V. V.'s Eyes Part 60

If with Mats and Evey, so and much more so with others, less genuinely friendly. n.o.body took the responsibility of open condemnation, as by "cutting" Mrs. B. Thornton Heth or her daughter. On the other hand, n.o.body forgot; n.o.body made allowances; n.o.body asked a single question.

Judgment was obviously pa.s.sed, and everybody seemed perfectly clear about the verdict. The Heths were people to be treated with respect as long as they kept their money, but between you and me, their social fortunes had received a stain which would not wear off. Hugo Canning had had it exactly right. Cally Heth would be pointed at to the longest day she lived....

Cally, after the first shrinking, was possessed by a sense of anti-climax. Life had a bra.s.sy ring. She had come home with at least something of her mother's military keenness for the "campaign" of vindication, but within a day or two she was thinking, rather cynically and cheaply, that the game was not worth the candle. What difference did it all make, in her actual life? People might whisper and nudge behind her back, but their invitations seemed to come in much the same as ever, poor mamma pouncing on each as it came, with a carefully appraising eye.

Wasn't there a hollowness in all this, something wanting?...

Untrained for a.n.a.lysis as she was, she had not thought of herself, in the months in Europe, as "changed" exactly. It took this recontact with the familiar environment to reveal to her definitely that her experiences of the spring and summer had not rolled through her as through an iron tube. Here were the old stimuli (as scientific fellows term them); but they failed to bring the old reactions. She was aware that the elevation of the family position, or its rescue, no longer filled her whole horizon. Old values s.h.i.+fted. In particular, she found her soul revolting at the prospect of another season--her fifth--another winter of endless parties, now with a secret campaign thrown in.

"I'm tired of the same old round, that's all," she said, moodily. "I want something new--something _different_."

"There's plenty that's new and different, Cally," said Henrietta c.o.o.ney, cheerfully, "if you really want to go in for it. And ten times as interesting as your old society...."

"And while I think of it," added Hen, "I want to book you now for Sat.u.r.day afternoon, four-thirty--open meeting at the Woman's Club on What Can We Do to Help the Poor. Don't say no. This new man Pond's going to speak, Director of the Settlement. He'll give us something to take home and think about."

This conversation took place on the way home from a meeting of the Equal Suffrage League, to which Henrietta had borne off Cally, not so completely against the latter's will as you might have supposed. And oddly enough, Cally found that she could talk quite freely to her poor cousin, partly because of Hen's insignificance in the gay world, partly, perhaps, because of the way she had written during the summer.

"Aren't you going to the Settlement opening on Thursday?"

"Can't get away from the bookstore in time. Sat.u.r.day's a short day,"

said Hen, her eyes on s.p.a.ce.... "Look around you, Cally. You'll see lots more women than you who're sick of parties. I tell you this is the most interesting time to be alive in that ever was."

Cally smiled wearily at these enthusiasms. Nevertheless she could by now understand at least what Hen supposed she was talking about. It was as if the cataclysm in the May-time had chipped a peep-hole in the embracing sphere of her girlhood's round, and through this hole she began to discern novel proceedings afoot....

Strange talk was in the air of the old town in those days, strange things heard and seen. Not a few women of the happy cla.s.ses had grown "sick of parties." They grew sick of years lived without serious purpose, waiting for husband and children which sometimes never came; sick of their dependence, of their idleness, of their careful segregation from the currents of life about them. They wearied, in short, of their position of inferior human worth, which some perceived, and others began dimly to suspect, under that glittering cover of fictions which looked so wholly n.o.ble till you stopped to think (which women should never do), and dared to glance sidewise at the seams underneath. And now lately some high-hearted spirits had begun to voice their sickness, courageously braving those penalties which society so well knows how to visit upon those who disturb the accepted prejudices; penalties, it might be, peculiarly trying to women, over which some of these supposedly masculated pioneers doubtless had more than one good cry in secret.

What could be more interesting than the revolt of woman against "chivalry" in chivalry's old home and seat? That curious phenomenon was going on in Cally's town now, though acuter social critics than she had quite failed to discover it....

Far rumors of her s.e.x's strange activities reached Cally, and she listened, but with apathy. She marvelled at the freshness of interest with which Mattie and Evey McVey were preparing for the light routine which by now they knew like an old shoe. But her own mood was nothing more forceful than meaningless restlessness and discontent. Not even the unlooked-for arrival, one morning, of the dividend from the bank stock her father had given her in May, all her own, afforded her more than a flicker of the familiar joys. How employ fifteen hundred dollars so that it would bring her happiness now? Cally, after listless deliberation, took her wealth to her father that afternoon, offering it as a contribution toward mamma's Settlement donation. Her impulse was hardly sheer magnanimity; still, it was known that finance was a distinctly live issue in the House just now.

However, papa, after staring at her a moment, merely gathered her into his arms, check and all, remarking that she was a goose; and when she tried to argue about it a little, he ruled the situation with a strong paternal hand. She was to buy herself pretties with that money, he said; and there, there, he didn't want to hear any more foolishness about it.

No more Alphonse and Gaspard, as the fellow said....

"And, Cally," he added, pinching her cheek, "I want you to have a good time this winter, remember. You can have anything you want. Go everywhere you're invited--enjoy yourself with your friends--have a good time. D'you hear me?"

