V. V.'s Eyes Part 86

However, talk of mere temporary repairs in condemned old buildings was quickly swallowed in plannings for the splendid new. Here the man from the outskirts indubitably shone; he bristled with illuminating ideas.

He, it seemed, was for a four-story building, brick, with concrete floors. Much he had to say on the subject of fire-escapes and patent-doors, lunch-rooms and rest-rooms with lockers, enclosed stairways and elevator shafts; shower-baths, too, if one simply must have the best and never mind the expense. And then his pencil began unconsciously to work as he went along; and presently there emerged upon a fresh sheet of mamma's best note-paper the first visible presentment of the Works that would be. There it actually _was_, for you to gaze at, dream over; the perfect apology: the front and side elevation of a fine, dignified, businesslike building, plain yet undeniably handsome, very substantial and roomy, very full of airy windows. Not like a marble palace, after all; but a child could see that n.o.body was ever crowded in there, n.o.body ever the least faint. Nothing homicidal here, Mr. V.V., look where you will....

"You can _draw_, too!"

"Straight lines," said V.V., modestly. But he regarded his handiwork with pa.s.sionate approbation, and finished it off gallantly with a flag flying from the roof and two stately motor-trucks (so he said) wheeling by the door.

"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Cally Heth.

And it was all so curiously exciting to her, so intensely interesting.

No prospect in her life, it seemed, had ever stirred her like this strange one; a new cigar-factory, born of her purse and heart....

Once, about at this point, the young man threw out with mysterious delight:

"I'll like to see old Sam O'Neill's face, when he hears about this."

In the midst of the animated talk came Annie, the parlormaid--and Cally started at the sound of the approaching feet, and hated herself for it--to say that Dr. Vivian was wanted at the telephone. The doctor seemed annoyed by the summons, though not surprised; he had had to take the liberty, he explained as he rose, of leaving word at his office where he could be found, in case of necessity--words of this sort being left, as we know, with his paid a.s.sistant, Mrs. Garland, the world's biggest office-boy.

So V. Vivian was led away by Annie to the downstairs telephone in the butler's pantry; whence he was back in a moment, looking relieved, and a.s.suring Miss Heth that it was nothing in the least urgent or important.

There was no hurry at all, it seemed. But Cally felt that the business talk was drawing to a close, with a good deal still left unsaid....

Returning with eager interest to his drawing, Mr. V.V. fell to planting shade-trees of the best quality all down the Seventeenth Street side of the new building. So engaged, he observed suddenly:

"Don't worry any more about those floors, please--will you? That's all going to work out very nicely.... I'll get a figure from Jem Noonan right away on that plan of yours. And I'll see that it's a low figure, too,--it's got to be low!... Good heavens!" said V.V., eyeing his drawing with a queer little introspective smile. "We can't be expected to spend anything much on a building that's going to come down in a couple of months, you know."

She looked, smiling a little, too, at his unconscious face, fine, to thinness, which had once made Mr. Pond think of a bishop who never grew up. And her look became suddenly full of tenderness....

"I don't worry," said Cally, "now that I've got you to help me."

The man from the Dabney House spoke again:

"I was just thinking, out there at the telephone, that if there's no further business before the house, you might feel like beginning that long story you--you spoke of just now."

That took her by surprise. She seemed to be less and less at her ease.

But now surely had come her moment to take her courage in her hands, and render him his due.

"I believe I ought to," said she, lightly--"a chapter or two, at least.

For I don't think you'll ever work it out for yourself.... And I'm glad you're that way."

He made no reply, going on carefully with his arbor-day practice.

"When you said just now that this was wonderful," said Cally, beginning to lose the light touch already--"you meant that it was a wonderful happening, didn't you? Your idea seems to be that all this just happened."

But no, Mr. V.V. denied that vigorously, and stated his logical theory: that her father had chanced to postpone his intentions, merely through the well-known fact that men get accustomed to conditions that they constantly see; but that she, going there with fresh eyes....

"I might have gone there a hundred times, but I'd never have thought of it as having anything to do with me--don't you know it?--if it hadn't been for you."

