He turned in at the Green Park, in the still night, and stood gazing
with bitterness at a dim gigantic Citizen, who rose in bronze at the
intersection of two walkways. The Citizen gazed back with no bitterness
at all; but then, he was dead.
Charles Garrott, being very much alive, was thinking cadlike thoughts
with clarity and vigor. In the romances, men who won a maiden's sweet
kiss instantly besought her to name the day; failing that, they were
cads. But Charles was resolved to fail that, and he was struggling
determinedly not to feel a cad. He simply did not consider that Miss
Angela's kiss had such a pricelessness, entailing cosmic
responsibilities. Why was her kiss any sweeter than his own, to come
right down to it?
Now pure remorse had faded: self-interest, outraged self-respect, fought
to have their say. Indeed, Miss Angela herself could not well feel more
mortified over those unimagined salutes than he, the New Man, did. And
it was as if his humiliation had destroyed all that restraining sense of
a bond here, and the brutal Charles was free now for a frank facing of
his new reactions.
"Well, I won't marry her! I won't," said he to the calm Citizen. "I'll
call myself names for her, yes; I'll send her bonbons--flowers--that
sort of thing. I'll land Donald for her--that's a thought! I'll get her
invited to the Thursday German. But _marry her_!... No, the kindest
thing would be never to see her again."
[Illustration: "WELL, I WON'T MARRY HER! I WON'T!"]
And, gazing up in the silent darkness of the park, the unheroic young
man began to think how he could go to Berringer's by the Center Street
cars, and take his walks henceforth in the manufacturing district, and
in far countrysides.
Between Miss Flower's and the park, Charles had been briefly unnerved by
a disruptive thought. This girl loved him. Recollections from his salad
days rushed on him, memories of swift violent fancies women took to him.
He was cursed, it seemed, with a fatal fascination. Women might be
practically engaged to other men; they might be at the altar's hinges;
but he could not stroll among them with his devilish gift without
scattering ruin amid the troths. If he was not openly rude to them, they
took it as direct encouragement; if he was civil, from him they viewed
it as wooing; and when actually crowned with the deliberate kiss ...
But these bachelor terrors he had exploded with one "Piffle!" spoken so
loudly that two young street-car conductors, passing to or from a
car-barn, no doubt, nudged and jeered. Oh, no, Miss Angela was not in
love with him. She had merely conceived that he, Charles, was in love
with her. (A stinging thought this, even while it vastly reassured.)
Yes, this rudimentary country cousin, whom he had felt sorry for because
of her loneliness, whom he had been interested in purely as a Type (he
maintained), with which to cudgel the hard utilitarian egoism of another
sort of woman--this little creature must needs suppose that he, Charles
Garrott, who knew the most attractive women there were, had fallen a
victim to her village arts and bucolic wiles.
Great heavens!--Oh, the cheek! Oh, the naïve complacence of the naïvest
sex the Lord ever made!...
Why, he had never paid the smallest attention to this girl; never taken
dog's notice of her, you might say! Booting pebbles this way and that in
the darkness, the angry young man reviewed the circumstances with
scientific dispassionateness (as he considered). Compulsorily introduced
by the firm Mary, he had spoken politely to the girl; kindly presented
a suitable young friend or two; and therewith considered that the whole
matter was closed. But no, on the contrary; one pleasant smile from him,
and the Womanly Woman was up and doing.
She had pumped out of him the hour at which he took his walks (he knew
nothing about the opera-glasses as yet); and straightway she began
waylaying him on the street, nothing less. She had all but forced a book
on him, which he would have to return with a "call"--she supposed; when
he did not call, she did something which could only be described as
inveigling him to her home (that was his word now), by the shallow ruse
of a bridge-party; and then and there she had (you might say) flung both
arms about his neck and kissed him. And by these proceedings, it
appeared to her, in that queer world where Nice Girls lived, that she
had affixed a claim upon him, fairly bagged his heart, in short. "Why do
you do this?" said she, insistently. Oh, how simple life looked to such
as these, her and her sisters of the Naïve Sex! Forever putting that
stereotyped query, forever expecting to elicit the hoarse but extremely
welcome reply, "Because I love you so!" No conquest too extraordinary to
seem at all surprising to their quaint little self-approval!
There was humor now in his imagining of the Womanly Woman as quietly
waiting at home to be wooed. It appeared that Miss Angela had done
everything but that.
A church clock boomed suddenly: it was half-past eleven. The young man's
eyes fell from the face of the Citizen. Through the stark stems of the
winter trees a yellow light glowed strongly in a lower window. That was
Olive Street there; this light shone in the Wings' house. He noted it
absently, wondering why Mary worked so late to-night. On the heels of
that came another wonder, more personal: What would Mary think of these
proceedings upon a sofa?
