In the Home on Center Street, the shrunken curtain was rarely hooked
back on the nail now. And on the ledge of the little window that gazed
toward the Blest, the shabby opera-glasses gathered dust.
As is perfectly understood, Careers in the making are the stuff to make
conservatives of others. Observing Egoettes, an authority, if male,
inevitably reacts, thinking better and better of the gentle business of
supplying beauty and supplying charm. Charles Garrott, in short, having
repudiated all connection with the life of Mary Wing, was in just the
proper frame of mind to applaud the life of Mary's so different cousin.
And Charles did applaud it--certainly. But, of course, such purely
scientific endorsement did not controvert another established known
truth, namely, that, under certain circumstances and as applied to
certain individuals, the supply of the soft commodities referred to may
very well prove a little in excess of the demand.
The well-known thought first flickered back into Charles's mind on the
third day of his homecoming. At the moment, he stood on the corner
nearest Berringer's, having just dismounted there from Miss Angela's
conveyance. On the fifth day of his homecoming, at the same corner, his
reflections on supply and demand were assuming an increasing
definiteness.
"Well, then--good-bye!" he was saying, with his fatal pleasantness. "And
thank you very much for the lift."
From the seat of Tommy's valuable donation, Angela was gazing up at him.
And he saw that her face, which had been smiling, was touched with a
brief seriousness.
"Oh, you know I've enjoyed it--so much! But--we never seem to have
anything but these little bits of talks. I'm sorry.... Perhaps I'll see
you to-morrow?"
"Ha!--quite likely!--yes! Thank you! Well!--_good-bye!_"
And he turned away toward luncheon and the good man-talk with a crescent
uneasiness, having failed to point out--possibly failing to
remember--that to-morrow was Saturday, and he would be off to the
country again.
Day before yesterday, he had encountered the conveyance as he left the
Demings' at one o'clock. To-day, he had overtaken it on his walk
downtown--literally that, for he was a fast walker and a little
absent-minded besides. Thus he had now enjoyed three peace-making drives
with the girl he had once parted from forever, all in the course of his
first five days at home. And now at the end of their third pleasant
talk, particularly after these last prospective remarks of hers, Charles
could not but feel that the true object of these re-meetings had been
satisfactorily accomplished. Now the reconciliation was complete; now he
felt no lingering shadow of doubt of his forgiveness for having once
been a brute.
He did not regret the drives; he was very glad, indeed, to be good
friends again; but his subtle instinct seemed to warn him that he and
Angela would do best, would get along with the fewest misunderstandings,
without a rapidly developing intimacy. And, taking the higher view, it
clearly was not right, it was not moral, that a confirmed bachelor like
himself should go on indefinitely monopolizing a nice young Spinster
Home-Maker's time.
Returning to town on Monday, Charles, though in the kindest way, went to
Berringer's by the Center Street car-line. He felt, indeed, that he was
really looking out for the girl's higher good more than for his own: she
lacked that competence to manage her own life, so harshly flaunted by
others. All passed off well. On Tuesday he utilized the traction system
again, with equally satisfying results. And then, on Tuesday afternoon,
as he trod professionally from the old lady's who was studying French to
Miss Grace Chorister's, he suddenly ran upon the Fordette again.
By an odd chance, the quaint little vehicle was standing still, directly
in front of the Choristers'. His reconciled friend was out of it,
standing by, bending well over the car, peering into it. Nevertheless,
by some sixth sense, she saw him at once and, straightening up with a
pleased smile, she waved and called:--
"Oh, Mr. Garrott!--how glad I am to see you! Do you know how to crank?"
He approached with the gallantest air, the most civil speeches. All the
same, as he bent to his hard labor--for the Fordette proved dangerously
stiff in the crank--and politely sought to explain how to avoid killing
the engine for the future, he was conscious of a certain sense of
rebellion.... Excellent, laudable, justifying things, beauty and charm;
but the plain fact was that he, Charles, was simply not in the market
for them at present, that was all.
The friendship, indeed, was well cemented now; the talk characterized
with a growing confidence.
"Oh, how strong you are!" said Angela admiringly, as he finally got the
old engine to spinning. "I do wish I could do it like that! Now you must
let me pay you for your trouble!--won't you? I'm just driving around,
really, so don't think--"
"Oh, thank you, but I go in here. Business hours, you know! Well! Now
you're--"
"Oh, is this where you teach every afternoon?" asked Angela, with
interest, gazing past him at the handsome stone "front" of the
Choristers'. "Oh, yes, Miss Chorister.... How long does the lesson
last?"
"Oh, an hour--usually. But, of course," added the young man, his eye
wavering slightly, "that depends somewhat--on circumstances--"
"You don't get out till about half-past four, then? I do _wish_ you
weren't so awfully busy! Mr. Garrott, have you been away again? I don't
seem to have seen you at all for a good many days now."
"Yes! That's it!--been away again! I go away all the time--practically.
And when I'm here, why, it's nothing but work, work, work, from morning
to night, for me! It's a wonder to me I have a friend left, I have to be
so horribly unsociable--_always_. But," continued Charles, "I'm glad I
happened by in time to be of some help. By the by, hadn't you better get
in and try her out? I don't like to rush on to my lesson till I know
you're all right."
"Yes, I suppose I had. I oughtn't to stop you now."
His suggestion, indeed, had a striking reasonableness. Fortunately, the
try-out proved quite successful, after only a little pushing and
kicking. But the Fordette snorted from before the Choristers' very
slowly, Angela looking back over her shoulder, smiling at him, a pretty
and appealing look on her entirely feminine face.
Charles went up to his daily hour with Miss Grace, in a brown study.
Miss Grace, it must be known, was a Temporary Spinster, verging toward
Permanence; she was round, gentle, blonde, by no means displeasing or
ill-looking. Had the world been the normal place Old Tories took it to
be, Miss Grace would undoubtedly have been one of those happy women who
find themselves, at twenty-five, with a home, a husband, and three
darling little curly-headed children; and there were a hundred signs
that so she would have found full happiness indeed. But the world being
not normal now, but, on the contrary, in Unrest, something remote had
gone wrong with Miss Grace, parting her from her manifest destiny.
Perhaps the panic of 1907 was to blame, or a decrease in the visible
gold supply; perhaps the trouble was in that hard saying of the
Redmantlers, that Love was going out. At any rate, here hung Miss Grace
on the parent stem in Washington Street, a Waiting Woman: the
non-understanding and unaccounted-for Anomaly in a disordered social
system; an adult human being thirty-two years old, with nothing upon
earth to do.
Miss Grace's subjects were Sociology and the History of the World. An
agreeable soul herself, she noted that her tutor's manner this afternoon
was taciturn and distrait. As he was concluding his remarks upon the
thirty pages of Lester Ward that made her lesson, she noted that he lost
his thread suddenly, and left a sentence permanently hanging in mid-air.
Back into the tutor's head, in fact, the artless questionings of another
had popped with arresting force: "_Is this where you teach every
afternoon? You get out about half-past four?_" From taciturn, Mr.
Garrott's manner became restless and rather irritable. And when the hour
of four-thirty arrived, he did not snap his watch at Miss Grace and
depart at once, according to his almost invariable habit. No, he moved
in a novel manner, to the drawing-room window. And he stood there, oddly
and irresolutely, gazing out, first up the street and then down.
Why had he mentioned that the lesson lasted an hour usually? Why hadn't
he said, frankly, that it lasted till five or six o'clock, and often
later?
Slowly but surely the idea was being established that it was the natural
and usual thing for him and Angela to drive in the old Fordette every
day. It was time for him definitely to break up this idea. Otherwise,
what was to be the end of it all?--that was what he wanted to know. More
and more he seemed to become aware of a gentle claim, an indescribable
pressure, very soft, yet rather alarmingly sure. Why on earth couldn't
she be satisfied just to be pleasant friends once more? Why all this
talk of future meetings, of seeing you again all the time?
Miss Grace stood some distance behind her tutor, observing his strange
behavior. Somehow her attitude wore the air of a typical expression of
character. Miss Grace had flutterings, as witness her growing knowledge
of the Merovingians; she even pretended to nibble fearfully at her
tutor's occasional exhortations, that she cease her parasiting and go to
work. But beneath such vague symptoms of Unrest, it was clear that she
remained as her tradition and environment had fixed her, a Woman of
Romance: that is to say, a being gladly content to serve as the
spectator and audience of Man.
