The "line" of the new novel refused to come straight on the first
attempt, or the second, and Charles had been compelled to leave his
preliminary scenarios to ripen gradually in his head. In the intervals
of intense plotting, he was tossing off short fictions; four such he had
now tossed since the completion of "Bondwomen" had set him free.
"Bondwomen" itself was in the hands of that discriminating house,
Messrs. Blank and Finney, Judge Blenso having risen up early on the
morning after the rejection to take it to the express office. Experience
was now coming with a leap; but yesterday the first of Charles's new
stories had been sent back by "Willcox's Monthly," with a mere printed
form of refusal. This was the fiction about Dionysius, who, it may be
remembered, had freed his eyes from the magic of sex and consequently
cracked walnuts with a sort of splendid sadness.
Such episodes staggered belief; but, in a strange way, they seemed to
fan the fires of genius unrecognized. Hence it was without joy that
Charles confronted after supper this evening a memorandum he had lately
left for himself in the place where he left memoranda. It was brief,
containing but a single word,--_Bridge_; and, coming on it unexpectedly,
the author spoke but a single word, though a different one. No more than
Mary Wing, of course, did he have evenings to fling this way and that,
in mere idle frivolity. Why did people have this mania for playing
cards, going to places, calling, all the time? Why the mad rage for
doing things?
As to this engagement, it seemed just to have developed along; the
first he knew of it, you might say, the thing was settled and arranged.
Still, it was admitted that from the young Home-Maker's point of view,
it was all quite simple and natural and human. Charles, even in the
first flush of author's revolt, really felt no bitterness.
Shutting his table drawer with a bang, he withdrew to the bedroom and
began to assume one of those garments which first brought renown to
Tuxedo Park.
Charles's acquaintance with Miss Angela had developed smoothly, without
any unusual effort on his part. That they had a walk or something every
day was not mathematically accurate; but he had seen the girl several
times since the day of the call, when he got the book. The very next
day, as it fell out, he had met the pretty cousin again on the
promenade, at about the same time and place, and as she was out only for
exercise, and had done her stint, she said, she very charmingly turned
around with him. In no sense was it repellent to the authority thus to
see, by pleasing signs, that the old-fashioned girl liked him, in the
good old-fashioned way. At the same time, of course, he was, by
deliberate choice, a fiction-writer, not a dancing-man; and his position
about the bridge-party, as he saw it, was that he was doing a kindly
deed, to give pleasure to a rather lonely young girl. Moreover, it
should not occur again.
And when he set out on the brisk walk to the Flowers', he was not
thinking of Angela at all, but of Angela's cousin, Mary. He understood
that Mary was to be at the bridge-party--indeed, he understood that the
party was being given principally in Mary's honor--and he was genuinely
concerned as to what his manner toward that young woman now should be.
His perplexity dated from an episode two days earlier. On Tuesday
afternoon he had met Mary Wing over by the High School, not entirely by
chance, and had turned and walked with her. She was alone, for a wonder;
but she had begun at once to talk of the unhappy Miss Trevenna, fairly
bursting out as to the way she was being persecuted, and so forth. Miss
Trevenna had "lost" two places already, it seemed. And Charles, seeing
how much to heart Mary took the luckless girl's troubles, suddenly felt
sorry for her--yes, he ventured to feel sorry for Mary Wing!--and did
what he had positively resolved not to do. He, also, dropped a hint to
Mary.
The memory of that unwisdom was with him yet, as an exasperation and a
hurt.
It had profited him nothing that he approached the task, circumspectly,
in his light, humorous vein. "Did you ever hear what Susan B. Anthony
said when she had tried using bloomers for a year?" he had inquired,
positively jovial. "Said she was convinced that one reform at a time was
all that one person could manage!" But Mary Wing had said instantly,
"You apply this to me," and right there had the trouble begun. "Aren't
you crippling yourself needlessly?" he had amiably suggested. "Is it
wise to feed the popular delusion that any sort of reformer is all sorts
of an anarchist?" To which she replied, quite indignantly, "This isn't a
question of _reform_ at all with me!--if you must have it explained to
you." And when he asked her what she expected to accomplish exactly, she
declared that in point of fact a great deal had been accomplished
already; Miss Trevenna's father had seen her, for one thing, and it
seemed but a matter of time before she would be forgiven and taken back.
