"Yes--something of that sort. You--"
"Why, no, Cousin Mary! I've never _had_ to think of that. Of course,
father can still support me. I didn't mean you to think--"
"Oh, of _course_! I understand that perfectly! I meant only on your own
account, my dear, so that you could have your own money, all you want of
it. It makes a difference, as I can testify! And then, too, I know a
good many girls with plenty of money already, who go to work--well, just
for the fun of it!--Helen Carson, for instance."
Angela looked as if she hardly knew how to explain herself to one
holding her cousin's known ideas of fun. However, she endeavored,
sweetly.
"Yes, I know. But in the first place, you see, I couldn't very well be
spared from the house. I do every bit of the work, except cooking and
washing, and mother doesn't expect ever to touch the housekeeping any
more. It takes so much time, and worry, and our cook is _awful_, because
we can't afford to pay but twelve dollars a month, and, of course, a
good servant won't work for that! And besides, father wouldn't dream of
allowing such a thing, Cousin Mary. He'd think it was--was just
charging him with being a failure, and not able to take care of his
family!"
It was a sufficiently conclusive statement, as Cousin Mary seemed to
feel; she did not argue back, but replied understandingly, and mentioned
that Harold Warder felt the same way about women's working. So Angela
felt the moment to be favorable for explaining her deeper points of
view.
"And, Cousin Mary, even if I made mother take back the housework, and
father'd let me do it," she said, with a girlish hesitancy that became
her well, "I wouldn't _want_ to go into an office--or have a business
career. I--just feel differently about all those things. I have no
ambitions that way--at _all_!"
Cousin Mary, who chanced to be standing near, surprised her by stooping
suddenly and pinching her cheek.
"Tell me what your ambitions are, Angela, dear."
"Well--you probably--I don't believe you'd understand exactly what I--"
"On the contrary, for two cents I'll tell you what they are myself."
"Well, what?" said Angela, gazing up with unfeigned interest. "Tell me
what you think?"
"They really can be stated as one, my guess is," said Mary, smiling in
the nicest way: "To be a good wife to the man you will love some day."
Color flowed suddenly into the girl's upturned face. By a strange
coincidence, Cousin Mary had stated the ambition in the very words
Angela herself would have used. But, though maidenly embarrassed, she
would not lower her gaze as if she were ashamed of her ambition, or
overborne by her cousin's hard masculinity.
"I know," she said, pink and sweet, "you think that's just a--weak
womanly ambition! I know you aren't much interested in my kind of
things, Cousin Mary."
"Indeed, you wrong me," said Mary, her smile dying. "I don't feel that
way at all."
And through her shot the irrelevant thought: "Why does she call me
Cousin Mary, all the time? I'm only four years older than she."
But, as the two girls thus gazed at each other, the interval in their
ages seemed, indeed, indefinite and immense. Angela's eyes could afford
that subtle expression of known womanly advantage. The light of
afternoon, flowing freely over the park and into the long windows, fell
full upon Mary Wing's delicate face. It was a face, to be just, not
devoid of a feminine attractiveness at times. But now the bright day
showed it colorless and tired; the marks of many "fights" lingered
indefinably about the mouth; tiny crow's-feet netted the corners of the
fine blue eyes. Yes, this school-teacher's first youth was gone. Full of
strange isms, she had lost sight of the real things of life, and now her
Woman's Opportunity had slipped away from her forever.
It may be that Mary Wing would have given something of her honors to be
prettier than Angela just for that moment.
"I think it would be hard to name a finer ambition. To be a good wife
to ..." And, breaking off, she added, with another smile, sudden and
merry: "To Dan Jenney, didn't you tell me?"
Her young cousin lost her dreamy look rather abruptly.
"Why, _no_, Cousin Mary! Please don't say that! I only told you that--"
But Cousin Mary, having turned her eyes toward the window, interrupted
the womanly talk with a smashing announcement.
"Here's Flora Trevenna coming in--good!" she said in her most
matter-of-fact way. "Excuse me a minute, Angela,--I'm bell-hop, you
know!"
Angela, who at least knew the ill-omened name, gave one startled gaze,
and sprang up. The prospect of casually meeting Mr. Manford was
forgotten in her sudden panic alarm.
"I must _go_!" she said, looking about her a little wildly. "I--should
have gone some time ago--really! I just stopped in to--"
Mary's colorless face seemed to stiffen a little. So, perhaps, Mr.
Mysinger was wont to see it.
"Well, wait just a minute," she ordered, rather than requested. "I'd
especially like you to meet Flora."
Nice reward this for being cousinly and inviting Cousin Mary to the
bridge-party: _to meet that woman_!