He looked at her briefly; and she saw that his look was as bewildered as a battle-ground.

"Oh!... Do you mean that you _are_ doing it because of--to--to avoid the--that is, on account of the articles?"

"Oh, _not_ the articles!--_no_! That's just what I don't mean. I've never thought of the articles! I don't think of you that way at all...."

She stopped precipitately, somehow divining that she was mysteriously wounding him. And then suddenly she understood that that _was_ the way he thought of himself, exactly; that he, who unconsciously moved mountains by his gentleness, somehow saw himself only in the light of his "terrible" (but still unpublished) articles. It was as if he reckoned himself as either an article-writer, or nothing....

"Though it's true," said Cally, gently, with hardly any pause at all, "that through most of the time I've known you I've thought of you ... as a hard man ... terribly uncompromising."

His, it was clear, was not a tongue that spoke easily about himself. He finished putting a flower-box into the window of the new Works, before he said:

"I hope we needn't trouble now about anything at all that's past."

"That's what I hope, too ... more than you could. And besides--I've always liked you best when you were gentle. And ... it's because of what you've taught me--at those times--that I'm doing this to-day."

Again he turned his singularly lucid gaze full upon her; and now his look was absolutely startled. Color was coming into his face. His short, crisp hair, which had been parted so neatly an hour ago, stood rumpled all over his head, not mitigating the general queerness of his appearance. And yet his mouth wore a smile, humorous and disparaging.

"May I ask what you consider that I've taught you?"

"Everything I know," said Cally, lacing a pencil between her fingers.

"Why!... When we've never even had a real talk about it before!... I told you once that you were more generous than--"

"No, I'm never generous enough. That's my trouble, among others.... But if you think that it's a nice and happy thing for us to be putting up this building, I want you please always to remember ... that you've done it all yourself."

There was a tense silence, out of which his voice spoke, no longer with any trace of humor.

"Don't be polite.... I couldn't quite stand it. Do you mean that?"

"It's all a failure if you won't believe that I do."

"Then I do believe it."

This time the silence ran somewhat longer, and again it was V.V.'s voice, greatly stirred, that broke it.

"I don't understand, but I do believe it.... And it makes me pretty proud. By George, pretty proud!... Why--I've talked a lot--but it's the first thing I've ever accomplished! _The first thing_...."

His voice showed that his mind had swept away from her, over s.p.a.ces; and Cally raised her eyes and looked at him. He sat gazing wide-eyed into the dull-green glow of her lamp, on his face a curious and moving look; a look humbled yet exalted, gloriously wondering, and to her the wistfullest thing she had ever seen in her life. He, who had given away his patrimony, who was giving away his life every day with a will, thought that this was the first thing....

All that was sweetest in the girl, all that was maternal and understanding, rose fiercely within her, stormed her with a desire to mother this man, to protect him from his own royal yet somehow infinitely sad self-denials. For this moment she felt far stronger than he. His hand, with the pencil in it, lay on the table close by her, and Cally closed her slim fingers over it with a firm clasp.

"Ah, don't say that, Mr. V.V.--don't look that way. It hurts me, in my heart.... Can't I make you believe that you've accomplished more than anybody else in the world?..."

He did not move at the shock of her touch, at the sound of his little name upon these unaccustomed lips. She was aware only of a subtle contraction, a sort of tightening going on somewhere within him. So Cally finished her small speech with her hand over his. But at just that point, a stir seemed to shake through the man; he was seen to be turning his head; and in the same breath, her moment of high strength broke abruptly. The veins fluttered queerly in the forward hand; she felt a quick flush rising somewhere within, spreading and tingling upward into her face. So Cally rose hurriedly, her hand withdrawn, and moved away.

But she did her best, for her pride's sake, to envelop her movement with a matter-of-fact air; and when she had got about four steps away from him, she remarked, quite distinctly:

"Don't get up.... I ... want to get something."

And she did, in fact, go on to mamma's desk and attentively select three more sheets of note-paper, which would no doubt come in handy for something or other some day.

And out of the stillness behind her came Mr. V.V.'s voice, just a little husky now: