"Let me get my hat," said Charles.
But Mary, standing in his way, was regarding him with a sudden
directness he had no wish to reciprocate. And she answered his remark
about the hat with a little exclamation.
"What's the matter with your eye?"
"My eye?" said the young man, and involuntarily put his hand there.
Recollecting, he finished: "Nothing--nothing at all."
The school-teacher came a step nearer, but he went round her as he
spoke, and continued his way.
"But there's a good deal the matter with it!" she exclaimed, concerned.
"It's swollen--it looks discolored, too.--How did you hurt yourself?"
"Oh, that? Oh!" said Charles, carefully fitting on his hat, and then
removing it again. "I remember now--it's nothing. Got a tumble this
afternoon, that's all. Stupid thing."
"You must let me get some hot water down the hall. I'm afraid it's--"
But he indicated, quite brusquely, that his eye was all right, just the
way he liked it, that having water put on it was, in particular, the
last thing he would ever dream of.
She said behind him, slowly, after a pause: "If you won't, you won't, of
course.... But it's so exactly like you--"
"Ready?" said Charles.
But when he turned he found that Mary had turned, too, after him--stood
facing him anew. And this time the confrontation was too near, too
immediate, to be further avoided.
He now discovered that the thin veil had not withdrawn his friend very
far. Looking at her for the first time since her cataclysm, he saw that
her delicate face wore that look described as "rain-washed," which
commonly means peace, but peace at a price. The redness of her eyelids
was quite perceptible. What struck the young man particularly, however,
was the look of the blue eyes themselves. More or less irrelevant eyes
he had always thought them, for all the heavy arched brows which so
emphasized their faculty for steady, sometimes disconcerting,
interrogation. That characteristic grave intentness was in Mary's gaze
now: but it was not this that gave her look its power to hold Charles
Garrott in his tracks.
The peculiar commotion within him gave forth in a short laugh, testy and
embarrassed: "Honestly, if you say the word 'eye' to me again--"
"I wasn't going to speak of your eye," said Mary Wing, with quite
remarkable meekness.... "I was thinking of that remark you made--about
being a fair-weather friend."
And then she went on hurriedly, with a rare, impulsiveness: "I've just
been thinking--I don't suppose since the world began there was ever such
another rainy-day friend as you. It's got so now that I never get into
trouble without thinking right away--as I was thinking this afternoon
when I left the Flowers'--that you'll be right there to help me with it.
Yes, I was. And it's so--perfect. Nothing to spoil it ever--not one thing
for you to gain--all just your rather extravagant idea of what being a
friend means. You don't know--how much it means...."
The strange speech--strange blossom of her disruptive emotion--ended a
little short; but that it ended was the principal thing. Doubtless there
had been a time when words such as these from Mary Wing, this fine frank
expression of abiding friendship, would have been sweet and acceptable
to Charles Garrott, crowning him with a full reward. But it seemed that
that time must have passed, somewhat abruptly....
The two moderns stood, gazing full at each other. And now, in the same
moment, a little color tinged the girl's cheek, beneath her veil, and
the young man turned rather pale.
"Miss Mary, you must be dreaming," said Charles, gently. "I've never
done anything for you in my life. We both know that. Let's go."
Mary, her eyes falling, had resumed the buttoning of her gloves. She
moved toward the door. The descent of the High School stairs was made in
comparative silence. The chief item of importance developed was that
Mary intended to go home by street-car; she was tired, she mentioned. It
seemed that Charles, on the contrary, had no intention of foregoing his
afternoon constitutional. He said that he would see Miss Mary to her
car, however; and he did.
So the old friends parted casually on a street corner, as they had done
a hundred times before.
But in the Studio, there could be no such reserve, no such slurring of
the characteristic services of men. Here combat must have its fair due,
in the moral order of a too sedentary world. Judge Blenso, in brief,
from whom no secrets were hid, had the full facts relative to the
altered eye within ten minutes of Charles's homecoming, an hour later;
and the Judge's cold manner, already somewhat softened by the heartening
acceptance of Entry 3, straightway dissolved in exultation and proud
joy. The reconciliation between uncle and nephew was instantaneous and
immutable, and there followed, by consequence, the most broken, the most
conversational, evening in the history of the Studio.
Charles was very glad to be reconciled with his relative. He was very
glad to feel that his secretary no longer viewed him with bald disgust.
Nevertheless, there were times, necessarily, when a writer wished that
he had no relative and secretary at all; and this, in a word, was one of
them. Charles did not wish, to-night, to go over and over one set of
primitive facts indefinitely; he did not wish to listen to sporting
anecdote and reminiscence, hour after hour; in chief, he did not wish to
go to bed at half-past ten o'clock. However, he did each and all of
these things, perforce.
"Always retire early after a fight!--that was my father's rule, long as
he lived!" cried Uncle George, his black eyes dangerously bright....
"No--let's see. _Before_ a fight--that was father's way! Well, good
gad!--too late for that now! You come along to bed, my dear fellow!..."
But, in time, a sweet snoring from the parallel white couch indicated
freedom, welcome solitude, at last. And then the young man rose
noiselessly in the dark, and slipped back to the familiar Studio, where
all his personal life had so long had its heart and center. On the old
writing-table, in front of which he had sat and pondered so many hours,
so many nights, the green-domed lamp was set burning anew. However,
Charles did not sit at his table now. Beside the lamp, Big Bill without
surcease ticked off the flying minutes of a writer's prized leisure. But
Charles heeded not Big Bill. Wrapped in a bathrobe grown too short for
his long shanks, he paced his carpet on slippered feet, up and down; and
there was no such thing as bedtime now. For this day the authority had
made the last and the best of all his many discoveries about Woman: and
he did not see how he could ever sleep again.