"I--really, I _can't_, Cousin Mary! I'll just run back and see your
mother a minute--and then--"
"You can't well be so rude as that, can you?" said Mary. And then she
added, as if something within her threw out the words beyond her will:
"Why do you call me Cousin Mary all the time? I'm only four years older
than you."
The question, of course, expected no notice. Mary was gone into the
hall. Yet Angela, left unpoliced, did not immediately fly toward the
bedroom region, or run and hide with the leaflets behind the sofa. It
may be she feared her hard cousin a little; but besides that, in the
strangest and most contradictory sort of way, it appeared that she did
not altogether want to fly. She was conscious of an excitement, of a
sort of unworthy curiosity.
The front door opened; there were voices. And then Mary Wing returned,
her arm slipped brazenly through that of her astounding friend.
And Angela, despite all of the injunctions of propriety, looked; looked,
with a sort of fearful fascination. Never in her life before, to her
knowledge, had her girlish eyes rested upon a Badwoman. Though virtue
went out of her, she _must_ look this once....
"Flora, this is my cousin, Angela Flower, whom you know of, I believe.
My friend, Miss Trevenna, Angela."
A look of greeting came upon the Badwoman's not displeasing face, a
little smile upon the pretty, sinful lips.
"Oh, how do you do, Miss Flower?"
But Angela, with her upbringing, found it impossible to reciprocate
these friendly overtures. Take one shameful peep, she might. But that
itself brought a reaction, perhaps; and as well as Donald Manford, as
well as Judge Blenso himself, Angela knew, if only by intuition, that
good people must stand up for morals. Donald certainly would have
applauded her, as she inclined her graceful head about an inch and spoke
two cold words:--
"Miss Trevenna."
And then, her alarm mysteriously gone, she turned to her cousin and
said, formally: "Good-bye, then, Cousin Mary. Do come to see us when you
find time."
Indeed, the two cousins viewed everything too differently to make much
intimacy between them probable. When the door had shut on Angela, Cousin
Mary put her arm about the shoulder of the Badwoman and said the
strangest, the most advanced thing possible:--
"Dear Flora! You must let me say--I'm sorry."
Miss Trevenna, with her deceptively cloistral countenance, seemed to
flinch a little. Her gaze looked rather bright; it fell away from
Mary's. But she produced a fair effect of uncomprehension and surprise.
"Sorry? Why, what for?"
"Well--I can't feel my little cousin showed to very good advantage."
"Oh, didn't she? But it makes no difference. I--hardly ever notice what
people do--really! Are you too busy, or shall we walk?"
"Let me get my hat," said Mary.
Having put on hat and coat in her own bedroom, the fighting educator
looked into the room beyond, where the babies and their grandmother were
considerably spread over creation.
"Angela gone?" asked Mrs. Wing presently, in the midst of cooing.
"Yes," said Mary; and let it stand at that.
"Look how he cuddles in his granny's arm. I had to change his little
socks again. She was very strange with them, Mary, didn't you think so?"
"Strange?--how do you mean?"
"Why, she just didn't seem to care anything about them! Didn't you
notice, she hardly looked at Paulie once! How could she help loving such
little darlings? And she seems such a nice, womanly girl, too."
"Well, _all_ women aren't maternal, mother, don't you know that?"
"In my day," said Mrs. Wing imperturbably, "all good women loved
babies."
But when Mary said where she was off to now, a shadow fell on her
mother's calm face, and Mary saw it. However, Mrs. Wing said nothing,
this time.
Though Donald had never carried out that hare-brained threat of his, as
to "dropping a hint" to Mary, his voice could scarcely have been missed
amid the general feminine chorus. Indeed, everybody who possessed so
much as a hint to her name, in those days, seemed to be dropping it to
Mary. How far she minded her public unpopularity Mary did not say, but
her mother's unwavering disapprobation she unquestionably took to heart.
"Good women don't make mistakes of that sort," said Mrs. Wing, and was
shaken by no argument. And now, as Mary bent to kiss this wrinkled and
well-loved cheek, she was thinking that never in the world before had
there opened such a gulf between two generations; and she wondered why
life must be so hard.
Later, Mrs. Wing sat for some time quite still, by her window, and her
brooding look was not grandmotherly now, but motherly, which is
different. For, of course, there was one person on earth to whom Mary
could never seem truly the mature, advanced and dangerous young woman of
Fights, Reforms and Careers. Through all her newnesses and strength, the
mother's eyes yet held her as the tiny, helpless, clinging little scrap
which she, a young girl then, had gone down to the gates of the world to
bring in.