"But if nothing was accomplished in a thousand years," said Mary, "I'd
still do exactly what I am doing!"
The worst of it was that one large disunited side of Charles stuck it
out that Mary was doing exactly right: he knew, indeed, whatever she
might say for argument, that all this was chiefly a matter of her
sympathies, and she no more believed in this sort of Freedom than he
did. Hence his counter-argument had not been up to his best standard, a
mere urging of timid prudences, it seemed. And very soon she had swooped
on his weakness, silencing him at a stroke:--
"I'll not drop an old friend just because it's _safer_! I'll not. Mr.
Garrott, you disappoint me."
Now, no man on earth enjoys being told that he has disappointed a
friend, least of all a woman friend, in a matter involving courage. Mr.
Garrott held that word ungracious from Mary. And now, as he strode
silently toward his evening of pleasure, he seemed to feel that there
was, indeed, a kind of hardness in her, and, as to him, a certain air of
assured superiority such as could not be further tolerated.
How, then, should he deport himself toward Mary now, seeing her again at
the bridge-party? Through long blocks, Charles pondered the question.
While leaning from the first toward a manner of brilliant tolerance,
slightly aloof, indeed, yet splendidly witty, he really had not settled
the point finally in his mind, when Miss Angela opened her front door
for him, and said, almost in the first breath:--
"Oh, Mr. Garrott, what do you think? Cousin Mary and Mr. Manford both
backed out! _I hope you don't mind playing three-hand!_"
Taken completely by surprise, the young man hardly repressed a bitter
mirth.
But that, after all, was for his wasted evening only. And in a moment he
was himself again, doing his deed of kindness, distributing pleasure
among the young and lonesome.
He was not, indeed, he considered, one to think the less of a girl for
being poor but hospitable, for desiring to "entertain," when, the too
obvious fact was, she had nobody to entertain. The three-hand's party
rather touched than repelled Charles; he criticized not Angela, but Mary
Wing, who had stayed away. Moreover, the other guest turned out to be
Fanny Warder, which suited him unexpectedly well. Grieved though he was
by Fanny's broken beauty, she had become a Case to him now, one more
exhibit in the growing gallery of Woman's Unrest.
And certainly, when it was all over, it never once occurred to Charles
to think of this evening as a waste, exactly.
Into the mysteries of three-hand, as pursued in the Flower parlor that
evening, it will do well not to follow. The play really was not the
thing, as Angela had implied to her Cousin Mary, when speaking of
Donald. Fanny Warder played a poor game; everybody said that. Of course,
she had only come to help out, but still, one could not avoid observing
how treacherous were her bids, or crying out upon her when she was
discovered slumbering with the three highest hearts. A great deal of
jumping up and changing seats there was, a great deal of discussion each
time as to which one had better jump and change, constant demands of,
"Whose bid is it?" and, "Who dealt these cards?" But there was much
girlish laughter, too; merry prattle flowed unceasingly; "a good time
was had."
And Angela's bridge-party had, as Charles viewed it, one sterling merit:
it ended early. It is a point which, as is well known, rests entirely in
the hands of the hostess, according to when she elects to bring on her
refreshments; and when Angela rose soon after ten o'clock and tripped
away alone to get "the party," as she called it, the author's whole
opinion of her went up at a bound. He had known women, thus having you
at their mercy, to keep you sitting around till midnight before ever
mentioning "the party," and then sometimes those horrible jolly girls
made you romp back to the pantry and help.
And when, after a considerable interval, Miss Angela returned, bearing
her refreshments on a large tin tray, the young authority again took the
large view, sympathetically seeing the general behind the particular.
