V. V.'s Eyes Part 81

"It's not a thing to argue about now, I say. You do love me ... I know it. You'll marry me next month, that I swear. Why--"

"No!--when I love, I want to look up, and when I marry, I'll marry above me...."

That checked his queer truculence; and Cally, desperate with the need to drive home her meaning, swept on with no more nervousness.

"And--don't you see?--I've not been able to look up to you since that day last year.... The day--I'm sorry to have to say it--when you came all the way down from New York to show me that you didn't care for a woman who was getting new little ideas about telling the truth...."

Canning's face was the color of chalk, his look increasingly stony; in his eyes strange pa.s.sions mounted. Now he seemed, to intend to say something, but the girl's words flowed with gathering intensity.

"Why, think what you did that day, Hugo!--_think, think!_ If I needed a protector and a man,--and I did,--that was the time for you to show me how protectors and men can act and love. If I was wrong, it seems to me that was the time of all times when you ought to have stood by me, protected me. But I was _right_--don't you know I was?... I--it was the first time I had ever thought about doing right--and _you threw me over for it_.... Of course I know there was a quarrel, but--you know perfectly well what you said. You said then, just as you say now, that I was shocked out of my senses, didn't know what I was saying. And then you said that people would point at me to the longest day I lived, so the thing to do was to hush it all up, or else I wasn't the girl you had asked to be your wife. Anything--anything--except that I should tell the truth.... So you went off and left me to bear it all alone. And then, when my heart had been broken into little pieces, when I'd cried my eyes out a hundred times, then, when all the trouble was over, and people weren't cutting me on the street,--then you came back. And even then you never said once that you were ashamed, or sorry for the way you'd treated me. You just came back, when I'd fought it all out without you, and whistled, and thought that I'd tumble into your arms.... Oh, it's natural, I suppose, for a woman to lie and be mean, and afraid of what people will say--for that seems to be the--the way they're brought up.... But--but--"

Her voice, which had begun to trail a little, dropped off into silence.

She turned away; made a visible effort to control herself. And then there floated again into the still room the sounds of m.u.f.fled revelry: strong Mrs. Heth making merry with her friends, a few of the best people....

"But I only hurt your feelings for nothing," said the girl, in quite a gentle voice.... "Hugo, try to forgive me if I've done you any wrong.

But ... you--you have your train to make. Don't you think you'd better go now?"

Hugo's extraordinary reply was to seize her in his arms.

"Go?... Yes, and take you with me ... you little witch. Why, you're raving, little witch," said the hoa.r.s.e, violent voice in her ear. "Gone out of your head with notions.... D'you think I'll let your life and mine be spoiled for a few minutes' crazy madness? You need to remember you're a woman, that's all.... Don't struggle. It's no use."

Her wild efforts to release herself, indeed, only drew his embrace tighter. His cheek rested upon her hair.

"Don't struggle, little witch. You've had your head too long. I'll make up your mind for you. You're going to marry me now. To-night. Don't tire yourself so. It's all settled. You belong to me--you see that now, don't you?..."

Now his hand was beneath her chin; he raised the still face she had kept so resolutely buried against his breast. And Cally felt his burning kiss upon her forehead, her cheek, upon lips that would nevermore be his.

"Little temptress ... you were so anxious for me to love you last year.... Doesn't this teach you that I'll never give you up? It's all settled now. We'll be married at once. I'll hold you this way--kiss you this way--till you learn to do what I say. Then you'll go up and put on travelling-clothes. Never mind lug...."

His wedding-trip ended in the middle of a word. His clasp had been weakened by that hand he had raised, and with the sudden strength of desperation his bride had broken from him. In an instant she had put the table between them.

Over ten feet of lamplit s.p.a.ce, the lovers of yesteryear regarded each other. Both were white, both trembling. The girl now suffered a brief collapse; her face dropped into her upraised hands, through which, presently, her voice came brokenly:

"_Go!_... Go, I beg you...."

