him in what great tome he had learned that fascinating fact.

"Ah, that's my secret. By the way," said Charles, "how's that charming

little cousin of yours, Miss Angela?"

He spoke in his most natural voice, as if no thought of conflict had

ever risen between him and the best of New Women. All the same, the

cousin's name fell rather oddly on the advanced air.

Mary Wing said that she hadn't seen Angela since the Redmantle Club; she

said she must try to go there this afternoon. He remarked that being

pulled up by the roots, and transplanted, was hard on the young, but

that Miss Angela would make friends fast enough. Having a passion for

biography, especially the biographies of women, he wanted particularly

to learn something about this girl, who had given him, Charles Garrott,

a phrase. But the talk now took another turn; it wasn't a day for

discussing Home-Making clearly. Miss Hodger and Professor Clarence

Pollock went walking by, across the sunny street, and Mary, having

greeted them much too pleasantly to suit his taste, said:--

"Do you know this is the third time I've seen those two together lately?

It begins to look like an affair."

"What!" he cried, disgusted. "Why!--why, she'd bite his head off in a

week!"

And then, while she protested argumentatively, he was silent for a

space, struck with the thought that here was an opening not unsuited to

his need.

While the plan for his new work was by no means settled yet, beyond

doubt this matter of Miss Trevenna had given strong impetus to the

conservative wave. And meanwhile, there was the personal side. To

lecture Mary Wing openly was a thing scarcely to be thought of. Yet,

having felt the unmistakable reactions himself, the young man found

himself itching, literally itching, to get his hands on Mary and make

her react a little, too.

He said in his pleasantest way:--"Did it ever strike you, by the way,

that she's got the propaganda in the purely archaic form?"

"Archaic?--Hodger!"

"She still imagines that the object of this Movement is to make women

more like men. Of course, the object of the Movement is to make women

more like themselves."

Her silence seemed to applaud his epigram. Charles felt that it was

generous of him to add: "I bagged that somewhere. Sounds like Havelock

Ellis to me. But," he added, frankly, "I've improved the wording. Why do

you say I'm unjust to her? On the contrary, I'd be delighted to fork

over all those rights of hers she was demanding the other night. By the

by, what are Hodger's rights exactly?"

"I suppose she's entitled to human rights, even if you, as a man, don't

find her especially attractive."

Charles winced, and then smiled faintly.

"Human rights--security and protection, life, liberty, and the pursuit

of happiness? She's got them, hasn't she? I thought what Hodger was

yelling for was special privileges, rather exceptional privileges in the

way of freeing her Ego from--"

"As a woman, she hasn't even all the human rights, you know very well.

As a human being, she would feel that she's entitled to exceptional

rights, because she's an exceptional being. She would take the ground

that her public work--"

"She would take that ground, of course. But," said Charles, amiably,

"possibly others would not agree with her. That is just the trouble,

isn't it? The doctrine that the world belongs to Exceptional People has

that fatal weakness."

"In your opinion," she qualified him--"what?"

"We'd need a great board, a sort of Super-Supreme Court of really

godlike understanding, to tell us which are the Exceptional People."

Seeing that he had her temporarily at a loss, Charles continued his

agreeable prattle:--

"And hand them out their little certificates, you know. I remember, this

chap Chesterton said a fairly bright thing once--a little piece I read

somewhere. He said he'd always wanted to hear somebody--anybody--preach

'personal liberty' with one small qualification. Said he'd waited and

waited to hear one person state the creed something like this: 'Men and

women of genius must not be bound by ordinary laws. But I am NOT a man

of genius, and therefore I will keep the law.' Chesterton said he'd been

waiting for years."

He was aware that Miss Wing was regarding him in a curious sort of way,

and now she said, directly:--

"Do you know, this doesn't sound like you at all?"

"Doesn't it?--why not? I've always believed in taking a good look

around, every now and then. Constant discussion," said Charles,

"constant canvassing of rival theories--"

"Well, those theories are only good for people who think that the way to

advance is by standing still."