The refreshments consisted of lettuce and tomato salad, together with
crackers, a little cheese, ice-water, and a small box of candy. Charles
could not conceal from himself that the salad was poor, the dressing had
"run," the crackers were without crackle, the candy cheap, the ice-water
warm; but, in a subtle sort of way, all this made him feel not less, but
more, friendly toward his simple young hostess. Not knowing that she
could not make mayonnaise, or suspecting that her little brother had
reluctantly stood treat to the candy, his fancy pictured the girl as
preparing the modest spread for her (two) friends with her own hands and
thought, her heart full of pleasant anticipations the while. And this
seemed normal and human to Charles, and sweet enough, and just a little
pathetic besides. Angela, gayly setting out her three plates, was again
a type and a symbol. She was all the poor Nice Girls in the world, ten
million poor Nice Girls scattered over the earth that night who, the
day's justifying labors done, were trying to create a little joy for
themselves and others, sweetly pursuing their great business of
Supplying Beauty and Supplying Charm....
But while Angela was still in the rearward regions, making ready her
tray, Charles engaged in a scientific talk with his old friend Fanny. It
both interested and depressed him.
Mary's young sister had taken Harold Warder out of a field unusually
large for these lean days. Harold had been in love with her from his
knickerbocker days, and was considered to be "doing very well"; the
match had been a most promising one. But ill-luck had pursued the young
couple from the first, assuming the worst of all forms, unceasing
doctor's bills. Fanny, beyond any counting, had had long illnesses
following the births of both her children; and the expenses of the first
one had swamped Warder, wiping out at once the rainy-day margin he had
married on. That Mary Wing secretly sent money to Fanny, Charles was
morally certain. But Fanny was well again now, and poverty and debt were
wont to be the butts of young love. Why, then, was her pretty face drawn
to a birdlike thinness; why this beaten look in eyes that were once so
gay?
Tête-à-tête over the three-hand table, Mrs. Warder surprised Charles by
saying that she wanted to go back to work; her husband, however, would
not hear of such a thing. Charles, though a modern, said naturally not.
"I can earn a hundred a month," said Fanny, "and get a perfect nurse for
twenty-five."
He explained the error in her utilitarianism. Intently shuffling the
cards on the table, he pointed out the injustice of orphaning Paulie and
Neddy-Weddy of their mother-love. Fanny's own mind seemed greatly
unsettled. But she could be as straightforward as Mary with those she
was fond of.
"Harold supposed," she said, presently, "that he was marrying a lively
young person, one that he, at least, would find indefinitely
entertaining. He discovers instead that he's got an ailing woman on his
hands, one with no spirits or looks at all worth mentioning. Could you
blame him if he woke up some day and said, 'I've been cheated?'"
And the Young Wife slowly added: "It'll be years before he gets his head
above water again. And that's my doing, Charles,--I, who'd have cut off
my right arm to help him the least bit."
Charles scolded her roundly for her morbidness. "Great heavens!--you
must know _he_ could never think that way! Look how you have helped him!
If your health went, you gave it to him--let him hold that to his heart!
There's Paulie and the baby, that you brought him, more than
compensating--"
But Mary's sister broke this argument with her old laugh.
"Don't tempt me, Charles! I'm all kinds of a hypocrite but that kind! Of
course, I wanted children a great deal more than Harold, and they're my
compensation--for everything--not his at all. You know all that
perfectly well. No, no," said Fanny, lowering her voice as Angela's
returning steps were heard. "If Harold ever tires of me, I'll go, you
may be sure. He won't find me clamping on his shoulders, claiming to be
taken care of for life because of my two little darlings...."
Charles had expected to walk home with Fanny, continuing the sad but
interesting talk, but he was frustrated in that intention by the arrival
of an escort of Fanny's own. This proved to be none other than Mr.
Tilletts.
