Miss Angela Flower entertained at bridge last evening at the
residence of her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Oscar P. Flower. Miss
Flower's guests included a limited number of the younger set.
At this description of himself and Fanny, Charles smiled, for almost the
first time that day. But as he continued to gaze at that small hopeful
item, his mirth faded, and soon he began to stroke the bridge of his
nose, his look distinctly worried.
X
In the little house of the Flowers, Miss Angela sat forlorn at her
favorite post. She entertained the younger set no more. It was the
middle of December, and a cold rain poured. With a ragged bit of
chamois, the old-fashioned girl polished her already comely nails. The
window-curtain, shrunken and twisted with more than one washing, was
hooked back on a convenient nail; now and then Angela picked up her
shabby opera-glasses and peeped over into the fan-shaped sliver of
Washington Street. But few pedestrians passed over there to-day, and the
motor-cars of the Blessed slid by in curtains of waterproof.
[Illustration: ANGELA PEEPED OVER INTO WASHINGTON STREET]
It was the slack hour again, it seemed, leaving home-makers with idle
hands. Even that subtle business to which but one modern authority gave
a scientific rating, the Business of Supplying Beauty and Supplying
Charm, was here at a complete standstill. The men of Angela's family,
who must be refreshed and made joyful for their battlings in the world
without, were at this hour out, battling. Mrs. Flower was lying down in
her room, doing her own refreshing. As for the cook downstairs, she had
her orders, and recked not of Charm. Angela, thus, had her strictly
earned leisure; and, on the other hand, she had not those intenser
occupations for leisure, reforms, fights, and attacks on Morals, such as
engrossed the mind of her advanced Cousin Mary. As a womanly woman, she
naturally thought a great deal about people, her friends, and as an
unassisted stranger in the city, she really had very few friends to
think about. Hence, it was the most natural thing imaginable if she was
now wondering, for the thousandth time, what in the world had become of
Mr. Garrott.
Angela could not understand about Mr. Garrott. He simply never seemed to
walk any more. That she had hurt his feelings very badly that night
after the bridge-party she had understood, from the start. But perhaps
she had never meant to hurt them so badly as this; and that Mr. Garrott
could vanish utterly from Washington Street had, indeed, not entered her
thoughts. This, however, was precisely what Mr. Garrott had done, from
the very day following the misunderstanding.
For so, in the lapse of days, had Angela generously come to think of the
occurrence on the sofa. She and Mr. Garrott had had a terrible
misunderstanding.
It was half-past four o'clock; the dreary day was shutting in. Angela
looked down into her own back yard, which was small, mean-looking, not
devoid of tin cans, and now running with dirty water. A dingy old shed
or outhouse, where some previous tenant had thriftily stabled a horse,
contributed not a little to the wintry desolateness of the scene.
Beneath the window the cook, Luemma, emerged, a ragged print-skirt
turned over her head, and emptied ashes into a broken wooden barrel.
Angela yawned, and picked up a hand-glass.
The girl's more kindly view of Mr. Garrott's demeanor had been, of
course, a gradual growth. Her mortification and rage against the young
tribute-payer had lasted two days, at least, and chancing to see her
poor Cousin Mary at this time,--who was now being talked about from one
end of the town to the other,--she had taken occasion to speak most
disparagingly of Mr. Garrott, though, of course, in an indirect manner.
She had described him as a person of the _lowest ideals_. At this Cousin
Mary had protested, quite indignantly; and, though Angela well knew
there were phases of Mr. Garrott which her mannish cousin was not likely
ever to see, that stout championship had doubtless done much to check
her first resentment and make her see things in a truer light. Moreover,
she was naturally a sweet-tempered creature, and the long days
following, and the long empty walks, may have been just the things
needed to appeal most subtly to her higher nature. After all, Mr.
Garrott had been remarkably nice to her, paying her every attention from
the beginning. And even if he _had_ been carried away, for once--what
did that show ...
A ring at the doorbell made Angela jump a little. While the Flowers had
a small house, they had a loud bell. Though its clanging nowadays rarely
meant anything exciting, the diversion, on the whole, was not unwelcome.