"Mr. Garrott," she said suddenly, in her rather childlike voice, "I
don't believe you are a bit busy this afternoon. You really must stay
for tea. Nobody's coming in, sister's out, and you know you haven't
stayed for perfect ages."
To her surprise, the unsocial tutor accepted at once. He remained with
his pupil till quarter past five. Thereupon, he reached his Studio
without interruption, entirely on foot.
Charles (thinking for the young girl's highest good) was rather pleased
with this development. By accident, he seemed to have hit upon quite a
satisfactory sort of _modus vivendi_: street-cars to Berringer's, and
tea at Miss Grace's till dark. Next day he tried the programme again.
This time, it did not work out quite so well: the secret truth of the
matter being that, at bottom, all Spinsters have certain well-defined
points in common. That, in fact, is what makes them a class. And,
speaking in the large, you may say that there is no such thing as a
Permanent Spinster.
Lessons at the Choristers' took place in the library, a stately room,
yet charming, too. Into it, a dusky maid wheeled a double-tiered
tea-table, all mahogany and glass, silver and china atop, little cakes
and small enticements on the deck below. Talk of historical matters
ceased. There sprang up light prattle of the little things Miss Grace
knew and liked best.
The tutor, basking by the fireside and waiting for night, was not
unhappy. Though he frequently lectured Miss Grace, through long use he
really liked her. Now, he was also consciously grateful for her haven
from the too social life of Washington Street. That he could not go on
taking tea with Miss Grace every day for the rest of his life he, of
course, knew well; but he would just take each day's problems as he came
to them. Meanwhile, this Spinster supplied a quiet charm. Her hands
hovered ministeringly over the tea-table. For a plumpish woman, she had
noticeably small hands, graceful and white. When the tutor made her a
civil compliment, she colored like a school-girl.
[Illustration: THIS SPINSTER SUPPLIED A QUIET CHARM]
Following the compliment there was a moment of fire-lit silence. And
then Miss Grace's voice said softly and sweetly:
"You are looking at my ring. I'm wearing it--"
So that ended _that_.
The tutor was on his feet so abruptly as to set the tea-things shaking.
"No! No, I wasn't--I swear! I must go at once," said Charles.
Unaware of the painful memories her womanly words evoked, Miss Grace
naturally looked very much surprised.
"But--_what's_ the matter? Why, you act as if it were something improper
for you to look at my ring!"
"Absurd," said the tutor, with a gesture.
He had merely remembered, all of a sudden, something very important he
had to do, that was all. Pardon his haste, but he had already stayed too
long, he feared.
Indifferent to Miss Grace's bewilderment, he left at once, wondering if
voluntary celibacy could not exist, and be respected, upon this earth.
And next day, as he stood on the corner of Center Street awaiting his
good, safe street-car--indeed, as he was in the very act of boarding the
said safe car--the little Fordette chugged up behind and nipped him.
It was a pure accident, and he knew it. But he saw at once that no
accident could well have been less opportune. It involved a discovery
highly prejudicial to his future.
Angela, indeed, had not even seen Mr. Garrott. She had merely perceived,
rounding the corner into her own street, that she was about to run over
somebody, and had awkwardly clapped on her brake, just in time.
Recognizing her friend in the person she had so nearly bumped, she gave
a little feminine cry of mirth and excitement; and, while she apologized
and laughed over the strange coincidence, Charles's car, of course,
suddenly clanged away and left him. The rest followed, as the night the
day.
Almost the first thing she said was: "Oh, is _this_ where you take the
street-cars, when you haven't time to walk?"
Charles's reply indicated that he was very erratic and uncertain in
these matters, taking the cars now at one point, now again in a totally
different quarter of the city.
So the two friends, no longer constrained by misunderstanding, started
off on the slow mile drive to Berringer's. In the course of this drive,
Charles had his first justifying thought of Mary Wing in ten days.
He recognized, with deep misgivings, that this girl's attitude toward
him was wholly ingenuous and natural, the "claim" he complained of but
the spontaneous expression of her girlish conception of their relations.
That, of course, was just the worst of it; in that naïveté (oh, surely
this was the Naïve Sex!) was her soft strength. He, with his cursed weak
politeness, knew not how to withstand her maidenly theory; she, on the
other hand, had new means of putting it forward constantly. All was
changed, he saw now clearly, from the instant when she came riding back
into his life at the wheel of the ancient Fordette.
