They had all cautioned her, her father, her brother, the nice man who
sold the gasoline, to pick the quietest streets, and to go very slowly.
So, from the alley-mouth, her safe progress had been by Gresham Street
straight to peaceful Mason, where the traffic was so reassuringly light;
and now, as she rolled securely out Mason Street, there began to dawn
within her a first shy confidence. She went as slowly as her
well-wishers had meant, at least; prudently close to the known haven of
the sidewalk she kept at all times; now and then she stopped short, just
to see if she could, and always she could. Through all, was the
indescribable thrill of really doing it for herself now; lingering
incredulity but gave a sharper savor to delight. And she was continually
excited with the consciousness of large new possibilities here, of
personal power in quite a new dimension.
It was possible to go on indefinitely out Mason Street, but at Olive
(always a quiet thoroughfare) she was seized with a sudden
adventurousness. She decided to turn up Olive, in short; not meaning to
stop at the Wings', of course, but just thinking that if the Wings were
looking out the window as she went by, it would be quite a pleasant
thing. The enterprise, once conceived, was carried out with perfect
technical success; but at the moment of passing the Wings', unluckily,
an enormous ice-wagon came lumbering close by, riveting her attention,
leaving her not so much as an eyelid to wink toward people's windows.
Hence, she never knew whether the Wings were looking out or not. But her
confidence waxed. At Center Street the rumble of a street-car warned her
to stop a moment--just in time, too, for the car was hardly two blocks
away--and when the car had passed, what must she do but roll boldly
across the tracks and into the altogether unexplored regions beyond!
What prompted her to do this? Of course, the natural thing was to turn
down Center Street a block and get straight back to quiet Mason, which
had been duly tried and not found wanting. Afterward, she remembered
distinctly that she had been on the point of doing just that. Was it the
new adventurousness that beckoned her on, instead? Was it something yet
subtler and more mysterious? At any rate, here she was pushing into a
quarter of the city where she had never set foot in her life, where, in
all human probability, her foot alone would never have brought her. And
lo, she had not gone a block into the undiscovered country when a wonder
befell, and with a little jump, all but a little cry, she saw the lost
member of her coterie rise suddenly before her.
He had come round the unknown corner just ahead, and was walking
straight toward her. She became aware of the beating of her heart. All
this, it must be understood, was the very first time that Angela had
taken out her Fordette alone.
* * * * *
Mr. Garrott was just off the train. Two hours in a day coach might have
cramped his long legs; there might have been cinders down the back of
his neck. Nevertheless, he advanced with an unmistakably lively tread,
continually slapping his leg with a folded periodical of a size and
shape like "Willcox's Weekly."
Nor was the coterie member's presence on the Wings' street mere blind
chance, either. Those remarkable articles in the magazines about Cousin
Mary, which had but popped as a rumor into one of Angela's ears and out
the other, had naturally occupied a somewhat more prominent place in the
thought of their creator. He remained, indeed, dazzled by the
completeness of the write-ups' triumph.
Charles had stayed in the country four days longer than he had intended.
And in his extended absence his whole mine of publicity had gone off
with a brilliant suddenness that had startled him. The successful sale
of the third write-up before he left town had assured a decisive _coup_,
but the quick action the weeklies had given him went beyond all reason.
He had not hoped that even the first of the write-ups could see print
before the middle of the month, say; on the contrary, he had discovered
the last and best of them--the one signed Charles King Garrott--on the
train just now, in "Willcox's," for January 10th. In short, in the space
of a Christmas holiday he, Charles, had spread the vindicating feats and
features of his "demoted" friend to the four corners of the globe.
Literally that, for did not the combined circulation of "Willcox's," the
"Saturday Review," and "Hervey's National" exceed two million copies
weekly (this on the word of the circulation managers themselves, a class
of men whose consecration to the austerest veracity has passed into
proverb)? Surely there remained few literate persons in the world to-day
who could plausibly pretend that they had never heard of Mary Wing.