It developed that the seeking widower, who was known as a sort of public
Former Suitor, had called on Fanny this evening, and, finding her about
to go out, had begged the privilege of squiring her to and fro. Had
Angela understood this in advance, how willingly would she have raised
Three-Hand to a Table! But at least she could do her best now to remove
from Mr. Tilletts's mind the idea that she was rude,--derived at the
Redmantle Club, where she had made her unfortunate mistake,--and
apparently she was successful, for Charles heard the plump seeker say,
"May I call?" quite distinctly, as they moved into the hall.
The door shut on a chorus of good-nights.
The bridge-party was over; and it was only quarter of eleven. Charles
turned toward the hat-rack and the Studio. And in turning, he surprised
a look in his hostess's dark eyes, which seemed to say, in the most
ingenuous way: "At last, a few minutes to ourselves!"
All evening, he had been aware of a subtly more personal note in Miss
Angela's manner; a coyer and engagingly proprietary note, which he, with
his known dispassionateness toward this sex, considered as intended for
Fanny Warder's benefit. Charles had not been annoyed by this: few men
repel the adoration of a pretty girl. And now this soft simple
expectancy of hers, this girlish lingering over her somewhat pathetic
party, seemed beyond his kind heart (as he would have put it) to
disappoint. "You're not going!--it's so early!" she exclaimed, and
coquetted prettily enough: "I'd think you were displeased with
me--promising to have Cousin Mary for you, and then not doing it!... But
you don't mind _very_ much, do you?"
Kindly Charles capitulated at once. "Pay my party-call right now--?" he
threw out, gallant and yet thrifty withal. "If you're sure I'm not
keeping you up...."
So these two reëntered Miss Angela's little parlor, with its
sleeping-car shape and too prominent Latrobe heater: a room poor enough
in itself, but having an institutional significance when considered as
the Waiting Room of the Womanly Woman. Here they sat down, side by side,
upon a dented sofa. And here, before a great while, there took place a
somewhat strange occurrence.
There began an animated flow of girlish chatter.
"I haven't seen you on Washington Street for three days now, Mr.
Garrott. I believe you're avoiding me! I met Mr. Manford this afternoon,
and what do you think he said? That he couldn't play bridge as well as
he could build them, and was afraid he'd be mobbed at a party! I don't
think he _could_ play any worse than Fanny, do you? But Mr. Garrott, why
does he want to go to _Wyoming_? I'd _lots_ rather go to New York, if I
were a man! I asked him if that river out there he was going to dam was
pretty, and he said he'd send me a picture post-card of it, when he
went. But I suppose he'll forget all about it...."
Mr. Garrott, pleasantly relaxed, made suitable replies as need arose. In
his scientific way, he was noting how fine and clear Miss Angela's skin
was, what shining soft eyes she had, how soothing and sweet was her
voice. Certainly this girl did not try to create the air that she was
your manly superior, or address you like a Self-Made Man reproving his
wife.
"Fanny's broken so dreadfully, hasn't she? She was so lovely and
attractive as a girl. Tommy was crazy about her when she visited us in
Mitchellton, a long time ago. He gave her the loveliest presents! But
Tommy was always the most generous boy. They were getting up a
drinking-fountain as a memorial to Major Beesom--he was postmaster for
years and years, you know--and Tommy headed the list with twenty-five
dollars, and he was only making forty a month! I just wish you could
have known Major Beesom! I know you'd want to put him in a book. Mr.
Garrott, I'm _so_ anxious to read some of your stories! What are your
heroines like, generally?"
Out of which, she said presently, laughing and whisking her hand behind
her back:--
"You were looking at my ring!"
"Why not?" said Mr. Garrott, starting a little. "A cat may look at a
ring."
That was reasonable surely. Angela, after a few teasing pretenses, held
up her modest gimcrack for him to see. And Charles, naturally, accepted
the hand so presented.
As to what subsequently occurred, there was always a divided house
within the many-sided Charles. But all his sides insisted that, at this
point, he had no interest in the matter whatever; some held that he had
not even seen the ring till she called attention to it. Now, bending
over the hand, he examined it, and said:--
"Well! This is news to me, you know!"
