V. V.'s Eyes Part 64

It was so arranged, with the gallant, and also with mamma. William Banks, detached by a nod from the procession of waiting vehicles over the dingy street, wheeled up to the entrance; halted with a whir; electrically self-started himself once more. Carlisle bowled off with J.

Forsythe Avery, who was well pleased with this token of her regard, and resolved to make the most of it. But soon the time came when he was debarked from her conveyance; she was rid of his ponderous ardors; and Cally rolled through the twilight streets alone....

There had settled down upon her a deep and singular depression. Her spirit ached, as if from a whipping. She thought a little of the Works; she had remembered that moment of somewhat painful revelation last year; but no reflection brought any doubt of her father. Long since she had reached the sound conclusion that that was the way business was; and if this fixed belief had been shaken a little now, she was hardly conscious of it. Papa, of course, did all that was reasonable and right for his work-people; it was perfectly outrageous that he should be subjected to abuse in the newspapers. Dr. Vivian, for his part, was conceded a religious fellow's strange sense of duty, though it required an effort to concede him that. Still Cally was not thinking of it from these points of view exactly. It all seemed to be quite personal, somehow....

She gazed through the car-window at the familiar panorama, streets, houses, and people which she now did not see. It had been, indeed, an afternoon of snubs, such as she was hardly accustomed to receiving; and she seemed to have lost something of that wholesome defensive power she had possessed last year, the power of being righteously indignant.

Time's whirligig had brought her to this,--that she had all but offered her friends.h.i.+p to Jack Dalhousie's friend, and he had more than repulsed her. She did feel indignant, a little; but, deeper than that, she felt wounded, she hardly knew why. After that moment of barrier-less intimacy in the drawing-room, how could he bear to be so hard?

Her vesper thoughts veered a little, moved from Vivian to Director Pond, who had also brusquely rebuffed her. It was Mrs. Page's experience that Cally had had this afternoon, and she too found it humiliating. She had lately caught a distant glimpse of "work" in terms different from those which the dull word had worn heretofore: vaguely discerned activities in which the best women were cooperating usefully with men--cooperating equally as human beings, and no nonsense; not as women at all. There was something mysteriously inviting in this. She had felt a bracing absence of s.e.x in Pond's hectoring catechism and blunt rejection of her. Yes, and in the cool declaration of war from Dr. Vivian, who had grown so hard since May. Busy and serious beings these, who would not be deterred by the flutterings of the doubtless ornamental but completely useless....

"You're to go back for Mrs. Heth, William."

"Yas'm," said William, and clicked the little door behind her.

Yes, and where there was no s.e.x, there she, Cally Heth, wasn't wanted.

Hard words these, but they seemed to have the ring of truth. She was wanted as a woman, she was wanted as an ornament, but she appeared to have no particular purpose as a human being. And the best prospect that life held out to her to-night was to settle down in a weary world as Mrs. J. Forsythe Avery.

Cally opened the front door, which was hospitably kept on the latch during the daytime, and stepped into the dim hall of home. Rarely in her life had she felt more dispirited. Nevertheless, when she heard a footfall from the direction of the drawing-room, and was reminded that papa had already come in, her combative blood plucked up at once. She wanted to tell her father immediately that he was going to be attacked in the papers; never fear but he would know what to do about it.

"Papa!" she called. "Where are you? I ..."

Speaking, she had put her head through the drawing-room portieres, rehung that very day: and so it was that her sentence was never ended in this world. For it was not papa who turned so quickly at the sound of her voice, and came walking so straight and sure towards her. Not papa, this splendid and once well-admired figure, now confronting her with such unmistakable feeling. No, the wonder of all wonders had happened; and the universe seemed to hang in momentary suspense as Cally Heth looked again into the eyes of her prince of lovers.

"Carlisle," said Hugo's remembered voice, "I've come back."

She stood unmoving in the doorway, her fingers tightening on the silken hanging. Her breast was in a tumult of emotions, in which a leaping exultation was not wanting. But stronger than anything else in this moment was the uprus.h.i.+ng feeling that here was one whom she had well trusted once, and who had failed her in her direst need.

"So I see," said she.

And continuing to look fixedly at him as he advanced upon her, beginning to speak, she was shot through with a bitter thought:

"He's found I'm not so badly damaged after all."

XXV

In which the Name of Heth is lifted beyond the Reach of Hateful Malice, and Mamma wishes that she had the Ten Thousand back again.