Canning stood panting, shaken and speechless. Upon him was the last measure of defeat. He had staked his pa.s.sion and his pride in the supreme attack, and had been crus.h.i.+ngly repulsed. Doubt not that he read the incredible portents in the heavens now. His face went from chalk to leaden gray.

He drew his tongue once across his lips, and said, just articulately:

"If I go--out of this room--alone ... as G.o.d lives, you'll never see me again."

It must have been something in Hugo's difficult voice, surely nothing in the words, that set a chord to stirring in Cally. She took her eyes from her hands, glanced once at his subtly distorted face. And then she stood silent by the barrier table, looking down, knotting and unknotting her yellow sash-ends....

That other night of humiliation in the library, which she had never been able to forget, had risen swiftly on the wings of memory. But, curiously, she felt no such uprush of shame now; her fury mysteriously ebbed from her. Even in this moment, still trembling from his familiar handling, still with the frightening sense of her life going to ruin about her, she felt a rising pity for her prince of lovers whom time and circ.u.mstance had brought to this....

"Perhaps," said she, out of the silence, in almost a natural tone, "I ought to feel very--angry and--and indignant.... But I don't. I only feel sad.... Hugo, why need there be any bitterness between us? We've both made a mistake, that's all, and I feel it's been my fault from the beginning. If you seem to take me--rather--lightly.... I must have taught you to think of me that way.... And you'll soon see how--how superficial my attraction for you was, soon forget...."

Strangely, these mild words seemed to affect Hugo more than anything done or said before. In fact, he appeared unable to bear them. He had checked her speech suddenly by lifting his hand, in a vague way, to his head; and now, without a word, he turned away, walking blindly toward the door.

She, in silence, followed his going with dark eyes that looked half ready to weep.

By the door into the hall, through which she had come a little while before, the broken young man paused. His face was stony gray, touched with livid streaks. Standing, he looked unseeingly about the room, around and over her; then at last at her. It had seemed to be his intention to say something, to claim the woman's privilege of the last word. But now, when the moment arrived, there came no words.

For once Hugo must be indifferent to anti-climax, must fail to leave a lady's presence with an air. Standing and looking, he suddenly flung out one arm in a wild, curious gesture; and on that he opened the door, very quickly.

The door shut again, quietly enough. And that was all. The beginning at the Beach had touched an end indeed. Hugo was gone. His feet would thunder this way no more.

But the latter end of these things was not yet. One doesn't, of course, kick out of one's groove for nothing.

Cally, returning after a time to her own room, did not go at once to bed, much as she would have liked to do that. She sat up, fully dressed, by a dying fire, waiting for what must come. She waited till quarter to eleven, so long did the dinner-guests linger downstairs. But it came at last, just as she had known it would: on gliding heels, not knocking, beaming just at first....

The interview lasted till hard upon midnight. When it ended, both women were in tears. Cally retired to a fitful rest. At nine o'clock next morning, papa telephoned for Dr. Halstead, who came and found temperature, and prescribed a pale-green medicine, which was to be shaken well before using. The positive command was that the patient should not get out of bed that day.

And Cally did not get up that day, or the next, or the next. She lay abed, pale and uncommunicative, denying herself even to Mattie Allen, but less easily shutting herself from the operations of her mind.

And at night, when the troubled brain slips all control, she dreamed continually of horrors. Horrors in which neither Hugo nor mamma had part: of giant machines cras.h.i.+ng through floors upon screaming girls, of great crowded buildings falling down with frightful uproars and bedlam shrieks. Through these phantasms the tall figure of Colonel Dalhousie perpetually moved, smiling softly. But when Cally met the doctor of the Dabney House in her dreams, the trust was gone from his eyes.

x.x.xI

Second Cataclysm in the House; of the Dark Cloud obscuring the New Day, and the Violets that had faded behind a Curtain, etc.; but chiefly of a Little Talk with Mamma, which produced Moral Results, after all.