The young housekeeper rose, went out into the hall, and listened down
over the banisters.
Below, there was nothing to listen to. Receiving only twelve dollars a
month, Luemma seemed to think she must take out the residue of her wages
in inefficience and impudence, and did; sometimes she answered the bell,
sometimes she "had her hands in the lightbread," etc. The present seemed
to be one of the latter times. The bell pealed again; a voice from the
front called, "Angela!--are you dressed?"--and Angela, replying to her
mother, went down to the door herself, smoothing her hair and trimming
her waist as she went.
The caller proved to be none other than her disgraced cousin, Mary Wing.
"Well, Angela, how are you?" said she, entering confidently, and kissed
Angela's cheek. "I hope I didn't break into your nap, or anything
unforgivable like that?"
"Oh, no, indeed, Cousin Mary. How d' you do? I wasn't asleep."
Cousin Mary was enveloped from neck to heels in a becoming gray
raincoat. Beneath that were seen glimpses of a costume rather elaborate
for bad weather and a workaday world. Nor did Cousin Mary's manner seem
in the least crushed or subdued, as morals demanded that the manner of a
disgraced person should be.
All the same, Angela greeted her cordially enough, with only a faint
conscientious stiffness traceable to her mother. For one thing, she was
really sorry for Mary now; right or wrong, she genuinely wished they
hadn't expelled her from the High School, and sent her off to a Grammar
School, in a low quarter of the city. And then besides that, whatever
Cousin Mary's strange ideas and behavior, the fact remained that she
happened still to be one of her, Angela's, particular little
coterie--that small group of friends and relatives with whom she herself
seemed to be sadly out of touch just now.
Mary entered with the air of being in a hurry. In the car-shaped parlor
she unbuttoned her coat, nevertheless, the Latrobe heater being, like
the doorbell, small but powerful. Angela, seated on the famous sofa,
said:--
"Cousin Mary, you're all dressed up! I believe you're going to a party!"
Mary glanced down at herself with indifference.
"No," said she, "but I've been to a little sort of one, a luncheon. And
we didn't leave the hotel till half an hour ago, either--"
"Oh, a luncheon! They're fun, I think. Where was it?"
"At the Arlington--very fine and beautiful, but it took hours! That's
why I'm so late getting around here. I've wanted specially to see you
for several days, Angela, but I haven't seemed to find a minute, and
this was my last chance. I wondered if you had any engagement for
to-morrow afternoon?"
"No, indeed, Cousin Mary, I haven't any engagement."
"Then I want you to come with me to a lecture," said Cousin Mary, "at
four o'clock."
The young girl's face, which had become brightly expectant at the
mention of engagements, fell perceptibly. She covered her disappointment
with a little laugh.
"Well,--thank you, very much, Cousin Mary,--but you know I don't
appreciate lectures very much. I'm not clever enough--"
"But this isn't an ordinary lecture. In fact, I shouldn't have used that
word at all. It's a talk, a personal talk to women by a woman, and a
wonderful one--Dr. Jane Rainey. You may have heard of her?"
"Well, I'm not sure. What is she going to talk about?" asked Angela
politely.
"The subject that means most to every woman, no matter what she thinks
or says! And Dr. Rainey, I do believe, knows more about it than anybody
else living. Jane Clemm she was--but that was years ago, before you
could remember. I got her to come here to speak, myself,--and expect to
lose some money on the transaction, too,--heigho! But I don't mind
really, it's such a privilege to have the whole subject lit up, from the
modern point of view, by a speaker like this. Jane Rainey's a practicing
physician, a fine human being, the mother of four children herself, and
she--"
"But what _is_ her subject, Cousin Mary?"
"That's it!--marriage and motherhood."
Angela stared at her cousin, and then looked rather shocked. Next, faint
color appeared in her smooth cheeks. It really seemed that Mary had
learned nothing, from the painful lesson she had just received. Why did
she have this persistent interest in the unpleasant side of life?
She said more decisively than was her wont: "No, Cousin Mary, I really
don't think I'd care to go--thank you."
Mary Wing, checked in her forensic by Angela's expression, looked
surprised, though, perhaps, not taken aback, and certainly not rebuked.