And Mary (as Angela had noted) had appreciated these extraordinary
services to the full. The letter she had written him in the country,
after the appearance of the "Saturday Review" article, was uniquely
grateful. A beautiful letter Charles had thought it; he had it in his
inside pocket now. And the interesting thought it had raised was this:
If his usually independent friend could be as grateful as that for the
write-ups, what would she say when his whole plan worked out, and his
Public Opinion had overwhelmed the School Board for her? Thus, on the
train, after reading "Willcox's" piece three times, and now as he strode
up the quiet back-street from the station, the author was intently
plotting out the next, or practical, stage of his campaign, still
unsuspected by her: the stage of the reprinting of the write-ups in the
local papers, in fine, of repeated editorial endorsement of the same, of
the outburst of letters from "Indignant Taxpayers," "High School
Graduates," and "Old Subscribers"--practically all, of course, written
by Uncle George Blenso and himself.
His thoughts proved increasingly stimulating to the home-come Charles.
And when he came to Olive Street, he suddenly bethought him to turn up
that way; not expecting to stop at the Wings', of course (for he had an
engagement to call there this evening, much as if he hadn't been a
modern at all), but merely thinking that if he should happen to meet
Mary it would be quite a pleasant thing....
Having turned, the buoyant young man presently sent, as it were, a
scouting eye on ahead. And it fell, not upon the friend he had made
famous in a night, but upon an Object approaching.
The object was a conveyance, a little vehicle of the self-propelling
type. It was an automobile, clearly; a runabout, you would have to term
it, though certainly of a pattern adopted in no recent year. So steep
and bobbed was this runabout's little body, so quaintly archaic its
contour, that it stirred in the beholder dim recollections of the early
days of the horseless age, of strange pictures seen in scientific
magazines back in the nineties. Very slowly the little vehicle
approached, but very loudly, too, with an increasing bias toward the
sidewalk, with queer rumblings and groanings, with the oddest snorts.
Charles's puzzled eye lifted. And so it was that it encountered again
the soft gaze that he had last seen misted in tears, upon a sofa. And so
he heard the pretty voice, that had once referred to him as a brute,
saying:--
"How do you do, Mr. Garrott!... I--I'm very glad to see you back!"
"Why--Miss _Flower_!"
Sheer surprise had halted him in his tracks, and the self-propelling
runabout, which had been almost stationary all along, became entirely
so, right at the curb.
"When did you get home?" Miss Flower was finishing, laughing, a becoming
color in her cheeks.
"I'm just in--this minute! How are you? I--ah--didn't realize at all
that it was you." He had taken the small hand she offered, momentarily
flustered, despite all effort, by the utterly sudden re-meeting. He was
aware that the girl looked a little conscious, too. But something in her
gaze seemed to be trying to tell him that bygones were bygones now; and
she went on with reassuring naturalness:--
"I hope you had a nice holiday? I've wanted very much to see you, and
thank you myself. About Wallie, I mean--your offering to teach him--"
"Oh!--Why, _that_!"
"It was really the nicest thing. I--haven't seen you since, but you
don't know how much I--we all appreciated--"
With recovered poise the young man easily brushed aside these thanks.
"But I'm awfully glad," he added, "that he didn't wait for me, after
all."
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You _heard_, then?"
He mentioned his letter from Mary Wing, causing her to say, "Oh,"
again.--"Wasn't it _wonderful_! I knew you'd be interested...."
She was prettier than he remembered--or was it merely that the new hat
(trimmed but yesterday) was more becoming than the old?--and her gaze,
though not reproachful a bit, had for him a quality subtly appealing. Of
the lives and loneliness of young womanly women--of that forced
_waiting_ which dams up all energies unused, and hangs the spirit to
thrash about in a void, working over each small event to a towering
importance--of such matters, a man, even Charles, the authority, knew
only through the powers of his imagination. Charles did observe,
however, that this girl seemed very glad to see him. And he felt that he
now reciprocated these feelings.
"But," said he, with a hypocritically pleasant look at the vehicle,
"Santa Claus seems to have remembered you, too! This is something new,
isn't it?" said Charles, though feeling that new was hardly the word.
"Yes,--aren't you surprised? My brother in Pittsburg gave it to me. I've
just learned to run it! It was so exciting!"
And then, in a pretty, hesitating way, she said: "Won't you let me drive
you--home, or wherever you're going? I'd like to, so much. I--want so to
tell you all the news."
He protested that he could not think of using Miss Flower as a taxicab.