As she spoke these positive words, the two were overtaken and passed by

Henry Mysinger, of all people. Mr. Mysinger was at once Mary's principal

at the High School and her special adversary in the Schools, against

whom in years past she and her friend Garrott had how often schemed and

plotted. His salute now was pleasant, with reference to Charles, but the

eye he cast upon his assistant was distinctly not approbatory.

As for Mary, it did not appear that she bowed at all.

"But the way to advance is by advancing," she continued, declining to

lower her voice at all, "and it's only the exceptional people who are

capable of superintending these advances. That, by the way," said the

school teacher, "is probably the very definition you are looking for."

He flatly rejected her definition; disputation followed. With increasing

pointedness, Mary Wing pressed the case for "exceptional people,"

Self-Developing People who recked not of Homes and being Sisters and

Daughters. And presently she said, with only a small air of

hesitation:--

"And please remember that enlightened people cannot possibly point the

way without courage, and--a certain amount of pioneering experiment."

Mr. Mysinger had mercifully withdrawn himself around the corner of Third

Street. There his assistant would turn, too, parting from her friend;

and really, that appeared to be just as well. Forgetting his mask, the

young man was beginning to betray signs of exasperation. No more than

Mysinger, of course, had he ever been deceived by the delicate

girlishness of Mary's face; but the positions she seemed to be taking

now passed anything he had ever thought of her addiction to the New. Was

this mere argument for argument's sake?--or did she seriously imagine

that the regeneration of society was to be accomplished by the antics of

a few wild female Egoists--lawless Egoettes?

"That's true, to a point, of course," he said, with control. "Yet don't

you suspect people who talk about their Duty to the Race, while

overlooking entirely their duty to that part of the race which should be

nearest and dearest to them?"

"I'd suspect even more people who daren't call their souls their own,

for fear they might be criticized by somebody who knows nothing about

the facts."

And then she exclaimed suddenly. "Oh, why don't you say at once that

you've been talking at poor Flora Trevenna for three blocks!"

He was considerably taken aback, but spoke calmly: "Not at all--or at

least only in a general way. One of the problems of the day, as we say

at the Redmantle Club."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say then, man to man, as it were:

"Miss Mary, you have a great work ahead of you, in a special field.

Isn't it a pity to confuse your good cause with one that perhaps is not

so good?" But, of course, you hardly gave advice of that sort to Mary

Wing.

"But since you seem to invite my opinion," he continued, "I will say

that I do think there is a logical connection between Hodger's kind of

talk and Miss Trevenna's--ah--pioneering experiment."

"Of course there is! Who denied it?" said she, with a forthrightness

that increased his wonder at her.

And then, as they came to a standstill at the corner, she added, after a

grave speculative stare:--

"If it'll do you the slightest good, Mr. Garrott, I'll tell you exactly

what finally decided Flora to forget her duty to her sisters, aunts,

uncles, and so on, as you consider. Prepare yourself. It was a sentence

in a book."

"_A sentence in a book!_"

Miss Wing nodded, several times. "As she's a reserved girl, and I appear

to be her only friend now, of course this is a confidence."

"I can name the book!" cried Charles; and he did.

"However," he resumed, with bitter urbanity, "if she'd happened to read

a few pages further, she might have noticed that the Lady in Sweden took

every bit of it back."

To his surprise, Mary Wing laughed.

"Do you know, that's just what I told her, in almost those very words?

And what do you suppose she said? 'Well, I'm glad I didn't read as far

as that.'"

Continuing to look at him and continuing to laugh, the annoying young

woman added: "I'm afraid you don't begin to understand women as yet, Mr.

Garrott! No, you don't begin to. _Au revoir!_"

It was noted that Charles's bow was characterized by a certain

stiffness.

He went on his way alone, to Berringer's, and the good solid man-talk.

The strongest thought in his mind now was that the end of these things

was not yet. And here, at least, he was by no means deceived.