How was he to have any privacy of movement henceforward; how get from
place to place?
Beside him, the girl was talking, with simple pleasure, of bridge. It
appeared that she was thinking of having another party next week, in
honor of Cousin Mary. Mr. Tilletts was very anxious to improve his game,
she mentioned.
"And I think I'll invite you too," she said, with becoming
coquetry--"even though you've never paid your party-call--for the other
one!"
But why wasn't she sometimes at home, home-making? That was what he
should like to know.
And aloud, he spoke with hard brightness of the weather.
Through her seemingly incessant practice, Angela drove better now; not
efficiently or rapidly, but no longer with her first anxious air,
stopping short when she saw a wagon a block away. This left her more
freedom and enterprise for conversation. Mr. Garrott's meteorological
comments soon petered out. Subtly, gently, her manner seemed to reprove
him for wasting their time, as it were, on trivialities.
She said presently: "Did you ever read that book I lent you, Mr.
Garrott--'Marna'?"
The young man groaned inwardly. He could not understand why he had not
returned the book last week as he had intended--with or without the
blossoms--instead of dilly-dallying along this way, till some point was
made of it. True enough, Angela interrupted his loquacious apologies:--
"Oh, it isn't that! I really don't want the book at all. But--"
She drove a few feet farther--an appreciable interval at four miles an
hour--and ended, rather wistfully:--
"I wondered if you weren't keeping it--for another reason. I mean--just
because you didn't want to come to return it."
"Why, what an idea! Ridiculous!--"
"Mr. Garrott, you know you _have_ seemed to--since--"
"You've no idea how overworked I am these days--never a minute to call
my own! Why, there's your cousin, Mary Wing,--one of my best
friends,--and I haven't so much as laid eyes on her--but once--since
'way before Christmas! Think of it! And that's--"
"You used to be willing to take a _little_ time for pleasure," said
Angela, looking away from him, "before--we had that awful
misunderstanding."
"It gets worse and worse all the time!" said Charles, hastily. "That's
what I say! That's writing!--yes, indeed!--inexorable--once let it into
your life, and it eats it all up--forcing a man to be a--a hermit for
life, you might say. But there was something I was very anxious to tell
you, Miss Flower. Let me see ... slipped me for the moment. Ah--oh,
yes!--did you know Donald Manford's back again?"
"Oh! No, is he? I hadn't heard."
"Yes, old Donald got back Sunday, full of pride and honors...."
And then into the eyes of the worried young man there shot a faint
gleam.
He had mentioned Donald absolutely at random, but the moment he heard
the youth's name on the air, an idea exploded in his brain, leaving
behind a dull hope. Unlike himself, Donald was a marrying man. Why, when
you stopped to think of it, wasn't Angela the very girl for him? And
why, then, shouldn't he, Charles, frankly reversing his purposes at the
Helen Carson luncheon last month, bring together once more these two
nice, simple cousins of the too-modern Mary, just as he had done that
night at the Redmantle Club, when all the trouble had begun?
Of course, at the moment, Charles's "psychology" was not quite so
elaborate as this. The thought, indeed, flashed through his brain in
purely concrete form, thus: "_That's it! I'll put her on to Donald._"
Forthwith, he launched upon a voluble talk, an address, at once
extolling Donald's character and throwing out suggestive commentaries
upon it: how Donald had come home in the vein of a boy let out of
school, seeming to feel that at last his playtime had come; how he (so
different from himself, Charles) openly sought and hungered for pleasure
now, was mad for some good times. And, observing closely, he thought
that Miss Angela looked interested in his exposition, too, though hardly
so interested as one might have liked, perhaps.
"Why, I didn't think he was that sort of person at all," said she.
"I've never seen a man change so--come out so--in my life! Landing this
great job, you know!--it's taken a great weight off him. And then the
thought that he has only a few weeks more at home, too--it's really
revolutionized his character! Why, Miss Flower, the man's all but quit
work! Really! He ..."
A knocking sense of disloyalty--to Mary's known plans--checked him, but
briefly. What was that to him now? Had not Mary convinced him, once and
for all, that she was more than competent to manage her own affairs?