"Not at all!" laughed the owner of the ring. "Why, what do you mean?"
"I've seen an engagement ring once before, you see."
"You're very clever! But--does it have to follow that I'm engaged?"
"That was the rule, in my day."
"You don't seem at all curious!"
"I'm very curious."
"Well, I'm not, of course!"
"I'm glad to hear it."
He made, as it were, a sort of sketch of a move to release the small
hand at this point. However, nothing seemed to come of it.
"Are you?... Why?"
"Oh, because--it's rather sad for an old bystander like me to see all
the nice young people going off two by two, for happiness and the great
adventure."
To that, the girl made no reply. She merely gave a little laugh, and
withdrew her hand. The house seemed very still. And Charles was at once
aware that he had been found somehow deficient at the simple game of
parlor conversation. In a scarcely definable way, he felt himself
rebuked for timidity, wariness.
Nevertheless, in her simple, natural way, the girl made known that the
ring was properly the possession of a man in Mitchellton--Charles
recalled Mr. Jenney--and was now worn only by courtesy, reminiscently,
as it were, with no obligations attached.
"You see, his brothers all went off, like all the other men, and his
sister married and went away, and so he said he would stay in
Mitchellton with his mother. And it's truly the most hopeless place! He
doesn't seem to have any ambition at all--it provoked me so! I think all
men ought to have ambition, don't you?"
"I do, indeed. And he owns that pretty ring, you say?"
"Yes. You see," she said, laughing and coloring, "when I felt I must
break it off,--well, he wouldn't let it stay off exactly! I--I'm telling
you all my secrets! He said he'd still consider himself--oh--you know!"
"Naturally. He had enough ambition for that."
And, as if to show Miss Angela that, in point of fact, none knew better
than he how to talk to a girl on a sofa, Charles carelessly took up that
betrothal hand again, saying: "So he made you keep the ring all the
same?"
"The day we left Mitchellton. And I said I'd wear it--oh, just till I
met somebody I liked better! It was really more of a joke!..."
"Ah! And you haven't met such a person yet, I gather?"
"Oh--I'm not to send it back till I know--"
"How long," said the young authority, at once completely conscious of
the supreme inanity of the proceedings, and finding them enjoyable
enough, "how long do you allow yourself to find out?"
"That isn't easy to tell.... Do you know you're the strangest man!"
"Am I? How do I seem so strange to you?"
The little hand was warm, not unpleasant to retain. The eyes, gazing up
at him, were liquid and bright; they were woman's eyes. "Consider me,"
they seemed to say. "Am I not sweet, desirable? Am I not worthy to be
held dear? Was I not made to delight? See, I am Woman, beside you...."
"Oh," said the soft voice, "the way you do. Cousin Mary says you're the
new sort of man, that isn't interested in girls at all. You're too
clever to care anything about them. Are you?"
"Clever? I'd call that the stupidest thing in the world."
"Then you do like them! I'm so glad. I've wondered, you see...."
The feminine speeches, the appeal of these eyes, seemed all at once to
create an enveloping pressure, softer than nothing, yet extraordinary.
Or possibly the trouble was that Dionysius, after all, had freed his
eyes of the magic more brilliantly than his creator.
"What sort of girls do you like? Tell me?" said the voice of Woman,
nearer.
And then in the suddenest way conceivable there took place the Strange
Occurrence referred to. Without the smallest premeditation, Charles bent
and touched his lips to that smooth invitational cheek.
On that central point there is not the slightest room for doubt. Let
there be no wriggling or evasion here. Charles Garrott, who scorned La
Femme and viewed Woman exclusively as a Movement, did bend his neck and
kiss the Mitchellton Home-Maker upon a sofa.