The next day was Saturday. At two o'clock on that day, each week,

Charles took train and went down to his mother's place in the country,

there to remain till early Monday morning. This was an invasion of his

writer's time, with which he let nothing interfere. Returning to town,

and finding "Bondwomen" not yet heard from, he became absorbed in a

short story--for the "line" of his new novel could not be laid in a day

or a week, of course--and went suddenly upon his emergency schedule, as

Judge Blenso had named it. This schedule called for the omission of all

exercise, other than as tutoring necessitated, and a general withdrawal

from the world of living women. But he couldn't get away from their

Unrest, even so.

Late Thursday afternoon, as he was working out the last pages of the

time-killing fiction, the door of the Studio opened without a knock, and

Donald Manford walked in. Donald certainly continued to make himself

very much at home here.

"Get out," said Charles, tired and cross. "What do you think this is, a

Wheelman's Rest?"

The tall engineer said that he was passing and thought he'd drop in. But

with the aid of an eyebrow he made known, over Judge Blenso's snowy

head, that he desired private converse in the bedroom.

The public talk between the two young men, continuing, was that Donald

wanted to borrow a white waistcoat from Charles, which Charles was

rather reluctant to lend him. Thus, gradually, they faded from the

Studio, much to the annoyance of the Judge, who had ceased typing on

purpose to listen, while ostensibly merely engaged in picking lint from

his types with a brass pin.

When the door of the bedroom was shut, Donald Manford said, in low

hurried tones:--

"Have you heard all this talk about Mary? I tell you the town's buzzing

with it!"

Charles had heard no talk; he was disturbed, if scarcely surprised. But

when it became clear that the purpose of Donald's visit was to get him,

Charles, to "drop a hint to Mary," he refused at once, point-blank.

The engineer was pained and astonished.

"You don't understand the situation," said he, stewing. "I tell you

Mary's gone to work to make a heroine of that woman! Recommending her

for good jobs, with her morning, noon, and night, having people in to

meet her at _tea_! Now, of course, she just doesn't understand what

she's doing. She's too innocent; she's ignorant of the practical meaning

of this business. And it's my duty to protect her from her

ignorance...."

Charles sat down on one of the parallel white beds--the Judge's. And

little as he sympathized with Miss Trevenna's Blow for Freedom, he

seemed to sympathize even less with his young friend's proprietary

absurdities.

Whatever this stalwart youth was, Mary Wing had made him. An orphan and

poor, he had been taken to the bosom of the kindly Wings; and Mary, a

girl of twenty then, had been from the start his second mother. She had

fed and clothed Donald, helped pay his bills at college; she had trained

him, taught him, filled him with her own ambition. She had got him his

first opening, pulled wires for him, hewed out his ascending steps. Fine

and confident as Donald stood there, Mary Wing had made him. And now to

see him, as to her, clutching on the toga of the primitive male, to hear

him, the ignorant, ridiculously claiming overlordship in a field which

should have been supremely woman's.

"Go ahead," said Charles dryly. "Protect her all you want."

But Donald angrily told him not to be an ass. It was a delicate

matter--for him--he declared; besides, Mary wouldn't listen to him. He

wasn't _advanced_.

"But you're another matter. You've got some influence with Mary, and--"

"Stop right there! I've got more influence with the Weather Department

than I have with Mary Wing."

Glowering at him over the foot of the bed, the engineer demanded reasons

for his strange unpractical behavior. Charles offered a few simple

selections from his complex feelings.

"First, your cousin's personal behavior is none of my business. Second,

I'd have no respect for her if she gave up her principles because you

asked me to ask her to. Third, I despise a person who's scared out of

his wits by fear of what the neighbors'll think."

Donald appeared momentarily speechless. Perceiving this, the author

fitted a cigarette into a holder Mary Wing had given him on his

birthday, and resumed his few remarks:--

"Of course your mistake is in supposing that Miss Mary is acting through

ignorance. She's acting from principle, as I say, and doing a plucky

thing, too. For she doesn't think that because a poor silly girl has

once made a mistake, the thing to do--"

But Manford recovered his voice with a bound.

"_Mistake!_ I'm surprised at you, Garrott! I did you the justice to

think that all this advanced rot of yours was just talk. Come!--say

right out you think it's a mighty plucky thing for a girl to go off and

live with a married man!"

Charles smiled, and then hesitated. It was odd how instantly Donald

Manford modernized him, killing all reactions: But what was the use of

arguing with a fellow who honestly believed that a woman had but one

"virtue," who spoke of her frankly as "the sex," allowed her no honor

but "woman's honor," had but one question to ask about her "character"?

This youth had not budged since the fifth century.

"The only way to punish this is by the disgrace of it, I tell you!" he

was arguing. "There's no punishment at all when you make a heroine of

the woman."

"There'll be enough to punish, don't fret, without Mary Wing's taking a

hand."

"Now look here, Charlie," said Donald, encouraged. "Just look at the

matter in a sensible way. You can feel sorry for her and all that. But

it isn't right, by George, it isn't decent and moral, to stand up and

practically say you admire a notorious bad woman! Just think of the

effect on other women! They'll argue, 'Well, if that's the way people

feel about it, there's no use being good any more.' And think,

Charlie!--what'll become of Society if all the girls get to skipping off

and living with married men!"

Charles laughed and rose. "Of course I'd not dream of speaking to Miss

Mary about this."

The young engineer exploded. But presently he gave it up.

"Then I'll have to speak to her myself," he declared, and looked as if

he expected the hazardous audacity of such an enterprise to touch his

friend's heart, even then. "And you remember this," he added, angrily,

"when Mary's friends are all dropping her!"

"Nobody who drops her for this was ever her friend."

"More New Thought! And what about Mysinger? Suppose your idea is that

this plucky business will boost Mary's standing in the schools like the

devil?"

"My dear fellow, you're seeing things! You never heard of politics, I

suppose? Nothing can shake us in the schools. 'Cause why? We own the

Board by two votes."

Donald regarded him with the strongest disapproval. "Do you know you

make me sick?"

"By the way," said Charles, pleasantly, "didn't I see you go by here

with Miss Flower the other day? Where did you--"

"Absolutely sick, and I've--"

"Meet up with her, old fellow? Isn't she a--"

"Sick!" roared Donald, and banged the door.

He was a hopeless ignoramus, and Charles was the peer of the greatest

authorities, living or dead. But the subject, beyond doubt, was the most

complex and baffling in the whole field of Womanology. And Charles,

standing and staring at that shut door, was possessed with the odd

feeling that Donald had got the best of the argument, after all.

Why must Mary _always_ be as independent as the Declaration, and more

militant than a Prussian?

V

The emergency schedule withdrew Charles from the streets; he lunched in

twenty minutes at Mrs. Herman's and spent the hour gained at his

writing-table. With the completion of the short fiction, he resumed his

walks to Berringer's. And now on Washington Street, the principal scene

of his social life since he became a regular author, he saw again Miss

Angela Flower. In five days, suddenly, he saw Miss Angela three times.

Twice, as it happened, the two passed on opposite sides of the street,

moving in contrary directions. But the third time he fairly overtook

her, not a dozen steps from the door of the rich little Deming boys, to

whom he taught the Elements all morning.

He was pleased with the agreeable coincidence. He greeted Mary's so

different cousin with a genuine warmth, springing spontaneously from his

personal sense of a bond between them. And Miss Angela, it seemed, was

not less glad to see him.

"You don't know how nice it is," she laughed, a tinge of color in her

smooth cheeks, "to see a familiar face, after blocks and blocks of

strangers. And you're almost the only person I know, too!"

Suiting his long stride to hers, he assured her that this state of

affairs would pass quickly.

"I got only a glimpse of you yesterday," he pursued. "Do you take your

constitutionals at this time, too?"

But she said, elusively, that she took them at all sorts of times.

"It's my chief form of recreation at present, you see! But--I thought I

might meet father up here--it's his time for coming home to lunch from

the college. Only I seem just to miss him every day."