But when she urged it, in pleasing, ingenuous sentences, and explained
that she was out only to drive about anywhere, for practice, it did not
occur to him to maintain the churlish negative. And, indeed, this was
exactly what he had desired from the moment of reading her perfect note
last month--sweet reconciliation in just such a casual way, admitting or
entailing next to nothing.
So the returning author of the write-ups was to be seen carefully
squeezing himself, and "Willcox's," into the seat of Tommy's delightful
gift.
"Let's see--the engine's still going--isn't it?" said she, rather
superfluously, it seemed, in view of the uproar. "Then I have to kick
that and push this over...."
As the girl said, so she did, her look a little anxious, her young face
flushed with excitement. And, sure enough, the vehicle, of a
self-propelling type, suddenly shook itself with a few loud snorts, and
jumped forward with a jar.
"And what sort of car is this?" resumed Charles, dissembling intense
curiosity as mere sympathetic interest.
"It is a Fordette," replied Angela, not without pride.
As they wobbled round the corner, narrowly missing the sidewalk, she
added in the same proud manner: "And this is my very first drive by
myself."
The taking of the corner (she explained that she could not turn round
alone yet) meant that he was not going to pass the Wings', after all;
but Charles hardly noticed that. He had himself to look to, in his
somewhat unusual position. However, the drive to the Studio, though
noisy, was very short; her completely feminine inefficience as a driver,
their snail's progress, could not extend it over many minutes; and the
whole thing proved as easy and reproachless as could possibly have been
wished. Light friendly talk was the note, flowing without embarrassment
now. Angela told of the two great happenings in her family, seeming to
count upon his interest, and getting it genuinely enough, too. He was
glad, sincerely, that Luck had smiled on this girl, who had seemed to
him not to be having much of a chance. But she was not one, even so, to
take all the conversation to herself; it was a trait that he had noted,
and liked, in her from the beginning.
"Mr. Garrott," she said, at the first little pause, "aren't you going to
have some stories out pretty soon now? You know you told me you were
writing some--before you began your book?"
How gladly Mr. Garrott would have reported a little luck, too! But no,
he was still known to Tables of Contents only as the author of
write-ups. Somewhat ruefully, he explained to Angela his position about
the editors; namely, that the sooner the lot of them came under the eye
of a lunacy commission, the better for all concerned.
She became the comforter: "But perhaps they've accepted some of your
stories while you were away so long!" He, however, knew that there was
nothing in that.
"Well, no--no. You see, my--my relative who lives with me, Judge Blenso,
looks after my mail when I'm away. And he's been sending me the casualty
lists from time to time."
"But that story I liked so much--you told me a little about it one
day--about Helena and her husband, don't you remember, who went off to
the desert island--"
"Oh, that? That's been declined--yes, declined three times, if I
remember rightly--"
"_Really!_ But how _could_ they! I should think they would have _jumped_
at it! Why, I thought it was just wonderful...."
Her instinct for supplying charm was not amiss, it seemed.
"By the way," said the young author carelessly, as they curved into his
own street, "have you happened to see this?"
And he not only showed Angela his "Willcox's," with the write-up in it,
but bestowed it upon her, for her own. It developed that he had extra
copies in his pocket.
Angela was very grateful for the magazine. Everything was as pleasant
and friendly as possible. And at parting, she said, with only the
slightest return of self-consciousness:--
"This has been a very short drive, Mr. Garrott! I hope we can have a
real one some day soon."
To that the young man, standing on the sidewalk before his own door,
replied with a courteous generalization. Wariness was reflexive with
him, so to say. But then, as he looked at the soft young face, he seemed
to become suddenly conscious of the essential caddishness of his past
behavior, and of yet another feeling, too, less coolly judicial. Had not
the Kiss, in fact, set this girl somehow apart from others, remaining as
a subtle bond after all?
Pressing her slender hand, he added: "Meanwhile, I've enjoyed this one
very much! You've been--extremely good to me."
* * * * *
"Willcox's" had given Mary the Freewoman a fine spread. The write-up
occupied all of one of its large pages, with three paragraphs "Continued
on Page 49," among the Men's Ready to Wear Clothing. Out of the middle
of the text, the best of the portraits supplied by Fanny Warder gazed
back steadily at the two relatives in the Studio. The famous Mary was
seated in a flowered armchair, and seemed just to have looked round over
her shoulder. Her delicate, quite girlish, face wore her characteristic
look of faint, grave interrogation; her eyes were intent and fine.
