V. V.'s Eyes Part 85

He turned on her another strange look, at once intensely interested and intensely bewildered. But she glanced away from it at once, and would give him no chance to ask her what that might mean.

"I've got so much I want to tell you, so much I want to ask your advice and help about," said she, rising, with a change to what she regarded as an excellent business voice and manner. "Perhaps we ought to go into executive session at once--and let's go into the library, too! I know you're awfully busy, but I do hope you've come prepared to make a good long visit."

The article-writer neglected to reply at all, moving after her with his queer, startled look....

So these two pa.s.sed from the Heth drawing-room to the Heth library, to talk about business: the new Heth Works, in fine. They came into a room which was intimately and poignantly a.s.sociated with Hugo Canning.

Memories of the departed greeted Cally upon the threshold, and thereafter; only they were not poignant now. Hugo's face kept rising mistily beside the so different visage of the man he had instinctively disliked, his ancient hoodoo....

This was to be a meeting like none other Cally had ever had with the stranger in her house, a _happy_ meeting, troubled by no shadow. They sat down across the great table from each other, in good business style, as she considered; and then she began to talk eagerly, recounting to him without any embarra.s.sment, though of course with some judicious expurgation, what had been going on in her mind, and out of it, during the last five days; beginning with the afternoon she had seen him at the c.o.o.neys', and culminating with the long talk she had had with her father at, and after, luncheon to-day.

And he, the only confidant she had ever had, sitting with his patched elbow on her father's table, and his chin in his cupped hand, attended every word with his singular quality of interest. He was unique among all the people she had known, in that the things he seemed to care most about were never things for himself at all....

"So that's how it stands now," said Cally, presently. "My father was naturally surprised at first, as I've never shown any interest in his work before, and of course he said he wouldn't do it,--wouldn't take my money, I mean, though it's really his all the time. But at last I did get him to talking about it seriously, and then he grew more and more interested.... Oh, I know he's going to do it! I _know_ it!--That's all settled! And I do think he'll let me have a hand in really planning it--that is, if I can show him that I--I know anything about it....

Well, of course I _don't_, you see--nothing, nothing!--and that's where my problem begins. I've got to learn everything, from the very start, and do it quickly.... Do you think I possibly can?--"

"_Books_!" he cried, throwing out both hands. "What're they for but to teach us everything, _right away_?..."

In fact, her problem there was really no problem at all, it seemed. Pond himself had at hand a fine little general library on all these subjects; there was the State Library; there were the bookstores of the world: all waiting for her, all packed with meaty information. Perhaps, just as a starter, she would let him make out a sort of preliminary check-list to-night, out of catalogues, out of some bully advertis.e.m.e.nts in the backs of Pond's works....

"Oh, you _are_ nice!" exclaimed Cally. "You can't guess what it means to be encouraged!... I do so want to go into it seriously."

He talked further, indicating the procedure: first her own idea of what she wanted; then an architect to sketch some plans; then a builder to figure after the architect. The thing began to shape up, rapidly, definitely. She found him an inspiriting soul....

"I ought to say," she explained, quite excited, "that I mentioned fifty thousand dollars only because that was the sum I happened to have, in a lump. But we're going to make it _good_, no matter what it costs. I have a little more money of my own," said she, "about eight thousand dollars, and of course I'll put that in, too. And I know my father will feel the same way."

But no, V.V.'s belief was that the sum she mentioned would be far more than necessary. She could get a rough sort of estimate at once, if desired, given the dimensions of the lot and a general idea of the style of building she wanted. His friend, Jem Noonan, he who was just now starting out as a contractor, would be only too delighted to do some figuring on it.

"Of course the best way of all to gather ideas at the start," said he, staring through her, "is to go to the Works--go often.... There's no other such way of seeing what the actual needs are."

"Yes ... Yes, of course that's true," said Cally.

But what she felt like saying was that she didn't want to go to the Works at all, unless he could go with her.

"I want to get _your_ ideas now, please," she added--"everything you can think of. You can't have any notion how ignorant I am.... But--oh, there's one thing I wanted to speak to you about first. I suppose--even at the best--it would be some time before the new building could begin?"

