To the host, the luncheon party at the Arlington had not once presented
itself as a jolly gathering of any set, young or old. He had conceived
it as a duty, and an expensive one; he approached it, truth to tell,
with a certain secret complacence as to Mary Wing uppermost in his mind;
and he left it (after Mary's private talk with him) with chastened
reflections and a group of new reactions on the subject of Egoettes.
For two weeks, Charles had been very busy in the Studio. The luncheon
stood as his first whirl in Society since Angela Flower's bridge-party.
Donald Manford, departing to seek his biggest commission, seemed to need
a friendly send-off. Miss Carson seemed to be indicated as the logical
co-sharer of the same. At the Redmantle Club, as he had never forgotten,
Charles had taken Donald bodily away from the firm beautiful girl Mary
had selected to be his wife. Now, as it were, he was handing Donald back
to her again--loyal Moderns all. Beyond the match-making, however, this
function was intended to cheer up Mary, and to indicate to the Public
that Charles Garrott was her supporter in adversity as in success. Thus,
from every point of view, the "demoted" school-teacher was the real
guest of honor, and the host, when not fomenting conversation of a
matrimonial nature between the two young persons on his right, found a
peculiar pleasure in conversing with her. Indeed, he could hardly look
at Mary to-day without a lurking smile.
Later, as noted, Charles sobered. What Mary lingered to tell him, "for
his own good," was that Flora Trevenna had gone away. As it was the one
thing he had supposed Miss Trevenna incapable of doing, he was
proportionately taken by surprise. But, for a moment, he saw in the
tidings only that the great obstacle in his and Mary's way back to the
High School, their common Old Man of the Sea, had been amazingly
removed.
Endeavoring to conceal his immense relief, he said: "Gone away! Why,
where'd she go to?"
Mary's reply was meant to shake him, and it did.
"Oh--anywhere! She went, not because she had anywhere to go, but just
because she wouldn't stay here."
"But--I don't understand you! I thought this was where she wanted to
stay."
"More than anything else in the world. And that was why she went--don't
you see? She went because of her mother and father and sisters--whom you
supposed she never gave a thought to. She went because of Mysinger and
me."
The two advanced friends stood among the shrubs of the Arlington winter
garden, beside a little tinkling grotto. In silence, Charles dropped a
pebble down among the dusky forms of fish.
"Of course," said Mary, slowly, "I told her a story about--my trouble at
the High School. But I could see that she knew all the time. I'm sure
now that was what decided her to go--by herself. Some friend or other
got her some sort of position--in Philadelphia. Of course she went
without saying anything to me...."
Her voice, which could be so annoyingly calm at times, was deeply
troubled. Charles expressed sympathies, with haste; and, indeed, he felt
them now, oddly and disturbingly. It was as if Miss Trevenna, by that
simple act of getting down off other people's backs, had too suddenly
upset his whole opinion of her.
"Don't you think, after all," he said presently, "it may be easier for
her somewhere else for a while, than--"
"Oh, easier in a way, yes! But I know she felt, and I think, too, that
her only hope of really putting her life together again, ever, was
here--where she broke it in two. To go and bury herself among strangers
won't ever settle anything. Oh," exclaimed Mary, "if she could only,
only _marry_ now! I suppose people might stop thinking of her as a
pariah then, I suppose she might come back! But what's the use of
hoping? She's still crazily in love with that man, you see."
"What!--she _is_! Why'd she leave him then--?"
The former principal regarded him, drawing on her gloves. She had dark
eyebrows, well-marked and unusually arched; they gave a peculiar
intentness to her blue gaze, and a faint habitual interrogativeness.
Now, perhaps at the young man's expression, she laughed, suddenly and
naturally. Her spirit was not broken certainly.
"And women are really so awfully simple, too! Of course she left him,
Mr. Garrott, because she didn't think he cared enough for her any longer
to--justify her."
And, grave again, she asked, directly: "Have you really doubted that she
has a higher ideal of love than half the good people who've wanted to
run her out of the city and stone her?"
This, indeed, Charles had had no reason to doubt. He, of course, had
never shared the low opinion of a woman, that she had but one virtue,
and that one too crudely appraised. His complaint against this girl had
been upon a wholly different ground--now abruptly fallen beneath his
feet. He was troubled with the sense that this young figure, in
vanishing, had suddenly touched the dignity of tragedy. He had
remembered, with a little shock, that Miss Trevenna was not yet
twenty-five years of age.
And still, he, the authority, knew that having a high ideal was not
enough.