He and the Womanly Woman walked a good half-mile together that day, and

the authority enjoyed himself thoroughly. It was in the course of this

walk that he evolved another phrase of scientific justification, viz.:

"The Business of Supplying Beauty and Supplying Charm."

The talk turned naturally upon the girl herself. Having failed to get

any biography from the embattled Miss Wing, Charles proceeded to the

source. Under his agreeable, yet artful promptings, Miss Angela sketched

with a charming simplicity the story of a commonplace family life: how

she and her brothers had grown up at Hunter's Run, a crossroads

post-office four miles from Mitchellton; how they had moved into

Mitchellton, which had seemed like heaven at first, but had palled after

seven years; how all the boys of Mitchellton grew up and went away, one

by one, to make their marks in the world (though there was one

exception, it seemed, a Mr. Dan Jenney, who was still in

Mitchellton--Aha! thought Charles); how lonely she was after Tommy, her

older brother, had thus gone away; how her father had had quite a large

practice in Mitchellton, but didn't seem much interested in getting

patients here; and so on. Tommy, it was learned, had married money in

Pittsburg, but appeared to be happy all the same. As for the younger

brother, Wallie, his ambition was to go to college and be an

electro-chemist, and he was now at work downtown, gathering funds for

that purpose. Mary Wing had got him a position, it seemed.

Miss Angela's conversation, as has been noted, was not remarkable as

conversation. But what mattered that? Into an atmosphere too heated by

the Trevennas of this Unrestful world, her girlish unsophistications

blew like a primrose zephyr. Moreover, she had her moments, you may be

sure; her vivacities as honest as wit. She said that Mitchellton was

like a town in war-time.

"That's the way a man described it to me once, a surveyor from the

North, when he'd only been there three hours! He declared he hadn't seen

a male between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five. They'd all gone off,

you see--"

"And then the surveyor went off, too?"

"He did!--exactly! Hopped on a funny little calico pony he had, the

minute he said that, and trotted off down Main Street. We never saw him

again."

Charles, laughing, looked down at her. She wore a plain blue suit and a

simple hat with a yellow quill, obviously inexpensive both, and not new.

She was characterized, sartorially, only by that unobtrusive yet

exquisite neatness whose practice some women bring to a fine art. Pretty

and sweet she looked, none the less; feminine, too, without a doubt.

And, quite unconsciously, she was giving by piecemeal an answer to that

fundamental question of her Modern critics, How do you spend your time?

A considerable part of Miss Angela's time went, it seemed, to the actual

care of the house. With her leisure she really had little to do as yet,

because of her lack of acquaintance. Even the table of bridge with

Cousin Mary had not developed so far. She walked a great deal, usually

alone, but mentioned having met Mr. Manford the other day; the

impression was left that she and Donald hadn't specially taken to each

other. She kept her mother company; she often went into the shops, "just

looking"; once or twice she and Wallie had been to the moving-picture

shows. She read also, it seemed, for she had just finished "Marna"--a

gift to her, this was--a certain late New Woman novel which Charles

himself meant to give an hour to some day. Her account of her domestic

business the old-fashioned girl concluded thus:--

"I don't know very much about housekeeping yet, but I do the best I can.

I think mother enjoys the rest."

And whatever criticism narrow utilitarians might have brought against

her management of her fifteen hours a day seemed to be morally destroyed

by that unconscious stroke. _Mother enjoys the rest._ Imagine Miss

Hodger, for instance,--to come no nearer home,--casually mentioning: "I

don't want to do this, but I will. I want to go there, but I won't."

"Why, Miss Hodger?" you would ask her. "Why must you mutilate your Ego

thus?" "Well,"--you are to fancy Miss Hodger saying,--"you see, I think

mother'd enjoy the rest!"

But the girl herself remained delightfully unconscious of the reactions

she set in motion.

"Mr. Garrott," she said suddenly,--"I hope you don't mind my asking,

but--when are you going to have some stories coming out? I'm crazy to

read one of them!"

"Oh!" laughed Mr. Garrott. "Well!--I can't say definitely, at the

moment. I'm trying," he said, modestly, "to write books, you know, and

it's a slow business, with the little free time I have. My first one,

that I've just finished, took me four years."