Oh, a few months, no doubt, before all plans would be ready, and her father's arrangements made to move.

"Do you think the floors in this old building are very _strong_? The man who was with me the day I went there didn't seem to think so--and I didn't either! And some very heavy-looking new machines were being put in the bunching-room, and I believe some more are going to be put in to-morrow."

"Oh!... You mean you think they might overload the floor?"

"Don't you?"

"Well--it's possible," admitted Mr. V.V., slowly, and one could see that he didn't altogether like the idea of anybody's criticizing Mr. Heth's conduct of his business. "But--ah--really I don't--"

"Couldn't we fix it, in some simple way--brace up the floor somehow?"

"Oh, yes. You'd have no trouble in fixing it.... Far as that goes."

"Don't you think you could manage to say _we_ once?"

"Oh!" said Mr. V.V., pleased. "I could that!... I didn't know, you see, how far you cared to let me in."

Cally smiled at him over the library table.

"Hasn't it occurred to you that you are in it, that you've been right in the middle of it all along?"

He gave her one of his original looks, and said: "Well, I can't say it had.... But it's where I'd rather be than anywhere else in the world."

"You can make nice speeches, at any rate.... Do you know you're the strangest man, I believe, that ever lived?"

"No, that's news. Am I?... Well, in what way am I so strange?"

"Oh, it's a long, long story. But I'm going to tell it all to you some day.... Do go on and help me about the floors. Papa won't. He didn't seem to like my speaking about them at all. He says they'd hold hundreds more machines if he only had the room--"

"Well, he _knows_.... He's--he's had the strain figured out. Of course."

So had Time, the master-humorist, reversed positions between Heths and Vivians. The old Arraigner, for his part, seemed to feel now that, to all intents and purposes, papa _had_ put up the building six years ago....

But Cally explained how floors and machines had got upon her nerves.

This was, she said, _our_ first point to settle. And thereupon the young man at once addressed himself to the question of remedies; sketching with his finger on the table-top, till she got note-paper and pencils from mamma's desk in the corner, switched light into a reading-lamp, and came and sat down beside him. On the paper V.V. obligingly produced an outline of the three floors of the present factory, accurately locating stairway and elevator shaft; even the point where the cloak-room was to be knocked out to give the s.p.a.ce needed for the new machines....

"How in the world do you know so much about the Works?"

"Oh--well, you see, the s.h.i.+pping clerk there is quite a friend of mine,"

said V.V. "A very nice fellow, sort of a Lithuanian, named Dolak. Don't be offended, but I--I've been down there once or twice at night."

However, he seemed stumped as to the best method of support, admitting that it was not so simple as it seemed. And presently, when he had tried and condemned columns from floor to floor, the girl said, hesitatingly:

"Dr. Vivian, do you think props--outside--would do any good?"

He turned his intent gaze upon her; he was frowning absorbedly and looking rather doubtful about it all.

"I mean iron braces running from the ground on each side of the building," said Cally--"and holding up girders, or whatever you call them, under the bunching-room floor?"

He gazed a moment, and then exclaimed:

"Oh--good! _Oh, that's good_!... That would do it--do it perfectly!..."

He proceeded with eagerness to sketch in her square-arch braces under his bunching-room floor, and he said again: "Perfect solution!... Why, you ought to have been a builder!"

"Oh, I--just happened to see a picture of something like that in the encyclopaedia this afternoon."

Her tone was depreciatory, not suggesting that she had looked some time before she happened to see that picture. But within she was feeling the strangest, the most exhilarating thrills.... Oh, the clearness of being a _fellow-worker_; of praise that had nothing to do with a candidacy for matrimony!...

"But the difficulty," she said, "is to persuade papa to let me do it. Of course, I've no right to expect him to take me seriously.... I know _you_ could persuade him."

That, spoken impulsively, she hurriedly covered up in conversation; begging him to go on at once and give her his ideas of what the new building should be like. She had gathered by now, that, whatever he considered wonderful in all this, it was not the fact that he, she, and her father should be, so to say, planning it shoulder to shoulder. But this fine unconsciousness of his she herself could not match; not at least till she had had more time to smooth things over with her father....