"Now, why not? I honestly hoped the subject would have a special
interest for you. You--"
"For me!--Oh, no! I--"
"My dear, you know you told me once what your ambition was--to be a good
wife some day, when the right man came for you. And that's the ambition
of every normal woman, I believe,--or one of them,--no matter what else
she may have in her head! Well, you see, that's exactly what this
brilliant student--and woman--wants to advise us about--how to fulfill
this ambition; how to prepare ourselves to be good wives and--"
"But I don't think of it that way at all, Cousin Mary. I hope," said
Angela, pink-cheeked, but once more standing firm for propriety against
all the astonishing Newness--"I hope I'll know how to be a good wife--to
the man I love--without going to any lectures--"
"Do you think anybody on earth knows as much as that, just by intuition?
It seems to me ... But perhaps your feeling is--you don't like the idea
of a public talk on the subject?"
"I don't, Cousin Mary--frankly. I know I seem to you dreadfully behind
the times--and all. But that's the way I was brought up to feel, and
it's the way I do feel. I'm not advanced at all, I thought you knew."
There was a silence in the dingy little parlor, during which the pouring
rain became audible.
"Of course I don't want to press you against your will, Angela," said
Mary slowly. "You know that? But--I can't get away from feeling that
being a good wife--and mother--in this awfully upset, transitional age,
when men's ideals are changing step for step with women's--and perhaps a
little in advance of them, who knows?--I believe it's the most
complicated and difficult vocation in the world. Compared with it, any
ordinary man's profession--like engineering, for instance--looks to me
like simplicity itself. And, Angela, I can't believe that every woman is
born with all this understanding, all this difficult expert knowledge in
her head, any more than I believe that every man is born knowing by
intuition how to be a good engineer. Of course we'd think it quite
strange--shouldn't we?--if Donald, as a boy wanting to be an engineer,
had thought he mustn't read any books that mentioned engineering, and
must stop his ears if--"
Angela, feeling almost ready to stop her ears herself, interrupted with
some warmth:--
"Cousin Mary, we simply don't understand each other! I don't think
of--of romance--and marriage--as anything in the least like
_engineering_--not in the least! I don't think of them as subjects for
lectures by _experts_! And I was brought up to feel there were some
things not very--suitable to talk about. I was brought up not to think
about them at all."
"Of course, my dear!--I understand. But every woman thinks about
marriage--doesn't she? She can't help it. Take me," said Mary,
good-humoredly--"a confirmed old maid school-teacher who's just
scandalized half the city, and been publicly dismissed from her job. I
haven't the slightest idea of marrying, ever, and yet I think about it
often, and would like to feel--"
"You do? Well, I am different. I _don't_ think about it."
"You don't think about marriage?"
"I never think of it at all," said Angela.
That settled Cousin Mary. After a brief pause she said, in the nicest
way: "Well, then, forgive me, Angela, and forget everything I've said."
Angela forgave her readily enough. Shut your eyes to the horrid,
unwomanly streak in her, and Mary Wing was really a very pleasant
person. She had always said that, to her mother and others. So talk
flowed easily into other channels, and the air of cousinly amity was
soon restored. But just when that was accomplished, Mary rose
unexpectedly to go, and Angela found herself left with several topics
not yet mentioned at all.
"Oh, don't go yet!" said she. "I want to--"
"I _must_! I really had no time at all to-day, but came anyway, whether
or no. How pretty you look, Angela," said Mary, and kissed the now
unblushing cheek again.
"I wish the lunch-party hadn't kept you so long! I haven't--"
"I do, too! A whole good afternoon! And the worst of it was," said Mary,
eyeing her with a sort of speculative archness, "I stayed after
everybody was gone just to talk to Charles Garrott, whom you dislike so
much! Still," she added, with a fading of archness, "I had something to
tell him for his own good, at least."
Cousin Mary's changes of expression were lost upon Angela. "Mr. Garrott!
Was he at the lunch party?"
"He gave it--didn't I say? It was just a little _bon voyage_ party for
Donald--and Helen Carson! Donald's leaving to-morrow for Wyoming, you
know, to be gone a month--"
"No--you hadn't told me.... Who else was at the lunch, Cousin Mary?"