There must have been a bracing quality in the thought of Mary Wing, for
Charles's hot desire to justify himself chilled instantly. Mary had her
faults, heaven knew; but she had nothing to do with sofas. In a wink,
the young man became staggered at himself. For there was nothing he had
been thinking just now that he had not seen clearly for many years past.
What, then? Had his vision of late been blurred in the cheapest way
conceivable? When he told himself that he was scientifically commending
the supplying of Beauty and Charm, was it possible that he, Charles
Garrott, had been subtly allured by La Femme?
From outraged and resentful, Charles became let down and depressed.
Standing and gazing at Mary Wing's bright light, he found his whole
point of view shifting. He, of course, was blameworthy, not this soft
bit of unthinking femininity. Turned out without a lesson and with but
one way of life--what could she do but signify, like her mothers, that
she was ready to twine about her oak? So again, Charles saw the girl he
had left in tears as a being mysteriously wistful and pathetic. And
still she was a type to him, still a symbol of myriads of girls, waiting
over the world: Girls brought up by simple parents who assumed that life
was still as simple as they; girls made to stake their whole lives on
the vague expectation that, because they are girls, some man or other
will be sure to want them some day; a million girls waiting, day by day
and year by year, while all they have to offer life fades away under
their eyes....
The young authority trailed out of the park feeling much like the cads
of Romance, after all. And yet it seemed to be settled now, definitely
and positively, that he would not make a Womanly Woman the heroine of
his new novel.
A light snow had begun to fall. Other people than Charles Garrott moved
homeward from evenings of beauty, charm and pleasure. Motor-cars rolled
on Washington Street. Emerging from the Green Park, Charles moodily
saluted two young men who stood there on a corner; one was his good
friend, Talbott Maxon, but the author passed him almost like a stranger.
To all intercourse with his kind he felt utterly averse. Nevertheless,
when he passed the door of the Bellevue Club, presently, he found his
privacy ruthlessly invaded.
Down the wide steps between the two columnar lights--exactly as on that
other evening when it had all begun--came shambling the loose figure of
Uncle Oliver Wing. Only now Uncle Oliver's large face was faintly
flushed, his large felt hat was pulled over his eyes, his very large
cigar was rakishly uptilted toward the heavens. From which it was
concluded that Mr. Wing was not less than five drinks and five dollars
the better for _his_ little card-party at the Club.
"Let's see now, Charlie,--what was it you asked me?" said Mr. Wing,
catching stride and slipping his arm through the silent young man's.
"Did I believe in this Woman's Movement, wasn't that it?"
Resenting the intrusion, Charles replied coldly: "That was it, I
believe."
Mr. Wing appeared no whit abashed. "Well, Charlie, fact is I believe in
most any kind of a movement, as I reckon you know, and all I ask about
any of 'em is, where's the harm of moving kind of slow, and taking a few
good squints around as we go. That'd about give my view that you asked
me for," said the money-lender, a known reactionary in theory and
practice--"Move slow and squint."
Genially, he took a fresh grip on the arm Charles had almost detached,
and therewith went off into an ill-timed long rigmarole. So convivially
windy was Mr. Wing that he had talked steadily through two blocks before
it came over Charles, with force, that Mary's uncle had had a sharp aim
from the beginning.
"Now, you take, for instance, this privilege of work they're all
clamoring for, Charlie. Women mustn't be parasites; give us the
privilege of work, they say. And that's right, too; give 'em all they'll
take's my view. But, Charlie, my observation is that when a woman
clamors that way, it's ten to one she's thinking of work like being
governor, or a great public speaker maybe, or Miss Jane Addams, out to
Hull House there. But if you ask _me_, are they willing to work like men
do, just so's not to have you call 'em parasites--well, that's where I
say, let's stop and squint around. Of course, now, whenever you see a
rich man's daughter refusing to touch her daddy's money, and jumping up
mornings by an alarm-clock to catch the 7.42, and when you see her
working nine hours a day, winter and summer, at a job it makes her sick
to look at, for ten little dollars a week, and no brass band or
fireworks anywhere--why, then you got a right to say, _that_ woman hates
being a parasite. But, Charlie, you're so quiet, you don't say anything,
I don't guess you're following while I try to answer that question you
asked me."
"Oh, I follow you," replied Charles, with annoyance.
Mr. Wing shot one keen glance at the young man's face, and another ahead
as if to measure the distance yet remaining to his domicile.
"Well, now, morals, Charlie!" he continued, most agreeably. "Lor', the
things our little gals do say nowadays! Make you laugh right out loud.
Ain't it funny how innocent women can keep, now? Up and take their
cocktails, yes, and smoke their cigarettes, and talk right out, white
slave this, and red-light that, and all the time--no more _notion_!...
Why, Charlie, you wouldn't believe the pretty-faced little gal, no
more'n twenty-two years old, I heard making a public speech once, and
what do you think her subject was? 'My plea,' says she, 'is a single
standard of morality for men and women. Whatever man may do,' says she,
'that we claim woman's right to do also.'"