"Gad, you know!" said Judge Blenso, who had seen Charles's name in print
for the first time with an exclamation of pride and pleasure. "Why, it's
stunnin', my dear fellow! Simply stunnin'!"
But the mind's eye of Charles, looking down at the life-like
presentment, was seeing that confident gaze averted; the ear of his
fancy was hearing the low sounds of womanly emotion in this quarter at
last. That, of course, was just after he had gently said to her--why, it
might be next week!--"Do you remember telling me one day that I couldn't
help you at all? Why, Miss Mary, did you really suppose I'd let you go
on as a Grammar School teacher till _May_!...."
"Bring 'em out as a holiday book--that's what I say! Why, good gad,
Charles!--we only got twenty dollars for that piece there!"
The young man laughed absently, and removed his overcoat. A glance at
Big Bill showed that it was just four o'clock. He had examined the mail,
heard the secretary's unfavorable reports. The Studio, after nearly
three weeks' holiday, suggested the necessity of work undoubtedly; he
was as far from settling upon his Line as ever. But it seemed that he
didn't feel like plotting scenarios to-day.
The "Post," the "State," the "Chronicle"--why shouldn't he go down there
now, get the thing started at once?...
"Oh, Judge, by the way! Do you know whether Miss McGee ever brought back
that book I lent her?--fat red book, called 'Marna'?"
"'Marna,' 'Marna'? Never heard of it. Yes, that's so, she did! Here it
is!" said the Judge, and forthwith plucked Miss Angela's long-kept loan
from the bookcase close by.
"That's it! Let's lay it here on the mantel. Then maybe I'll remember--"
"And borrowed a lot more, too!" exclaimed the Judge, suddenly laughing
loud and long. "Gad, I lent her an armful, fact!--night we had the
sleet-storm!"
"You did?--good! We'll convince her we're her true friends yet."
His secretary, having gazed at him a moment with brilliant blankness,
suddenly exclaimed: "Why, Charles, my dear fellow, you're looking like a
fighting-cock! You must have put on a stone--fine! Here, let me feel
your muscle!"
Charles tried to evade that ceremony, but it was, of course, no use.
Having caught him going through certain setting-up exercises one night,
and being misled by the light remark he let fall, Judge Blenso was
irrevocably convinced that the sedentary Charles had an affair of honor
on his hands. The night he made this discovery--the very night Charles
secretly began the exercises, of course, the night of the day he had
seen Mysinger on the street--the Judge had become almost dangerously
excited, springing from bed and walking about a long time in his
pajamas, saying over and over: "The old blood'll tell! Gad, you know!
It's the old blood!" All attempts to explain, then and since, had been
utterly without effect.
However, a knock on the door interrupted the proceedings, and Mrs.
Herman came walking into the Studio--a dark, round, rosy little body,
beetle-browed but beaming.
"Such a popular man I never saw!" said she, roguishly. "One lady meeting
him and driving him up from the station, another calling him up before
he's hardly arrived, and goodness knows who'll be next!"
"Why, who's calling me, Mrs. Herman?"
"It's Miss Wing!--waiting at the phone! And no wonder, with all you and
the Judge have done for her, I'm sure! Judge, I hope you find your new
chair comfortable?"
Having received the unexpected summons with a peculiar start of
gladness, the young man descended the stairs with the most agreeable
anticipations. To do a valuable service for a friend is, with some
natures, to become fonder than ever of that friend; and Charles, from
the moment of reading her unprecedented letter, was aware that his
original services to Mary had distinctly had these sentimental
reactions. (For of course such natures _are_ sentimental, disgustingly
so, and real Men--not to say realistic men--invariably hate and despise
their friends, and speak to said friends at all only with a view to
taking away their money or their wives.)
So, sitting down at the little telephone-table in the dark rear-hall,
Charles smiled to himself and said, in a false voice:--
"Pardon me, but is this the famous Miss Wing, who--"
And Mary's voice seemed to spring toward him through the receiver, like
an embrace: "Oh, _King Charles_!"