The foolish nightmares receded; the sad faces of a dream dwindled again into air; and she waked suddenly in the suns.h.i.+ne to find herself quite well. This she knew with the first opening of her eyes. The familiar objects in the room, the face of the morning, wore the unmistakable _well_ look. Wellness there seemed within, too, refreshment in body, mind, and spirit. Life called to the young and the strong, and the sunlight, streaming royally through the shuttered windows, was the ringing reveille of a new day....

But Cally Heth, having waked to life, lay on in bed. She heard the summons, was strong to answer it; but was held back as by a high surrounding wall. She was like a tied bird, unfolding wings with the heart to soar, and continually brought down by the shortness of her tether.

She had waked to overspreading gloom in the House of Heth; but this she could have fronted cheerfully to-day, fortified to charm it away, for herself and others. If events of late had been sweeping her along too fast, one emotion crowded unsteadyingly upon another, nature, stepping in, had put the gentle punctuation where it was needed. Hers was the resilience of youth. And the second cataclysm in the House, even at its worst (which was what mamma had made it), was hardly comparable to the first. There was no spiritual abas.e.m.e.nt this time, no sense of calamity and worlds at end. Rather, indeed, the contrary: and it was here that was found the seriousness of it all, in that now the smash-up was her own deliberate doing. Cally had hardly needed her mother's savage outbreak to make her feel how definite a parting was here with the ideals and aspirations of a lifetime. She saw that one whole phase of her girlhood had pa.s.sed away forever. Or, it might be, this that she had said good-bye to was the dim figure of her girlhood itself....

In these thoughts there was sadness, naturally. Hugo's going had been with the noises of breakage, the reverberations of the day of judgment.

But Cally had had four days to put her house in order; and she felt that she would have waked almost happy to-day, but for this stranger cloud that still hung so dark upon the horizon....

It was such a day as October in this climate brings week on week, gloriously golden. Cally breakfasted in bed. Toward ten o'clock, as she was slowly dressing with the maid's a.s.sistance, word came that her mother desired her presence in the administrative bedroom below.

"Very well, Annie," said the girl, listlessly. "I'll be down in a few minutes."

The message came as something of a surprise, though a disciplinary intent was easily surmised behind it. In the interview the other night, mamma had formally washed her hands of Cally and all her flare-ups, more than intimating that henceforward they would live as comparative strangers. Since then there had come nothing from the staunch little general, who also had remained in her tent, not ill, but permanently aloof and unreconciled. Very different, as it chanced, was the note struck by papa, who had come twice a day, and sometimes thrice, to the sick-room, ostentatiously cheery in his manner, but obviously depressed underneath by the dreary atmosphere enveloping the house. Never, it seemed, had papa been tenderer or more affectionate than in these bedside visits: so that Cally, with her sense of a guilty secret, could hardly bear to look at his kind, worried face.

And she had opened her eyes on the day of wellness with the knowledge that she must put her hand to this cloud now, though she brought down the skies with it. Nothing, it was clear, could be worse than this.

To-night, after dinner, she must follow her father into the study, say what she must say. Her mind had returned and clung to the solid arguments of Hen and others. She knew that the memory of the bunching-room had got upon her nerves; entwined and darkened itself with other painful things; a.s.sumed fantastic and horrid shapes. Perhaps the dreaded interview would not be so very bad, after all. Surely her father could not wear that kind look for nothing....

Dressed, Carlisle stood at her window a moment, greeting somewhat sadly the brilliant day. Her desire was to stop the footless workings of her mind; to go out and do something. But all that she could think of to do was to return to Baird & Himmel's emporium and complete that shopping for the Thompson kinsfolk which had been so suddenly interrupted last week. And, that occupation exhausted, she would go on to Mattie Allen's, and probably stay there for luncheon. Tame achievements, but better than staying longer in this room.

Here on the broad window ledge, behind the concealing curtain, there stood a bowl of flowers. They were violets, dry and discolored now. The girl's eyes, just as she was turning away toward her mother, fell upon them, and she stopped, overtaken by memory. These were Hugo's flowers, his last gift to her. She herself had placed them here, that eventful afternoon five days ago, and not thought of them again till this moment.... Was that, which seemed like an echo from some previous life, only five days ago?