"Oh, just those I've mentioned, and Fanny for chaperon, and Talbott
Maxon."
Angela, naturally, felt more lonely and out of things than ever. In
fact, she felt blankly depressed. Mr. Garrott's luncheon had included
exactly her coterie, only she herself being omitted.
"Why do you say I dislike Mr. Garrott, Cousin Mary? Of course I like him
very much. You know I told you long ago he was much the most attractive
man I've met here."
"Well, but I thought you must have changed your opinion, when you told
me the other day that his ideals were so low."
"Why, of course I didn't _mean_ it, Cousin Mary! I thought you knew I
was angry when I spoke."
The two cousins regarded each other, in the dark little hall by the
hatstand. Angela felt her position to be annoying. But she explained
with that complete lack of embarrassment characteristic only of women
conscious of rectitude:--
"I can't tell you _all_ about it, even now. But what happened was that
Mr. Garrott and I had a terrible misunderstanding, and at first I put
all the blame on him, and was awfully mad with him, I admit. But since
then, the more I've thought of it, the more I've seen that I was very
unjust to him--in what I thought and said, too. He really has much more
cause to be mad with me--now--than I have with him."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it. Don't quarrel--that's my motto," said the
stormy Miss Wing. "And Mr. Garrott thinks you are charming!--I know, for
he told me so. Well--"
"Yes--that's what has changed my feeling about it all, you see. Cousin
Mary--when you see him again, you might just say--"
"My dear, I never see Mr. Garrott!" said Mary, rather hastily.
"Why, you've just seen him!"
"The first time for a week, and probably the last time for a month. He's
going down to his mother's in the country on Saturday, to stay over
Christmas and New Year's. Angela, I must _run_!"
Left alone, Angela remained standing in the hall for a moment, gazing
into space, of which the hall really afforded little. Her despondency
now had a certain edge; it did seem hard that, while her friends and
relatives--and Cousin Mary, of all people--were going to jolly lunches
of the younger set, _her_ invitations should be only to New-Woman
_lectures_. And still, the girl's feeling had no bitterness, even now.
Of course she understood that she would have been at Mr. Garrott's
luncheon, too, but for the misunderstanding....
As she went upstairs, her mother called out to her, and Angela pursued
her way to the front bedroom, as she had meant to do anyway. Here, her
mother was discovered prone upon a pillowless lounge, dangerously facing
a gaslight and reading a magazine which had no covers. Having laid the
magazine, broken open, on her lap, Mrs. Flower listened attentively to
her daughter's report of Mary's call, and at the end said:--
"I must say I think it's very kind of Mr. Garrott to stand by her in
that way. Men secretly can never admire that sort of woman, whatever
their theories may be. And that's just it--that explains Mary's whole
lurid course. If she had ever had a ray of attention, of course she
would never have dreamed of these wild goings on."
Angela's mother was still a pretty woman, and long habit, it seemed, had
impressed her voice with a permanent plaintiveness. She had kicked off
her slippers for comfort; her high-bred feet were clad in faded cotton
stockings; she herself looked high-bred and faded. Her air and tone were
those of one to whom life had brought rude shocks--such as, that lovely
woman's portion was sacrifice ever, and that men cared only for the
first bloom of girlish beauty--and who found her only consolations in
her religion, and in the noble words, My Duty.
"You must see her when she calls, I suppose, but that is all. Until she
completely changes her ideas on all subjects, I cannot allow any
intimacy. I cannot."
"She means to be nice to me, mother. And besides--that's the sort of
connections you and father have given us, you know."
Mrs. Flower denied any responsibility whatever for the advanced Mary.
She continued her remarks with interest, the theme being one of her
favorites. Angela, having moved restlessly about the room for a time,
had halted at the window. Hence, she gazed out at a board fence billed
all over with advertisements of a celebrated spring tonic. A trolley-car
went rumbling by, its wheels throwing off jets of icy rain-water. It had
been a long, long day.
"The things women will do when they discover they're not attractive to
men! They simply get defiant. They get all reckless and bitter!"