It was a little name she had made long ago by turning his first two
names about, but reserved for rare occasions only. Rare also was it to
hear this commonly contained voice so deeply stirred.
"Welcome home! I hope I didn't interrupt your work, but it seemed I
couldn't _wait_! And, of course, I haven't _half_ thanked you yet,
haven't begun to tell you how much--how much--I appreciate all you've
done for me...."
Once more, the fortunate Charles was brushing aside a lady's
gratitude--rather generously, considering the infrequency of grounds of
gratitude here. He laughed gaily into the receiver.
"The real point is, why under the sun did you connect me right away with
the remarkable outburst of popular admiration? Hartwell went gossiping
about, I suppose?"
"I didn't need Mr. Hartwell to tell me anything about that! But--"
"Aha! So Fanny told you about the photographs--"
"She never breathed a word--"
"Good-evening, Miss Holmes!--old Watson speaking! Will you kindly
explain your--!"
"Why, of course there wasn't but one person on earth who could have done
such a beautiful thing for me!"
All alone in the hall, Charles felt himself coloring with pleasure.
However, the unwonted flush was not for long.
"I have to pinch myself," the girl's eager voice rushed on (did it sound
just a thought more triumphant than even the author of the write-ups
could have expected?),--"for every magazine I pick up is full of nothing
but Me! I've just seen 'Willcox's'--oh, you don't know how much I liked
that! You've simply taken my breath away! And then to come in and find
_this_!--everything beautiful happening to me at once! I--"
"What? _More_ honors, celebrity?"
"The greatest!--the most wonderful! Mr. Garrott, what DO you suppose?"
Mr. Garrott hardly liked the slant the conversation was taking. The
understanding was that whatever beautiful things happened to the Career
were to happen exclusively through him now.
"Why!--I can't guess! Not--Has the School Board--"
"Pish for the School Board," cried the voice that was wont to be so
calm. "You're talking to _the new Secretary of the League_!"
"I'm.... _What?_"
"The person you're conversing with, if you please, is the General
Secretary of the National League for Education Reform!" Her happy laugh
rang on the wire: "Are you _staggered_? Well, I am, too! I simply can't
begin to take it in...."
Had Mrs. Herman's house fallen about his ears, the young man at the
telephone-table could, indeed, scarcely have been staggered more. His
sense was of one falling headlong through space. He gripped the edge of
the table with a large left hand, and for the instant there was no
speech in him.
"I found the letter from Dr. Ames when I got in just now--oh, the nicest
letter, explaining everything! And of course I wanted to tell you right
away--you've been so good about wanting to help! Don't you remember, it
was you who spoke of this as my brilliant revenge? We little thought
then ..."
_Wanting to help!_ Doubt not, that was the body blow. "No--no! And I--I
really don't take it in--even now," he was saying, struggling
desperately for his mask. "I--ah--I'd given up all--idea, you see! Why,
I understood that was _all off_! I--"
"Of _course_--so had I! That's what makes it such a wonderful bolt from
the blue! There was another candidate, you see--a college president,
imagine!--and Dr. Ames says he felt he ought to be very discreet and
reticent till it was all settled. But I was elected unanimously, and
must be in New York to take charge of the office on March 1st...."
It was the complete collapse of his triumph and his hope: he would not
be going to the newspaper-offices now. But that sentence, that concrete
date, took the whole matter deeper still. Charles Garrott took a firmer
grip on Mrs. Herman's little table. Now his voice came firmer, too:--
"The first woman secretary they ever had!... Why--it's _immense_!"
In the ensuing dialogue, in which, for pride's sake, he sought to strike
just the right felicitatory note, there was an instant when the
possibility flashed upon him that the stunning event was itself but the
unimagined by-product of the write-ups. The directors had decided not to
give the distinguished post to an obscure provincial teacher, when all
of a sudden his great broadside of fame for Mary had come roaring in
among them. The thought, in this moment of utter frustration, seemed
actually welcome to him. But it had hardly fluttered before Mary struck
it dead, in the most incidental manner: incidental--since, to be just,
she, having no knowledge whatever of his secret plans, could hardly
guess what annihilation she was dealing out to them. It developed, in
short, that her election, though held back a few days to be ratified by
the trustees of the League's endowment fund, had actually taken place on
December 27th. And it was too readily recalled that the first of the
write-ups had not appeared till the following day.