The old gasbag broke off to say, "How-do, Ed," to a passer in the
filtering snow, knocked the ashes from his cigar with the large hand
that was not clutching Charles, and resumed.
"Well, Charlie, I'd been sitting there meek as peaches while that little
gal explained to us all about men and women, but when she gets that off,
and right away asks if anybody in the audience has got any questions,
seemed like I couldn't sit still any longer. 'Excuse me,' I says,
standing up, 'but d'ye make a plea for the single standard of physical
courage also, miss?' I says. 'What say?' she sings out, pretending not
to hear me, while she tries to think what it said in that book she'd
been reading. 'It's a little thing, miss,' I says, 'only an old fellow's
way of saying if maybe Godalmighty didn't figure a little variety'd be a
good thing in this hard world he gave us. When the ship goes down,' I
says, 'do you call on your sisters for the single standard of courage,
miss, or do you hold by the men's rule of the sea and the land, and hop
into the lifeboats with the kids? Excuse a plain old fellow from
speakin' up this way, miss,' I says, 'but seems to me maybe Godalmighty
might have known what he was doing when he gave women more feeling, and
men more fighting strength; when he appointed women to give life and men
to guard it; when, as you might put it, he appointed some virtues for
both to hold in common, and then some for each of 'em to grow and
cultivate specially. And maybe, miss,' I says, 'Godalmighty made the
distribution fairer than some of our college gals realize.' Well,
Charlie, you ought to have heard the hand the crowd gave me, though
there was some hissin' by Suffragettes, I own. And what d'ye think that
cute-lookin' little thing does? 'I deny,' she sings out, her voice
shaking, 'that God gave more strength to men. I deny there is a God,'
she says. And right there she bu'sts out crying, and runs off the
stage.... Yes, she did!--first speech in public maybe. Well, Charlie,
all I say is, that's the kind of loose talk our gals're hearing all the
time nowadays. And that," said Mr. Wing, coming to a halt before his own
steps, and glancing hastily over his shoulder toward his door--"that's
why I can't help feeling sorry for this little gal here that got into
the trouble, and taking sides with her, too, against my public duty and
morals. Why, Charlie, _she_ thought all the talk was meant, not seeing
it was only half-foolin', like in a play."
Now it was that Charles Garrott's bored eye upon Uncle Oliver suddenly
became fixed.
"Taking sides with her?" he said, speaking for almost the first time in
the walk. "What do you mean?"
"Well, that's just what I did, the effect was," said Mr. Wing, his own
eye wandering, "and against my conscience, too. Why, Charlie, if I
wasn't an early retirer by habit, and this snow comin' on, too, I could
show you quick enough where all this Single Standard was
damfoolishness--unless, of course, you mean Perfect Purity, like I
preach myself. And when a woman jumps up and hits a crack at marriage,
that the rest of us are sacrificin' ourselves to build up for the good
of Society, why, she's a bad woman, you can talk till you're black in
the face, that had ought to be punished. Yes, and those that help her,
they're lending encouragement to the enemies of the Republic, seems
like, and they'd ought to be punished, too. But, shucks," said Mr. Wing,
crushing the fire from the cigar against the iron railing, and putting
the stump carefully in his pocket, "blood's thicker'n water, like they
say. And I don't regret voting the way I did, though the majority was
against me from the start."
The two men stood fronting each other in the silent street, and the
young man's face had become rigid. And he was now perfectly aware of the
faint gleam in the old man's eye, a gleam of distinctly malicious
enjoyment.
"Mr. Wing, what are you talking about?"
"Why, I thought you must have heard, Charlie, you seemed so kind of
glum. Why, I thought you must be on your way from Mary's now."
He glanced again at his door, as if to say that he really must not be
expected to stop for further conversation at this late hour. And then he
said what exploded Miss Angela Flower off the horizon.
"Why, Charlie, you see the School Board fired Mary this afternoon. On
account of this little friend of hers, Trevenna, that she--"
"WHAT?"
"Well, transferred's really the word, Charlie," said Uncle Oliver,
edging up a step or two. "She's sent over as a teacher to Lee Grammar
School, reporting Monday. Johnson Geddie's the new assistant principal
at the High School, commencing Monday, too. Well, Charlie, good--"
Charles seized the burly arm in a grip sufficiently strong for a writer,
and threw all his turmoil into three words: "_Who went over?_"
"Creamer and Honeykamp, I guess you mean. Of course, there was right
smart feelin' aroused, and it seemed Creamer's got a growin' daughter in
the High School, that's got to be protected and all. 'Twas only Mary's
good record saved her being dropped entirely, I guess, considering how
Mysinger'd worked the case up against her. Well, _good_-night, Charlie."
Wrenching away his arm, Mr. Wing rolled rapidly up the steps and
vanished into the dark cave of his hall. But Charles stood still as a
snow-man on the sidewalk, feeling as if the skies had fallen.