As the two moderns left the hotel, he said in a grave manner: "Let me
take you home."
"No, don't think of it! I'm only going to the car-line," said Mary; and
added absently: "I've been trying all week to go to see Angela, and now
I must."
"Ah, yes!--certainly!" said the luncheon host hastily, and a look that
could only be described as guilty flitted visibly over his face.
But this disappeared; the somewhat chastened authoritative look returned
at once. Pursuing his tutorial round, Charles seemed able to think of
nothing else but Mary's ill-starred friend, who had so damaged Mary, who
had so staked and smashed her own life, on a sentence in a book.
And who put that sentence into a book, and who was going to wipe it out
with another, if not he, Charles? Here, it might be, he had a pointer or
two to give to that great compeer of his, the lady in Sweden.
He had done Miss Trevenna a serious wrong, of course; he had judged her
by the company she kept. It was an age when cheeky "prophets" were
shouting from every bush a New philosophy which amounted to this: that
civilized society must be made accommodating to self-indulgent people.
They did not mention, very probably they did not know, that it had not
been easy to civilize society, and that self-indulgent people had not
done the job. With such shallow egoists he had classed Miss Trevenna;
and now, silent still, she had finely refuted him. There was, indeed, a
quality not for little folk in this girl's fierce imprudences. At the
test, she had repudiated the Ego, kicked off all the meanness and
flabbiness of her teachings. But in the meantime, unfortunately, these
teachings had done for her.
And it seemed to Charles Garrott, tramping intently along (for the
downpour gave him the freedom of the streets to-day) that it would be a
sweet and glorious thing if, say, a dozen of these leathern-lunged
professors of a new chaos could be gathered up, from the studies and
libraries where they sat so snug around the world, and brought here to
share this girl's catastrophe and go with her in her exile. And by
George!--they shouldn't squirm out by trying to blame it all on a mere
ignorant Public Opinion either! No, he, Charles, having a lot of them
together thus, would improve the occasion to explain, once and for all,
that freedom was not a thing that any chance passer could pick up and
use, like a cane; but, rather, the last difficult conquest of a unified
race. He would inform them that it was only too fatally easy to act
"free," at others' expense, the difficult and important thing being,
precisely, not so to act. And as to love, he would hammer into their
thick heads that the way to freedom was NOT through the delightfully
easy course of "demonstrating experiment" by self-elected Exceptional
People, but by the far more difficult demonstration that men and women
could be strong and constant in their affections, and trustworthy in
their passions.
There, indeed, was a demonstration for Exceptional People to get to work
on at once. Why write large books to declare that "the great love" was
its own justification. Why waste good ink upon an ideal truism? On what
day would a New book-writer teach men and women how to love greatly, or
how to tell even a little love from love's baser counterfeit? So long as
every schoolboy, drawn by a brief spark, will swear that his is the
great love; so long as men greatly love one person this year, and next
year quite another; so long as they will gladly deceive themselves, or
ape emotions above them, lest they must deny themselves a passing
indulgence: thus long would untrustworthy mortals need the hard
restraint of Law.
"Why, if men and women had the quality of love needed to make 'freedom'
work," thought the tutor suddenly, sloshing along toward the
Choristers', "they wouldn't need the freedom! No, then they'd be
perfectly satisfied with monogamous marriage."
Decidedly impressed with this epigram, Charles thought at once of "Notes
on Women." To draw the ruined life of Miss Trevenna across the line of
his new novel had, of course, come into his mind while he yet talked
with Mary. But he was fully aware that not one novel, or five, would
ever plumb bottom here.
Nevertheless, these thoughts pursued the young man through his lesson
with Miss Grace Chorister, and up to the very door of the Studio. There,
he suddenly became a working author again.
It was now five-thirty o'clock in the rainy afternoon. The demands of
hospitality had forced the postponement of Miss Grace a full hour, and
the cutting altogether of the old lady who was studying French. Entering
his retreat thus belatedly, Charles shot a look ahead at the
writing-table, according to his habit. A letter lay on the table,
wearing a distinctly business air; and when the young man was still
several paces off, he saw that the envelope bore the name of "Willcox's
Weekly."
For the most part, Charles's communications from editors had come to him
in long envelopes of an ominous, a rejectional, fatness. Now it was his
hour to see other samples from the editorial envelope supply, square
envelopes, gratifyingly thin. Breaking the square thin envelope of
"Willcox's Weekly" with nervous hurry, Charles read:--