"Yes--yes!... Fine holiday, thank you!--fine! But of course--no triumphs
like this to report!..."
"Well!--I mustn't keep you now, of course!" said the victorious voice.
"I'm looking forward to seeing you ..."
No, it was sufficiently clear that he had but labored to heap coals in
Newcastle. It was just the case of the old write-up, last year; only now
a thousand times worse. Often before, this desire in him to help, this
spontaneous protecting instinct which seemed to be always flowing out
here, had been rebuffed and defeated. But this time, his defeat seemed
to be final. And, hanging up the receiver at last, the young man sat
silent with the feeling that something valuable and important had
suddenly departed from his life.
He felt that he had been rather imposed upon, but that didn't matter
particularly. He felt beaten, as he had never been beaten before, and
that seemed to matter a good deal. With an odd and profound sense of
blank chagrin, he recognized, at last, that when Mary Wing had said that
she didn't need his help, she had been merely stating a literal and
obvious truth. How he had been such a fool as ever to think otherwise?
But deeper than all this, it seemed clear from the beginning that he was
disappointed in his friend, personally. Had he not read into her all
along, and put into the write-ups, a rather finer quality than she, in
fact, possessed? Spinsters were entitled to a man's freedom to follow
away their work--of course. But it seemed that he had never been able to
imagine Mary as actually seizing this Right. And now, here she was doing
it, with joy--the end of next month. Now behold her, whose praises he
had so superfluously sung round the world--just an ordinary Redmantler
after all, it seemed, exultantly striking off mother, home, friends; a
female Egoist, no more, visibly engaged in "fiercely hacking away"....
He could, indeed, scarcely take it in. And stoutly he assured himself
that his whole feeling about the matter would have been different--if
only she had showed, at once, that this would be a wrench for her, that
her thought was colored by a sense of values not connected with her
Self. But no; it seemed that the new General Secretary had no thought to
spare for the immaterial business of being a sister and being a
daughter.
* * * * *
So Charles's call at the Wings' on the evening of his homecoming wore a
complexion not contemplated by him when he had arranged the matter.
He had made this engagement, under the general misapprehension, in his
reply to Mary's grateful letter last week. And now he had to keep it,
however malapropos, resolved as he was that she should never sense any
criticism or disapprobation in him. To seek to "influence" her,
naturally never entered his mind. No, he was her casual spectator now
and henceforward; he had dipped his oar in her affairs for the last
time.
But the call was hardly much of a success, despite all efforts. Mary,
having now had time to recapture her usual poise, no longer impressed
one as being so unreservedly overjoyed with herself. It was noted that
she kept referring to the write-ups, kept assuring him how delightful
she found it to be a celebrity as well as a Secretary, etc., etc. The
caller's intellect coldly gave her credit for "being very nice."
However, no niceness could help much to drape the stark obtruding facts;
no civilities seemed fitted to cope with the intangible wall suddenly
sprung up in the old friendship. And if there had lingered in Charles's
mind some revolting incredulity, some reactionary insistence that Mary
could never really carry out the typical exploit of the Egoette, the
talk this evening finally killed it. The famous educator's sentences
made it clear, once and for all, that she was Leaving Home for good--for
her own good, of course--on the 1st day of March succeeding.
Charles was determinedly "sincere" throughout the brief call,
continuously and spuriously hearty. Inwardly, his resolve grew more and
more fixed that this young woman, who was so rarely competent to Lead
Her Own Life, should be permitted to lead it quite unassisted
henceforth. For himself, he decided that his life should go to the
unremitting service of pure Letters. But of such matters, of course, he
permitted his agreeable chatter to yield no hint. Taking his departure
upon a new wave of felicitations, he could but congratulate himself upon
the trained adeptness of his mask.
And Mary, having shut the door upon her caller, stood leaning against
it, her arched brows drawn together in a faint frown, her fine eyes
faintly bewildered.
"Now what," she said, half aloud, "have I said or done, or left unsaid
or undone, this time?"
And then she went slowly back to her mother's bedroom, where she found
her mother with stockings to darn, and (taken unawares) her eyes a
little red.