He meant the salute, he was afterward certain, as but a fatherly tribute
to youth and beauty, or (considered in another way) but the expected,
and in a sense purely conventional, move in the ancient parlor-game. But
on such a move as this homes have been broken, families set to mutual
slaughter, thrones shaken, history changed. Charles, to put it in a
word, found it easier to begin paying his tributes than gracefully to
desist from them.
Prompted by a not unnatural curiosity, the lady (who had not proved more
than maidenly surprised or rebuking) said:--
"Oh!... Why do you do this?"
[Illustration: "OH!... WHY DO YOU DO THIS?"]
Who knows what trusting heart first voiced that immemorial question?
Charles Garrott, at least, was not the first gentleman on earth to fail
to utter promptly the one satisfactory commentary on his behavior. Miss
Angela made that little, gentle note of interrogation which cannot be
written, and then she said again:--
"Tell me--why do you?"
Then it was as if the intrinsic pointedness of that query penetrated the
man, suddenly and sharply. It was the mere force of iteration, no doubt;
but all at once the soft voice seemed possessed of a certain insistence,
tinctured with a certain definite expectation, you might say. Now that
Charles stopped to think of it, why was he doing this?
The young man's arms fell, as if something had burned them. He rose
abruptly and strode away to the mantelpiece, where, however, the Latrobe
heater spoiled any hope of an effective pose.
If he meant thus to signify that the little episode was closed and done
with, life, unluckily, was not quite so simple as that. The pretty
Home-Maker, having gazed at his back- or side-view a moment, as if
bewildered, said in an uncertain voice:--
"I--I don't understand you at all. Why did you do that?"
Putting down the impulse to bolt, and the even more astonishing impulse
to return to that fatal sofa, Charles Garrott braced himself to reply.
In this effort he was handicapped by emotions altogether unknown to most
young men who sit upon sofas. For example: What would the lady in Sweden
have to say to this little affair?
He confronted a fact which he had temporarily lost sight of: that he who
pays these tributes must pay for them to the full. Half of him might
feel resentful and furious, but it was clear that the whole of him, the
net Charles, must cut a sorry figure for a while. Half of him might be
crying out, stern as science itself: "Come, girl, be honest! Don't go
about dropping matches into gunpowder, and then pretend to be surprised
at the explosion." But the net Charles, brightly flushed, was speaking
lamely as a schoolboy:--
"Well! Do you think I could be _blamed_--exactly? It--it seemed such an
awfully natural thing to do. You--ah--it seemed I--I couldn't do
anything _else_!..."
"I see," said the girl slowly.
"Ah--you--you're a very kissable person, you must know--"
"And do you always go about kissing people you think are kissable?"
The young man shrank as from a blow. Not looking once in her direction,
he did not note that she had spoken with a quivering lip. With a great
effort at lightness, he stammered:--
"Well, hardly! It must be that I don't often meet people who--who are as
k-k-kissable as you--"
"I suppose I ought to feel flattered."
There was a miserable silence.
"I was mistaken in you," continued the Nice Girl's stricken voice. "I--I
trusted you. I supposed you were too honorable--I didn't think--"
That word seemed to touch him to the quick. He spoke with desperate
stiffness.
"I _am_ honorable, I hope. Miss Flower--aren't you taking this too--too
seriously, perhaps? After all, you--"
She astonished him by bursting into tears.
And all modernity became as nothing then, and Charles was a simple man,
horrified by the sight of woman's grief. Now his abasement became
complete; now he groveled most properly; never, he vowed, would he cease
to censure himself most severely for this Occurrence. He wheedled, he
implored, he cajoled. But, of course, all this but made the matter
worse, threw his wary, inexcusable omissions into sharper and sharper
relief. And presently Miss Angela referred to him as _brutal_ (did she
not pause even after that, in a sort of expectant way?) and then ended
the tragedy by begging him to leave her, her fatally ringed hands held
fast before her eyes.
No such conclusion to the evening of wholesome pleasure could have been
devised by the wit of fiction-writers. Charles gathered up his hat and
coat like a thief, and let himself gently out into the night.