Mrs. Heth returned from the Settlement "opening" a full hour behind Carlisle, and in a victorious glow such as she had not known since May.

Doing good for cause, she was not one to blush too much to find it fame.

Having notified Mr. Byrd of her ten thousand dollar gift to the Foundation Fund, she had proceeded with her tidings to others of the authorities, and presently met with appreciation in proportion to the funds involved. Director Pond, a decisive and forthright man, had stood upon a chair and cried the splendid donation to the a.s.sembled company, his obvious moral being that others similarly prospered by the Lord should go and do likewise. So had come vindicatory advertis.e.m.e.nt gorgeous beyond the little lady's dreams.

It was well that the world should mark this gift, for it had not been made by the mere scratching of a signature. And the colloquies preceding it had been of a thoroughly typical sort, compressing in a nutsh.e.l.l a whole history, in fact the whole history, of the domestico-commerical relations.h.i.+ps of rising Houses. Settlementers might have applauded more heartily had they understood just what a deep-cutting business they were witnessing. However, they did not understand this, and Mrs. Heth, for her part, was the last person in the world to moralize upon the non-essential. Returning homeward through the night, rolling eclat beneath her tongue, she frankly reflected that it was worth the money.

The envious would hardly be able to conceive that people who gave so magnificently to charity could have done anything really deserving of censure; no, no. Or, if such people imaginably had, then certainly the only thing to do was to forget all about it as quickly as possible....

So agreeably musing, Mrs. Heth arrived at the door of the House, and received upon the threshold the great surprise of her life.

It was almost seven o'clock, so long had she lingered to enjoy and capitalize the reverberations of her triumph. Yet Carlisle, singularly enough, was discovered standing in the hall, still in her hat and gloves, just as she had left the reception an hour earlier.

Full as Mrs. Heth was of her own engrossing thoughts, her daughter's expression at once notified her that she, too, had news of some sort to communicate.

"Well, Carlisle? What're you.... Why, what's happened?"

"You've just missed Hugo, mamma."

"_Hugo!_" said mamma, paling and almost falling backward. "He's _been_ here?"

In her daughter's blue eyes there lingered that gleaming exultation, not completely softened as yet by the sweeter and now due love-light.

"He wants me to marry him next month."

"Oh, _Cally!_..."

Fairly tumbling forward from the door, Mrs. Heth gathered her daughter in a convulsive bear-hug, murmuring ecstatic nothings. Little she thought of Settlements or picayunish donations now.

"Oh, Cally!... Mamma's so happy for you, dear child!... And me never dreaming he was within a thousand miles! All's well that ends well, _I_ say!... When'd he come? I'm wild to see him. Where's he staying? Will he be back this evening?"

She drew away from her unwonted demonstration, leaving her hands on Cally's shoulders, and the two women looked at each other, both a little flushed with excitement.

"He's at the Arlington, to stay only till to-morrow," said she, "and he's coming in after dinner to see you and papa."

"Oh!... He insists on not seeing you, I suppose?" fleered mamma, with enormous archness.

"I won't be here, you see. I'm going to the theatre--Mr. Avery's getting up a party."

Mrs. Heth showed as much surprise as the jubilation of her countenance could accommodate.

"Why, my dear child! Break it, of course! I'll telephone him myself--a friend from out of town--"

"But I don't want to break it, you see!" said Carlisle, laughing brightly. "He can't expect to drop in after months and months and find us all twirling our thumbs on the doorstep, you know!"

"But you're _engaged to him.'_"

"I should hope _not!_... Why, _mamma!_ You must think I'm frightfully--die-away!... I'm _disciplining_ him, don't you see? I'm not going to make it too easy for him!"

"Oh!... I see!"

Perhaps she did not see exactly, and certainly she did not believe in manufacturing sporting chances in the most momentous matter in the world. But then neither did Cally, she well knew; and of her daughter's victorious skill in the matter of managing men, she had had many proofs, and now this crowning one. Lovers' coynesses mattered little in the face of the supreme fact of Canning's return.

"Well! You'll give him the whole day to-morrow, of course!... And don't you be too hard on the dear fellow, Cally. His coming back shows he's been disciplined.... How the cats will open their eyes!"

"Probably.... But don't worry about Hugo, mamma. He'll do just what I say after this."

Mamma laughed delightedly. She was of course in the woman's league for the general putting down of the enemy, Man. The two women stood staring at each other in the stately hall.

"_Next month!_" said mamma. "We can't do it, Cally! November would be better--much better--just before Thanksgiving, don't you think?"