Into the narrow walkway below turned a very tall man, under a small
greenish umbrella. In the silence of the house, the front door was heard
to open and shut. Then there were footsteps along the hall below, and
another door shut quietly, toward the back.
"Anything, anything to distract their minds!"
"Mother!--where on earth do you suppose father _goes_! His lecture was
over at half-past three. If only, _only_, he'd try to get some patients!
But he's not even in for his office hour half the time!"
"I'm sure I do not know," replied her mother, generally, and picked up
her coverless magazine.
Angela fidgeted at the window, drumming on the dripping pane. Presently
she said:--
"Oh, mother! Why _couldn't_ you or father have some relations that would
help us! We're the only family I ever heard of that hasn't a _single_
rich relation!"
Her mother, not looking up, mentioned complainingly the branch of her
family to which she always referred in such discussions.
"Much good the Ashburtons have done us!" said Angela truly, and also as
usual. "When they think we're not good enough to speak to. I have nobody
to help me but myself."
It was as if the girl was herself struck with the truth of her own
observation. Her gaze out the window became thoughtful, and then intent.
Suddenly, without more speech, she left the window and the room.
In the hall there came an interruption. An untutored voice bawled up,
without the slightest preamble:--
"_Sugar hasn't came!_"
"All right," responded the young housekeeper, after a short annoyed
pause.
And then, returning to her own room, she thought: "If I telephone from
Mrs. Doremus's now, it'll be too late for supper. I'll have to ask
Wallie--just to step around ..."
Angela shut the door behind her and lighted a flaring gasjet. Then she
stood still, knitting her brows slightly, glancing about. She wanted
writing-paper, and didn't know where to put her hands on any, exactly.
In the sharp light of the gas it was now seen that Angela's little
bedroom lacked Beauty, of the purely objective sort: Beauty of that kind
depending, as all know, on fathers being good providers, which was not
the case here, alas. Everything in Angela's room was cheap when it was
new, and everything was far from new now. A very large old walnut
wardrobe occupied all one side of the room, awkwardly substituting for a
clothes-closet. The bed was of yellow imitation-oak, and sagged
considerably in the middle from worn-out springs. The bureau was to
match; its somewhat wavy mirror was the nearest Angela came to a
dressing-table; its three drawers would never quite shut, and frequently
wouldn't quite open. There were also two chairs in the bedroom, one
straight, one a re-seated rocker, and a small walnut work-table, which
trembled dangerously if you brushed against it.
Nor was the room specially spruce, at the moment at least, people's
tastes differing in these matters, even in the same family. Angela's
young brother, for example, kept his small room shining like a new pin,
and let himself personally go till he was a disgrace to the family.
Angela, on the other hand, whose exquisite personal neatness had
attracted the notice of Charles Garrott himself, was more or less
indifferent about a room which nobody but the family ever saw. The door
of the wardrobe stood open now, with one of the yellow bureau-drawers; a
pair of shoes rested on the straight chair, with a pair of stockings
curled on the rag-carpet below. On the sway-backed bed were strewn
various things--a towel, two old summer dresses that she had been trying
on a little earlier in the afternoon, a pair of soiled white gloves, a
paper of pins and two new dress-shields.
In the drawer of the wardrobe, Angela presently found several sheets of
note-paper, and, after a longer search, a single envelope. The envelope
was not what it had been once. It had knocked about the world a bit in
its time; its bright youth was gone. Upon its face was a dusky smudge,
souvenir of some forgotten encounter, and, near the smudge, some hand
had once written the word "Mrs.," and then lost heart and abandoned the
whole enterprise. Still, it was possibly the only envelope in the house.
Angela found, after due trial, that the smudge yielded, quite
satisfactorily, to the eraser on the end of a pencil. As for the
reminiscent "Mrs.," that was easily enough worked over into a "Mr.,"
though not, to be sure, without a slight blot.
Angela sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the rickety work-table
into position before her. Having addressed the remainder of the
envelope, after the "Mr.," she sat biting the penholder for a space. But
when the business end of the pen was put into action, it went ahead
quite steadily:--