"Four years! How wonderful! But isn't it going to come out soon?"

"I'm--ah--negotiating with a publisher now."

"It must be fascinating! I--I never knew an author before."

He warmed, expanding.

At the parting of their ways, these two paused, talking like old

friends; and no parting took place here, after all. Angela said, with a

charming hesitancy: "Mr. Garrott, if you really want to read that

book,--'Marna', I mean,--I wish you'd let me lend it to you. We've

finished with it--for good!--and if you have time to stop a minute--"

And he, who never called, who had a special rule against borrowing

things from ladies, restored his hat to his head at once, accepting with

pleasure.

So they turned out of Washington Street toward Center, and she

continued, with a laughing, sidelong glance:--

"Do you know who _Marna_ reminded me of? Quite a friend of

yours!--somebody you admire a great deal!"

Knowing the nature of the book well from the reviews he was incessantly

reading, the young man smiled: "I wonder if you can possibly be alluding

to one of your most distinguished cousins."

"It did, just a little! At first, I mean--where Marna goes away to lead

her own life, and everything.... Mr. Garrott, do you think she's really

going to take the position in New York, Cousin Mary, I mean?"

"Take it! Why, of course she will, provided she can get it! It would be

a remarkable thing for such a young woman, and a great opportunity

besides."

This the girl seemed to understand. She remarked, however, that Cousin

Mary and Mrs. Wing seemed so wrapped up in each other. Her extreme

domesticity was peculiarly refreshing to Charles just now; nevertheless,

he now took up the cudgels for Modernity, though in the gentlest way:

Why should not daughters have the same right to leave home for work that

the sons of Mitchellton had, for example? Daughters had always left

homes for another reason. Suppose _Marna_ had married the first

whippersnapper that came along, and he had carried her off to Australia,

etc.

But Miss Angela seemed to feel that, for her part, she would look long

at any lover who wished to separate her from her mother.

Center Street, at this point, was a place of car-tracks, cobblestones,

and threatening small establishments of those personal sorts which are

always first to appear in a waning "residence district." At the corner

stood a Human Hair Goods Works. The Flower house was not intrinsically

pretty. It was one of a block of six, all just alike and evidently built

some time ago; rather dingy little brick houses, with weather-beaten

small verandahs set only a step or two above the sidewalk, and scantily

separated from it by grassless "lawns." However, Charles was not

repelled by poverty, to which he had been well used.

Within, he had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angela's father, who was

encountered in the hall, in the act of removing his overcoat. Angela

left the two men together, while she tripped upstairs to get "Marna."

Charles found the medical father a decidedly queer individual. A very

tall, thin, seedy man he was, with a neglected sandy mustache, and a

long neck punctuated with a very large Adam's apple, which he jerked

with a sort of nervous twitch as he talked. With his lusterless eye and

spare, remote manner, he looked like a man who had let himself dry up

from within. Yet, if Charles remembered aright, the Medical School had

counted this gentleman a distinct acquisition.

He assured Dr. Flower that he had long desired this pleasure, and

explained:--

"Your cousin, Miss Wing, is an old friend of mine."

"My wife's cousin," said the Doctor, seeming to make a distinction.

"Quite so! Certainly!"

"I believe it was she who first brought the Medical School to your

attention?"

"Ah, yes! I fancy it was. Quite so. Have a cigar, will you? However,"

continued the father, jerking his long neck, "you don't offer that as

something to be urged against her, I assume?"

The young man, though surprised, smiled politely.

"Possibly you're no more enthusiastic about teaching than I am, say?"

"Ah, well!... It wants excitement, you maintain?--lacks the spice of

brilliant variety? You find no romance in it, you suggest? Well--"

Dr. Flower fell silent, brushing his hat with the sleeve of his worn

coat, while he stared cheerlessly at nothing. Charles wondered at him,

with a certain sense of mild mystery. If he felt that way about

teaching, why had he thrown over his practice and left Mitchellton?