Deliberately, the young man released his valuable information:--
"Why, he leaves his office every afternoon at four o'clock--rain or
shine--and walks up Washington Street, absolutely hunting for somebody
to come and give him a little fun! But who is there to do it? He's been
out of things so long, he hardly knows anybody! And then, too, Donald,
beneath that--ah--standoffish manner of his, is really a shy man. What
he needs most, really, is encouragement...."
To all of which Angela's final reply--delivered after a slight
silence--was: "You seem to love to talk about Mr. Manford to-day, Mr.
Garrott." And then she took the wind out of his sails completely by
saying:--
"I don't think of Mr. Manford really as a friend of mine. You know--I
often think you're the only real friend I've made, since we left
Mitchellton."
During the remainder of the drive, Charles thought it best to affect an
amiable absent silence. But that gained him nothing, any more than his
treachery to Donald and Miss Carson. Before she released him at the now
too familiar corner near Berringer's, the girl said, simply and
seriously:--
"Mr. Garrott--aren't you really _ever_ coming to see me again?"
Why again? When had he ever been to see her? And why all this talk of a
misunderstanding? _He_ had never misunderstood anything.
"Why, yes!--yes, certainly!--when I ever find a minute to see anybody!
Ha, ha! But--when that'll be--"
It was her great merit in his eyes that she had never really reproached
him. It seemed to cost her an effort to go on:--
"You've never forgiven me for--for saying what I did that night. You
know you haven't! But if you'd ever come to see me--so that we could
really have a talk--I feel I could make you understand that I--never
really meant it!"
The maiden's gaze at once embarrassed and vastly depressed him. In it he
read, as if spread upon a bill-board, her soft certainty that, though he
himself might not realize it yet, he was her man....
In the restaurant, the four or five entirely masculine persons with whom
Charles commonly lunched took note of his peculiar gloom. It was their
whim to assume that a valued pupil had just discharged Charles without a
character. Theirs was a crude and noisy wit. But the tutor ignored,
hardly heard, their gibes. He sat withdrawn and silent over his chicken
hash (for which Berringer had no less than fourteen different names).
And before his fascinated mind's eye there unrolled an endless vista of
driving duets, with the gentle feminine pressure closing down ever more
and more irresistibly upon him.
What to do, what to do? That was the question. There did not seem to be
a corner of the city now where the Fordette did not go poking its ugly
mug.
All very well to say: Be bold, be cold. Refuse under any conditions to
get into the Fordette. That, to him, was simply not a possible line of
conduct. Inability to be successfully rude to people, even under the
most favorable circumstances, had long been recognized as the damnable
flaw in his character. And as to this very peculiar case--how could the
roughest boor, the most thoroughgoing cad, repel and affront a nice
young girl whom he voluntarily kissed but last month--one whose only
fault, after all, was a fatal constancy?
Now he fairly confronted the two distinct and fundamental weaknesses in
his position: the moral and the mechanical, the Kiss and the Fordette. A
just thinker always, he would not deny, even now, that it was his own
free-will act that had first altered everything. If he took the ground
that he had kissed, with warmth, a girl he cared nothing on earth about,
what sort of person did that make him? No better than a Frenchman, daft
about La Femme. She, it could not be gainsaid, really paid him a finer
compliment, took the nobler view of him, when she assumed that those
salutes had signified something. She was not without right to her naïve
confidence. And now that she had this maidenly expectancy firmly mounted
upon a gasoline engine--do what he would, he could not escape a ripening
affection. She would get a call out of him yet. There would be another
bridge-party, and he would be at it. And after the bridge-party....
Alone with his thoughts among his noisy companions, Charles drew a
handkerchief across his brow. A Home was, indeed, a sweet and beautiful
thing. But the positive fact was that he, Charles, did NOT want one made
for him at present. And still, the soft advance that leads straight to
Homes pressed resistlessly on.
Great Heavens, what a price to pay for one little kiss on a sofa!...
Well, two or three little bits of kisses, then. What a price! What was
the reason of it, where the justice?
He spoke aloud, for almost the first time at his lunch, with sudden
heat: "I believe I'll move away from this town!"
The remark elicited a shout of laughter. In the midst of it, the tutor
rose and stalked intently away. It had just occurred to him that he
might force a quarrel on Angela, on some trivial pretext: pretend that
she had hurt his feelings in some way--about not returning that book of
hers, perhaps--something like that. The old dodge: a million men must
have worked it. But even as he dallied with the notion, Charles knew
very well that the ruthless strength was not in him. Besides, his
thought now had taken a cold retrospective turn, interesting in its way:
the sight of Talbott Maxon, grinning there, had roused old associations
in him. Talbott was a good one to laugh! But the Oldmixon girls had had
him laughing out of the other corner of his mouth.
