The author laughed. "Well, it was about like that. Still," he added, as
if there were such a thing as carrying modesty too far,--"of course I
could do what they want easily enough--in a month, I think."
"You don't seem excited at all. But you aren't going to do it?"
"On the contrary, I have now formally changed the name of my old novel
to 'Bandwomen,' and--put it in the Morgue."
"The Morgue?"
"A repository for deceased manuscripts, recently founded by my
relative."
"Oh!" said she, slowly. And, after a pause: "You don't feel any longer
that it's good?"
"I _do_ feel that it's good! I'd swear it--before a publishers'
convention. But--it doesn't happen to be the story I want to write any
more. I'm not interested in it."
There was another pause.
"It doesn't represent you now, I suppose? And the one you do want to
write?--you're writing it, aren't you? Judge Blenso says you work till
all hours of the night--and this is going to be your masterpiece."
"I shall have to caution the Judge about this, I see. We won't have a
friend left, between us."
"But I'm interested, very much so. I've wondered ... Do you remember your
speech at the Redmantle Club last winter--on work for women? Do you think
you'd make the same speech to-day?"
"Oh," he said, lightly, "I don't know quite so much as I did last
winter, you see. I'm not in the class with the lady in Sweden any
more.... Why do you suspect my--loyalty?"
"Suspect?--no. I was only deducing from what you just said. I know
something about the point of view you took in 'Bondwomen'--you told me
once--and now if you're so dissatisfied with it that--"
"No!--no! It isn't that! My point of view hasn't changed at all. It's
only--"
He glanced down at her, and away, suddenly struck with hidden
significances, abruptly recalling that this woman beside him had played
hardly less part in the making of "Bondwomen" than in "Bondwomen's"
final consignment to the Morgue....
"I--I want to approach the whole question differently--lay a different
emphasis--that's all.... But if I believed in the value of work last
year, as--as a liberal education in responsibility--I believe in it ten
times as much now. Don't you know that?"
"I'm glad you feel so. And that's what you're going to say in this
book?"
"Hardly anything else."
They walked on a little way in silence. The afternoon was fine; the last
flickers of a vernal sun danced along the sidewalks. Many people moved
on the promenade. The passing moderns attracted the favorable gaze of
not a few acquaintances. In appearance, Mary was judged one of the
variable women. She, the worker, with her habitually colorless face and
faintly fragile look, responded remarkably to dress, as Charles had once
before had occasion to note. And to-day, she was dressed as for a holiday
and a fête. However, he hardly looked at her once, throughout the brief
walk.
"Do you know," she said suddenly, again with some touch of
consciousness, he thought,--"every conversation you and I have had for
months has been about _me_? That came over me, with a sort of shock--the
other day. I feel that there's a great arrears to make up. And I doubt
if you know how much I've wanted to hear about this book--since you told
me you had your 'line' straight at last. See how I remember.... Don't
you mean to give me any idea what the story's to be about?"
The young man's heart seemed to move a little within him.
"Can you imagine a writer's turning away from an opening like that?"
"Well--but when will you?"
"It's a long story. I don't think I could make it all clear in five or
seven minutes--and that's all the time you have to spare nowadays."
"Do I seem as bad as that?... But I know literally nothing about it yet,
you see, except what I've just extracted. Idleness is bad for
able-bodied persons, including women. Does that state your point of
view--approximately?"
"Precisely."
"And how are you developing it this time? I mean--with a working-woman
as your central figure?"
"No--principally with a woman who has nothing to do--and reacts
accordingly."
"Oh!... That's what you mean by a difference of approach, I suppose?
She's married?"
"No--that's the trouble."
"You are dreadfully mysterious. How _does_ she react?"
"Of course, she marries."
"Then it's not a story of work at all?"
"Hardly at all. It's an old-fashioned romance."
"I see--told from a new-fashioned point of view?"
Charles laughed. "The description was suggested to me--very recently. Up
to a point, it fits. You see, I'm still learning."
"You know," said Mary, after a step or two, "you like to picture
yourself as one who can't be restrained from talking about himself and
his work, on the smallest provocation. In reality ... Tell me honestly,
do you object to being cross-examined this way?"
His gaze kept straight ahead.
"By you?--oh, no. Of course, I ... I've wanted to tell you my story some
day."
"Then I'll continue my quiz now. I know it's usually a stupid question
to ask--but have you decided on a title yet?"
But that happened to be the one thing he did not care to tell her now.
"You can't fix the title till you're done, you know," he evaded lightly.
"A story changes so. But I have a sub-title in mind ..."
She asked if his sub-title was a secret, and he said no.
"I'd thought of--'A Comedy of Temporary Spinsters'--something like
that," said the author, and, unseen, colored abruptly.
"That's _good_!" Mary exclaimed after a moment. "It suggests--so much!
Temporary Spinsters.... Only--I hope you don't mean to be cruel to your
heroine?"
"Oh, no."