She said that she did: and as she spoke, a bitter question rose at her.

Who were her friends? She had always thought of herself as having many; "hosts of friends" had always figured prominently in her inventories of her blessings. But what was a friend? Among all these people she had spent her life with, there was not one, it seemed, who cared to understand the infinite shadings of thought and impulse that had brought her to where she now stood; much less one heart which saw intuitively

All the world's coa.r.s.e thumb And finger failed to plumb...

Papa was adding, with an unconscious frown:

"The cash is in the bank, if your mother must have it. I'd laid it by for something else, though--make some repairs at the Works. Come in....

I reckon I've staved off ..."

Considered from one angle, these fragmentary words might have been illuminating; but Cally did not even hear them. At that moment there happened the unexpected. The parlormaid Annie entered, announcing Mrs.

Berkeley Page to see Miss Carlisle.

Surprise was expressed in the study. This was the lady who had said that the Heths were very improbable people. Papa opined, somewhat glumly, that she had come to beg funds for the confounded Settlement. Cally, having looked at herself in the mirror, trailed into the drawing-room with a somewhat cool and challenging civility.

But her coolness soon melted away, under the visitor's strange but seemingly genuine cordiality. It became clear that she had come in the vein of amity, and without sinister motives; though why, if not for Settlement funds, could not be imagined.

Mrs. Page was a tall, pleasant-faced woman, still on the right side of forty, a widow whose husband had left her too much of this world's goods for her ever to be cla.s.sed as a poorhouse Tory; and despite the fact that she was a leader in the old-school, as opposed to the bra.s.s-band, set, many people considered her a very agreeable woman. She had amusing things to say, and she said them in the Heth drawing-room with no air of awkwardness. Carlisle, somewhat against her will, was soon thinking her extremely attractive. But the thawing out went further than that.

Talk turned by chance--or perhaps it was not chance exactly--on those growing currents of feminine activity which had nothing to do with dinners and dances: and here the visitor expressed ideas which did not seem old-school in the least. It appeared that she, Mary Page, in the period of her spinsterhood, for she hadn't been married till she was twenty-six, a thoroughgoing old maid in those days,--had also wearied of the gay round; she had desired to _do something_. But alas, she had suddenly discovered that she wasn't fitted to do one earthly thing, having been trained only to be a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. She said, smiling, that she had cried all one day about it....

"Why is it a.s.sumed, really," said she, "that women are such poor little b.u.t.terflies that amusing and being amused should absorb all their energies? I don't think of myself as a pet, do you, Miss Heth? Give us something solid to do, and the world wouldn't be so full of discontented women. Do you know, if I had a daughter," said Mrs. Page, "and she wasn't married after three years 'out,' and hadn't developed any special talent, I should send her straight down to Hartman's Business College, and have her learn typewriting. Yes, I should!--and make her get a place in an office, too, at five dollars a week!..."

The distinguished visitor remained twenty minutes in the improbable drawing-room, and contrived to make herself interesting. When she rose to go, she mentioned that she was staying at her mother's place in the country till after Thanksgiving, and was only in town for the day. And then, as she held out her hand, smiling in a simple and friendly way, her expression changed, and she brought up her other hand and laid it over Carlisle's.

"My dear," she began, with some embarra.s.sment, "I wonder if you will let a much older woman say how truly she has sympathized with you in--all this trouble--and how much she has admired you, too?..."

Cally's eyes wavered and fell. And suddenly she divined that this, and nothing else, was what Mrs. Page had come to say.

"All of us make mistakes in this world," went on the kind voice--"all that I know do wrong. But not all of us, I'm afraid, have the courage to go back and set right what we did, as bravely as you have done."

The girl stood dumb.... Strange, indeed, that the first word of understanding sympathy she had had since her home-coming--barring only Hen c.o.o.ney--should have come from this worse than stranger, whom at a distance she had long secretly envied and disliked. One touch of generous kindness, and the hostility of years seemed to fall away....

She raised her eyes, trying with indifferent success to smile. But perhaps her look showed something of what she felt: for Mrs. Page immediately took the girl's face between her hands and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"May I?... I mean by it that I hope you'll let me know you better, when I'm home again.... Good-bye."

Cally caught the gloved hand upon her cheek, and said, with an impulsiveness far from her habit:

"I think you're the sweetest person I ever saw...."

And two days later, she said to her mother, though in a distinctly frivolous tone:

"What would you think of me as a Settlement worker, mamma?"

"Settlement worker?... Well, we'll see," said Mrs. Heth, absently. "It remains to be seen how far the best people are going in for it...."

Cally laughed. She was beautifully dressed, and felt perfectly poised.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and she and her mother were in the new vindication limousine, en route to the old Dabney House.

"What difference does that make?"

"All the difference.... Now, Cally, don't pick up any of poor Henrietta's equality notions, just because you feel a little blue at present. This is going to come out all right. You may trust me."

"I do," said Cally, sincerely.

After a silence she added with a laugh: "Who are the best people, mamma?"

"I am, for one," said mamma; and unconsciously her grasp lightened on the little ornamental bag where snuggled her Settlement check for Ten Thousand Dollars, securely bagged at last.

"Don't let any poor n.o.bodies pull you down to their level with their talk about merit," said mamma. "What's merit in society?"