How had he ever lost sight of _that_ little affair?
People like G. B. Shaw might go about pretending that they had invented
the idea of Woman the Pursuer. But the fact was that he, Charles, had
personally discovered the elementary truth before he was out of his
teens. Experience, you would have said, had driven it home
unforgettably. All the way up to the old lady's who was studying French,
tucked away in an obscure corner of the street-car, Charles was soberly
going back over the instructive time he and Talbott had had with a group
of Temporary Spinsters--all of five years ago--and wondering how under
the sun he had ever allowed its lessons to grow dim.
That old trouble had started casually, too--how sharply it all came back
now! At a dance it was, when Talbott, who was also fatally kind-hearted
(and was pushed by a chaperon from behind, besides), had invited Susie
Oldmixon to abandon the wall for the waltz. Of course, he had been stuck
for four dances for his pains: of course Miss Oldmixon--a womanly
girl--had misconceived the character of that long set-to; of course she
invited him to a party in a day or two. Then it was that Talbott,
sensing how things were going, had introduced him, Charles, much as a
cowardly conscript offers a substitute. But the base act had gained him
nothing; the Oldmixons produced a friend of theirs, Sarah Freed,--how he
came to loathe the sight of Sarah!--and upon the instant, he and Talbott
found themselves caught up together in a literally endless chain of
little engagements, usually thus: a party, a party-call, another party,
etc. Naturally, they had early had the bright thought of breaking the
chain by not paying any party-call; and at once, this very same kind of
soft pressure was put upon their weak chivalrousness: "Ethel thinks you
must be mad with her," one or the other of the loyal sisters would say.
"You know you've never paid your party-call." If they yielded, and went
and paid their party-call, it was not considered that they had then
discharged their duty like soldiers; no, by an inexplicable shift in the
point of view, the call was straightway viewed as a personal
"attention," and they were at once invited to another party. So it went:
these girls had reduced to an intuitive science the feminine instinct
for making one thing lead to another. Of course they were always
offering to teach him and Talbott something, as auction or the Boston;
always trying to lend them something--like "Marna"--which would have to
be returned. And even if all the regulation pitfalls were fairly
side-stepped, it really accomplished nothing, for in that case Sarah or
the Oldmixons were sure to have a Visitor. Even Sarah Freed, of course,
rather hesitated to ring you up on the telephone and say: "Please,
please, come to see me! You know I haven't a thing in the world to do
but sit and think about men, and you're the only man who has spoken
politely to me since 1908." But none of the virgins minded at all
ringing you up and saying, "Do come to see my Visitor."
The worst thing in it all (reflected Charles, with worriment, in the
street-car) was that Sarah and the Oldmixons were far from being brazen
hussies; they were really nice girls, only sharpened a little by tedium
and the creeping fear of "failure." Odd though it seemed, they actually
remained almost completely unconscious of their own processes. And still
it had taken him and Talbott nearly a year to get out of the soft
vicious circle; and still he remembered distinctly that they had then
agreed upon the following as their invariable rule of conduct,
thenceforward: Never be polite to a womanly girl, unless positive you
want to marry her.
A _year_! And of course he had never kissed Sarah and the Oldmixons,
either....
Charles went on his rounds in a humor of fatalistic despondence. The
mood proved premature, decidedly: while there is life, there is hope.
And it seemed that he, by too much thinking, had wrongly discounted the
promising aspects of his case. He had builded rather better than he
knew.
When his lesson with Miss Grace was over, at four-thirty that afternoon,
the tutor said gloomily:--
"I can't stay for tea to-day. But I think I'll just stand here, and look
out of the window a little while."
Of course, after yesterday, there could be no more tea-taking. Equally
of course, caution was more needed than ever. "Don't wait for me,"
muttered Charles, reconnoitering, to Miss Grace. And then he forgot her
entirely as his eye, shooting out the window, fell upon Donald Manford
sauntering carelessly along, over the sunny street.
From the Choristers' window, Charles gazed out at his young friend with
moroseness and moody envy. What he had told Angela about this youth was
(by chance) almost literally true. Donald--hitherto a hard worker,
through Mary Wing's unceasing influence--_was_ visibly relaxing the ties
he was so soon to sever; he _had_ come home in distinctly a holiday
humor. And a lot of good that did him, Charles! Donald walked Washington
Street there with utter free-and-easiness, with almost insolent
impunity. Dull, lucky Donald! He, of course, did not have the devilish
gift; Donald kissed no one. No one viewed Donald as her own true man; no
home-maker chased him all over the city in a Fordette.
Behind him, Miss Grace pushed a flat button on the wall and said:
"Tea'll be ready in a minute, Mr. Garrott. You really might as well
stay, you know, as stand there looking out of the window."
The tutor made no reply. In fact, he did not hear Miss Grace. By strange
luck, he was in the grip of an extraordinary, a truly fascinating
experience. Quite suddenly, his ears had been captured by a sound from
the street, a sound that had an arresting familiarity among all other
sounds, a peculiar whirring, a rumbling, and a snorting, insistent,
growing louder. Upon earth, was there but one noise like that?
Swifter than a bullet, Charles's eyes had gone speeding down the
spacious street. And his heart leapt up within him as they lighted upon
the self-propelling conveyance approaching--but half a block away,
chugging steadily nearer....
Yes, his word to the wise had not been wholly wasted, it seemed. There
rumbled the good little Fordette after unconscious Donald, gaining on
him, gaining almost rapidly....
"Mr. Garrott, what _are_ you looking at?"
"Oh!... Nothing," said the tutor in a muffled voice.
But in truth, he was looking, with breathless interest, at the fairest
sight seen by him in many a long day. Safe behind the Choristers'
curtains, with general joy, with the acute delights of a born
strategist, Charles saw what had so often happened to him, happen now to
poor old Donald.
By odd coincidence, it fell out that the re-meeting of Mary Wing's two
cousins took place within fifty feet of the Choristers' window. What
more natural than that Angela, in the moment of passing her home-come
friend, should look over her shoulder and speak a pleasant greeting? Or
that Donald, surprised and civil, should unconsciously take a responsive
step or two toward the sudden speaker of the greeting? What more
certain than death or taxes but that the Fordette should thereupon come
to a halt--which it did so easily and naturally? (Oh, how perfectly
simple it all was, as you stood off and watched, how gentle and friendly
and inexorable!) Casual talk seemed to spring up: how easily Charles,
peeping with starting eyes between the parted curtains, could imagine it
all!--"I'm so glad to see you back! I've wanted so to congratulate you
on your great success! I'm crazy to hear about Wyoming!" And presently
those crucial words, so innocent-looking, so sweet: "Mr. Manford, won't
you let me," etc. "Truly I'm just out for a drive." And--sure
enough--oh, by George! _Hooray!_ There was the poor fool grinning; there
he was compressing himself, clambering right into the jaws. _Ah, there,
Miss Mary!..._ And there the two young people went snorting away up the
street: perfectly normally, though something in Donald's cramped
position, his long legs hunched up to his chin, did oddly suggest a
captive, seized and bound.
The tutor astonished Miss Grace by bursting into a wild roar of
laughter.
* * * * *
But of course, he understood, on cool analysis, that this really settled
nothing. That exciting spectacle, which seemed to make the whole process
so extremely concrete, represented a hope, nothing more. And the more
this hope was scrutinized, the less substantial it seemed to become.
Walking safely home in the golden afternoon, Charles suddenly recalled,
with cold annoyance, a remark Donald had made, after his second walk
with Angela in November: "Charlie, she worries me." And Angela, for her
part,--though of course womanly, and hence agreeably plastic in her
affections,--really seemed hardly more attracted to Donald, as yet.
Charles thought he knew the reason, too. With a fresh chill, he recalled
the look the girl had given him, on the corner near Berringer's,
to-day.
Had he really "put her on" to Donald even in the remotest degree? Was it
not highly probable that she, patrolling Washington Street at
four-thirty, had been looking, not for Donald, but for another?
Of course, there could not be the slightest doubt that--for the present,
at least--Angela preferred him to Donald, infinitely, unreasonably. And
Angela usually got what she wanted, too, it seemed. For example, she had
wanted to move her family from Mitchellton to this city, where he,
Charles, lived. And she had moved.