They turned into Olive Street.
"And by the way," said Charles, "she's not my heroine--only my central
figure."
"Oh! Is there a distinction? Then will there be two women in this book?"
"Of course--a common principle of writing. Your central figure--in a
character story--needs the comment of contrast, you know--of a--a foil."
"I hadn't thought of that. You had only one woman in 'Bondwomen,' you
see.... And the contrast--she'll be as different as possible--a
working-woman, I suppose?--a Permanent Spinster! That's interesting, I
think--a study in contrasting types. Now--by my catechism--I really
begin to get an idea--"
"Do you? I don't know. There are points--there are points--which I've
never been able to settle yet, myself."
Mary began to search for her latch-key. Splendidly competent though she
was, she did not appear to have a regular place for keeping her key,
like a man. And Charles wondered if she had quite forgotten that offhand
remark of his, the day of his luncheon to Helen Carson, that he was
drawing his Line from his life....
"But the men in the story," she was saying--rather mechanically, he
thought--"I conclude there must be some, even though you don't mention
them. What type do you make your hero?"
"Oh!--hero! There isn't any. The hero's the reader."
"The reader!--I fear that's too technical for me."
He explained: "My--my study develops by the method of 'progressive
revelation,' so-called--the principal characters being first set out, of
course, with the wrong labels carefully pinned on them. Well, the hero's
just the commentator on this development as it takes place, thinking it
out to save the reader the trouble."
"But--isn't it the theory nowadays that there shouldn't be any
commentator?"
"Oh, there may be a _theory_!" he retorted, the artist briefly flashing
in the man. "However, I comment."
They went up the Wings' three steps, and Mary put her key into the lock.
"But your hero can't be altogether an abstraction," she insisted, thus
engaged--"else how can there be any old-fashioned romance?"
The young man's laugh covered an interest in the conversation intense to
the point of physical pain.
"Really, this won't do. We get it more and more backwards. I haven't
even described the story to you right. It's not an old-fashioned
anything--primarily--it's not a study of types. No, it's--it's an
intellectual autobiography. Do you work on Sundays?"
The school-teacher wheeled in her open but inhospitable door, with
something like reproach in her eyes, and said: "_No!_"
"Then you can't escape me. I'll stay in town this Sunday, and you shall
hear it all from the beginning. You--you've brought it on yourself now."
The two moderns looked at each other. And the young man in the tall hat
was breathing rather hard.
"But--wouldn't that disappoint your mother? I know--I've noticed--that
you never let anything interfere ..."
His look changed perceptibly at that. And still, it was not the son, not
the old critic of Egoettes, who answered, slightly chagrined:--
"What time have you to give me, then? Some day in the summer vacation?"
Mary Wing's eyes fell to her hand on the door-knob. "I hoped," she said,
"that you would come in now."
"But your--your work?"
"I--thought I would take a holiday to-day."
So they went into the house. And Charles stood alone in the Wings'
silent hall, slowly pulling off his wedding-gloves.
In the sitting-room Mary was similarly occupied. Though she was going
back to the Flowers' so soon, she took off her hat. Having done so, she
stood before the mantel-mirror, fluffing up her hair a little, where the
hat had pressed it down. It is the immemorial fashion of women: a
characteristic position, and so an engaging one. Delicately the upraised
arms defined the lines of a graceful figure.
But when Mary saw in the mirror that Charles Garrott had come into the
room, and had stopped short just over the threshold, looking at her, she
knew only that the moment had come when she must make acknowledgments
due for good aid and comfort received. And in her, the strong,
nervousness spread now like a fear.
So she plunged hastily, the moment their eyes met: "I know, of course,
there isn't time to tell me about it now. But--I don't seem to get any
picture of your--your man at all.... What sort of man is he,
personally?"
The author, starting a little, moved forward in the dusky room.
"Oh, let's not speak of him," he said, with visible effort. "He's only a
writer. That's polite for a poor stick."
"No--don't! Tell me--in the action of the story--what does he do?"
"Not a thing--really. Just sits around and thinks."
Strength came into her low voice: "Why--_why_ do you always belittle him
so?"
Continuing to look at her, he said, remotely surprised: "Belittle him?
But I don't."
The school-teacher's fingers closed over the mantel, and the tips of her
nails whitened.
"Then I don't understand at all," she said, steadily. "I've been
thinking that it was he who almost murdered the villain, and gave one of
the Spinsters her old place back...."
Charles Garrott stood like a man turned to stone, fascinated gaze upon
the eyes in the mirror: girlish eyes, doubtless, but quite unwavering
now. And then, in an instant, his face was scarlet from neck to brow.
His embarrassment was frightful to see: that of a soul too suddenly
stripped bare.
"Oh!... So you've been looking through me--all along. I see ... the
Judge didn't confine himself to ... Well, his knowing--was purely an
accident. He had, of course, no--"
"And why must my knowing be an accident, too?"