"I believe," said he, with discretion, "your--that is, Mrs. Flower's

cousin, Mary Wing, is the only teacher I ever knew who could really be

called a 'fan.'"

"Quite so. You won't have a cigar, you said? But even in that case, it

doesn't amount to a complete exhaustion of the energies, you would feel?

You'd contend there's an unused store for other enterprises, even

there?"

"Quite so," said Charles, considerably puzzled.

But then Miss Angela came skipping and smiling down the narrow stairs,

book in hand, and slipped her arm through her father's. She said that

Mr. Garrott could keep "Marna" as long as he liked, but that she would

be _so_ interested to hear what he thought of it. The trio stood

chatting a moment together.

Angela's last word, in her soft and pretty voice, was, "Don't forget,

we're going to have that bridge game some night soon!"

So he took leave of her, not only with the book, but with the promise of

a party shortly to come. And, curiously, that was the first thing this

simple Nice Girl had ever said that the authority felt inclined to

criticize somewhat: the use of the word "that," now. Skilled and wary he

had grown since he became a regular writer, and he could not recall

having agreed to give a valuable evening to playing bridge soon. The

engagement had just developed along, it seemed.

But that was a trivial matter, early lost sight of. Continuing his walk

to Berringer's and the good man-talk, Charles pondered upon the nature

of a Home.

La Femme, as we know, was all over for this young man; through too much

knowledge he had analyzed the charm away. He did not (of course)

exaggerate Miss Angela's values, magnify anything about her whatever. Of

course she was but a Type, and a familiar one. Only, for him she had

happened to personify, with unexpected freshness, that aspect of the

Question which, he was more and more convinced, scientific thinkers

fallaciously slurred over: the business aspect of Home-Making, to wit.

Though few of the sounder authorities openly advocated the suppression

of Homes, was it not true that they--and he once among them--practically

did so by denying any value in their schemes to those emotional and

spiritual contributions which alone turned a house into a Home? There

lay the heart of the whole great problem. "Four walls," mused Charles,

as he swung rapidly down Center Street, "and three meals a day, and even

the banisters dusted, to boot--these mere utilities can never make a

Home."

And he made a mental note of the sentence for his conservative Notes in

the exercise-book of the old lady.

But this day, as it fell out, was memorable in the Studio for more than

meditation.

When he left Miss Chorister's at four-thirty, which was when the

tutorial day ended, the author did not make straight for the Studio,

according to habit, but turned downtown again, instead. He had personal

affairs to attend to to-day, an accumulation of small shopping and

sundry errands that could not be longer procrastinated. They took much

valued time. It was after six, in the winter night, when he got home.

At the foot of his own steps he encountered his and his relative's new

fellow-lodger, and their only one. Possibly he was still thinking

scientifically of Miss Angela, for it instantly occurred to him that

here was Miss Angela's full opposite.

"Oh, good-evening, Miss McGee!"

He spoke as pleasantly as possible, but the lodger only answered

"Evening," and turned her back at once.

"How do you do to-night?"

"Tired as a dog."

"And no wonder, working such long hours!"

No answer from the lodger.

"You _are_ later than usual this evening, aren't you?"

"Keep me on purpose," muttered Miss McGee angrily (or something like

that), climbing the tall stairs.

She was a dark young woman, darkly dressed and darkly scowling, it had

seemed, at the mere sight of Charles. As he knew from a rare letter on

the hall table, her official name was Mary Maude McGee, but to him she

was always and simply Two-Book McGee, on account of her apparent habit

of reading two novels a night, every night in the year. She had them

under her arm now, with the labels of the circulating library showing.

Charles also had a book under his arm, "Marna": here was a topic!

"Do you," he inquired, continuing the social chat, "find many good

novels these days?"

"No, I don't!" said she, so sharply that you would have supposed he was

to blame for it. Imagine!

"You must really look over my stock some day, Miss McGee. I'm sure I

have _something_ you could read."

But the invitation brought only a mutter from Miss McGee, and the door

of the Second Hall Back banged shut behind her.

"Help! help!" mused Charles, and straightway was struck with an

interesting thought: How about taking over Two-Book McGee as a minor

character in the new novel?

He considered the idea, mounting to his Studio. The lodger was known as

a self-supporting female, allied with a tintype and "art photography"

establishment. Certainly she seemed an odd sort of person to say "Look

pleasant" to anybody. Friends, engagements, pleasures, she had none, on

the word of Mrs. Herman. All day she helped to photograph the General

Public; all night, till sleep overcame her, she sat alone in her very

small room, reading novel after novel which she did not like. A dull

life, it might have seemed; but then, you see, she had, to bless her,

the priceless knowledge that she was a self-respecting and independent

being, a person and not a parasite. The authorities could not doubt that

Two-Book McGee was happy in her way.

Charles, however, seemed to be doing just that, at the moment. He

conceived Miss McGee as one not joyful in her economic freedom; hence as

an "illustrative character" for conservatism, sowing doubts in the minds

of readers as to whether Leading My Own Life was, in fact, necessarily

the other name for happiness. Climbing the stairs now, he invented

words for Two-Book's mouth: imagining her as saying, "Oh, I'd marry

anybody to get out of this!"--and again, with sobs, crying out to some

modern arguer, "Oh, just to be a parasite again!--just to be a snug,

comfortable little parasite!..."

So making fiction, Charles Garrott opened the door of his Studio. And

full upon the threshold, he encountered the great surprise of his life.

The large room looked familiar and inviting. The lamp burned on the

writing-table; the drop-light shone over the Judge's typewriter; the

author's office-coat hung on his chair-back. By the typewriter stood the

Judge, pink and shining from his evening bath. Wrapped in a beautiful

lavender robe, he turned, smiling.

But on the writing-table, beyond the lamp, there lay a strange package.

The author's eye had fallen on it even as he opened the door. Some

instinct in him seemed to divine the incredible truth instantly, but

something else within spoke loud and sharp:--

"_What's that?_"

Judge Blenso laughed agreeably, and lowered the bath-towel with which he

was rubbing his fine white head. To the secretary, the literary business

was still a sealed book indeed; so far as he was advised, a package of

manuscript back by express was doubtless a very pleasant little

occurrence.

"Why, it's Entry 2, Charles!" he chuckled. "Your novel--just come in!

Must be! And gad, my dear fellow! Willcox wrote you a letter, too!"

The young man bounded for the table.

Long as he had deemed himself a writer, Charles King Garrott had as yet

sent out little manuscript, "Bondwomen" having absorbed all his creative

energies for years. Accordingly, the prevalent stupidity of editors and

publishers, amounting ofttimes to mere madhouse imbecility, as every

young writer can testify, was yet as a sealed book to him. With the

ultra-modern message of the Old Novel, he, personally, might have become

authoritatively dissatisfied; but that any publisher in his senses could

fail to jump at it had, of course, scarcely entered his mind.

Hence, in the two seconds required to pounce upon and open Willcoxes'

letter, his mind was tossing out other explanations of that package with

the utmost lucidity and vigor. Willcoxes had been so pleased with the

Old Novel that they had put it in type at once: this package was the

proof. The package was the manuscript; but it had been sent back by an

office-boy by mistake, and the letter rushed after it to implore pardon.

Willcoxes, while delighted with the novel, had thought that possibly

some of the ultra-modernism had better be toned down a little, in the

interest of Homes; therefore....

In short, Charles Garrott's mind executed exactly the processes that all

young writers' minds execute at these moments, in instinctive recoil

from the stupefying fact of Rejection. But when he got the letter open,

all this activity was quickly stilled.

DEAR SIR [it ran]:

We have given careful consideration to the manuscript of the

novel, BANDWOMEN, which you were good enough to submit, but

regret to report that the decision has been adverse. We fear

that the publication of the story would not prove a financial

success.

The manuscript is returned to you to-day by express. Thanking

you for giving us the opportunity of examining it, we are

Yours very truly,