"I--it was simply something you had nothing whatever to do with. And
there was an understanding--the--the matter was entirely private. You'll
please forget the Judge's--small-talk, and--"
"Not if I live to be a thousand! I'll forget everything--I'll forget my
name!--but that!--no, you ask too much of my feelings."
That, indeed, checked the young man's horrible self-consciousness. He
saw, with unsteadying bewilderment, that this was no light conversation
of hers, that Mary Wing was more deeply moved than he had ever seen her.
And suddenly he was aware, by some swift flicker of his intuition, that
it was to say this to him, and nothing else, that she had come home,
made a holiday, to-day....
"And you told me you had done nothing for me," she said, in the same
passionate low voice--"that day--when you had just done everything--what
nobody else in the wide world would ever have done for me! And you
were--hurt, too...."
She stopped, abruptly. Her face quivered, just perceptibly, but he saw
it. Strange and incalculable.... Surely he had tried to do bigger and
better things for Mary, than the impromptu display of his primitive
passion.... Was this, also, of the primal and everlasting; did this,
too, touch the immutable and true?
The helper was making reply, not exactly with _insouciance_: "Why!--why,
but I can't let you think of it--it was _nothing_! I _enjoyed_ it! I
simply didn't think he had behaved to you as he should. Naturally, I
didn't like that...."
"_You_ didn't--because that's the way you are. You expect nothing--but
give everything. I don't like to hear you make light of yourself. I
don't."
She turned away, went over to her desk by the window, where the school
examination-books awaited her. But once more it was clear that she had
no purpose here. She moved the piled books on the desk-leaf, half an
inch, perhaps, and went on in a controlled voice:--
"But I can't tell you how I felt, and feel, about it. And it's foolish
to--try to say thank you. We must talk of something else.... Sit down,
won't you? I'll give you some light in a minute."
But the young man in the wedding raiment did not sit down, gave no sign
at all that he had heard her conclusive and hortatory speech. His eyes,
turning, had followed her as she went away from him. And now, as she
ended, he only stood and looked; looked over the familiar room at the
slender figure of a woman which, all so suddenly, had shot up to fill
the world for him.
Fading light from the Green Park just touched Mary's face, where she
stood. She was a school-teacher, thirty years old. Life had buffeted
her: hard contacts with the real world had left upon her their permanent
marks, traced lines not to be eradicated beside these fine eyes. This
woman's first youth, her April bloom, was gone forever. But to this man
on the hearthside, her presence, her nearness, were charged now with an
intense power over depths in him which would stir to no fleshly
prettiness.
He had her secret now. He knew her, a Woman revealed. And, standing and
looking at her over the darkening room, he was mysteriously shaken with
a profound emotion.
This was his best old friend, this was the being he admired most upon
earth. She was his dearest comrade, his work-fellow and his playmate,
his human free and equal. She had a mind as good as his, a spirit whose
integrity he respected no less than his own; hands that were capable and
feet that she stood upon, and did not depend. She had an honor that was
not woman's honor, a virtue and character that had no part with the
business of sex. There was no competence a man had that this woman did
not have: she was as versatile and thoughtful and fearless and free as
the best of them. And, through and beyond all this, there was the
discovered marvel, that she had tilled and kept sweet the garden of her
womanhood. Underlying her rich human worthiness, as the mothering earth
lies under a tree, there was the treasure he had hardly glimpsed, this
store of her secret tenderness.
So it was that Charles Garrott spoke up suddenly, with a kind of
huskiness:--
"No, there's only one thing to talk of now. You will have to hear my
story."
The grammar-school teacher did not move. The twilit sitting-room was
stiller than a church. The young man went toward her on feet not now to
be stopped.
"But not from the beginning--no. That doesn't matter. It's the ending--I
have waited to talk with you about."
He stood now by the hard-worked little desk, an elbow rested on the top;
he looked down at the bent familiar head, the thick crown of feminine
fair hair. Just so, he had stood and looked on that other day, when she
had written upon his heart what freedom meant to her.
"I wanted to show how one man--got his education in womanhood--learned
how strength is stronger for being sweet--just by coming to see and
understand the moral beauty of one woman's life.... That is my story.
But it isn't enough to end with."
Some of his dignity, some of his self-control, seemed abruptly to
forsake the hard-pressed young man.
"You are that woman," he said, hoarsely. "You've educated me. But it
isn't enough."
She, his only heroine, raised her head, gave him one look from under her
arched brows; a strange look, that might have said good-bye to the
perfect friendship he had forever changed now. And he saw in the dusk
that her face was very pale.
"You've supposed I want nothing for myself. I am here asking for
everything...."
Her lashes fell. He was so close to her now that, just by putting out
his arm a little, he could have taken one of the small hands on the
desk-leaf. So he did put out his arm thus. Her hand, possessed, was cold
as ice; but it was not withdrawn. No, Mary's hand seemed to stay and
cling, like a hand come Home.