Angela's Business Part 25

It was a little name she had made long ago by turning his first two names about, but reserved for rare occasions only. Rare also was it to hear this commonly contained voice so deeply stirred.

"Welcome home! I hope I didn't interrupt your work, but it seemed I couldn't _wait_! And, of course, I haven't _half_ thanked you yet, haven't begun to tell you how much--how much--I appreciate all you've done for me...."

Once more, the fortunate Charles was brus.h.i.+ng aside a lady's grat.i.tude--rather generously, considering the infrequency of grounds of grat.i.tude here. He laughed gaily into the receiver.

"The real point is, why under the sun did you connect me right away with the remarkable outburst of popular admiration? Hartwell went gossiping about, I suppose?"

"I didn't need Mr. Hartwell to tell me anything about that! But--"

"Aha! So f.a.n.n.y told you about the photographs--"

"She never breathed a word--"

"Good-evening, Miss Holmes!--old Watson speaking! Will you kindly explain your--!"

"Why, of course there wasn't but one person on earth who could have done such a beautiful thing for me!"

All alone in the hall, Charles felt himself coloring with pleasure.

However, the unwonted flush was not for long.

"I have to pinch myself," the girl's eager voice rushed on (did it sound just a thought more triumphant than even the author of the write-ups could have expected?),--"for every magazine I pick up is full of nothing but Me! I've just seen 'Willc.o.x's'--oh, you don't know how much I liked that! You've simply taken my breath away! And then to come in and find _this_!--everything beautiful happening to me at once! I--"

"What? _More_ honors, celebrity?"

"The greatest!--the most wonderful! Mr. Garrott, what DO you suppose?"

Mr. Garrott hardly liked the slant the conversation was taking. The understanding was that whatever beautiful things happened to the Career were to happen exclusively through him now.

"Why!--I can't guess! Not--Has the School Board--"

"Pish for the School Board," cried the voice that was wont to be so calm. "You're talking to _the new Secretary of the League_!"

"I'm.... _What?_"

"The person you're conversing with, if you please, is the General Secretary of the National League for Education Reform!" Her happy laugh rang on the wire: "Are you _staggered_? Well, I am, too! I simply can't begin to take it in...."

Had Mrs. Herman's house fallen about his ears, the young man at the telephone-table could, indeed, scarcely have been staggered more. His sense was of one falling headlong through s.p.a.ce. He gripped the edge of the table with a large left hand, and for the instant there was no speech in him.

"I found the letter from Dr. Ames when I got in just now--oh, the nicest letter, explaining everything! And of course I wanted to tell you right away--you've been so good about wanting to help! Don't you remember, it was you who spoke of this as my brilliant revenge? We little thought then ..."

_Wanting to help!_ Doubt not, that was the body blow. "No--no! And I--I really don't take it in--even now," he was saying, struggling desperately for his mask. "I--ah--I'd given up all--idea, you see! Why, I understood that was _all off_! I--"

"Of _course_--so had I! That's what makes it such a wonderful bolt from the blue! There was another candidate, you see--a college president, imagine!--and Dr. Ames says he felt he ought to be very discreet and reticent till it was all settled. But I was elected unanimously, and must be in New York to take charge of the office on March 1st...."

It was the complete collapse of his triumph and his hope: he would not be going to the newspaper-offices now. But that sentence, that concrete date, took the whole matter deeper still. Charles Garrott took a firmer grip on Mrs. Herman's little table. Now his voice came firmer, too:--

"The first woman secretary they ever had!... Why--it's _immense_!"

In the ensuing dialogue, in which, for pride's sake, he sought to strike just the right felicitatory note, there was an instant when the possibility flashed upon him that the stunning event was itself but the unimagined by-product of the write-ups. The directors had decided not to give the distinguished post to an obscure provincial teacher, when all of a sudden his great broadside of fame for Mary had come roaring in among them. The thought, in this moment of utter frustration, seemed actually welcome to him. But it had hardly fluttered before Mary struck it dead, in the most incidental manner: incidental--since, to be just, she, having no knowledge whatever of his secret plans, could hardly guess what annihilation she was dealing out to them. It developed, in short, that her election, though held back a few days to be ratified by the trustees of the League's endowment fund, had actually taken place on December 27th. And it was too readily recalled that the first of the write-ups had not appeared till the following day.

"Yes--yes!... Fine holiday, thank you!--fine! But of course--no triumphs like this to report!..."

"Well!--I mustn't keep you now, of course!" said the victorious voice.

"I'm looking forward to seeing you ..."

No, it was sufficiently clear that he had but labored to heap coals in Newcastle. It was just the case of the old write-up, last year; only now a thousand times worse. Often before, this desire in him to help, this spontaneous protecting instinct which seemed to be always flowing out here, had been rebuffed and defeated. But this time, his defeat seemed to be final. And, hanging up the receiver at last, the young man sat silent with the feeling that something valuable and important had suddenly departed from his life.

He felt that he had been rather imposed upon, but that didn't matter particularly. He felt beaten, as he had never been beaten before, and that seemed to matter a good deal. With an odd and profound sense of blank chagrin, he recognized, at last, that when Mary Wing had said that she didn't need his help, she had been merely stating a literal and obvious truth. How he had been such a fool as ever to think otherwise?

But deeper than all this, it seemed clear from the beginning that he was disappointed in his friend, personally. Had he not read into her all along, and put into the write-ups, a rather finer quality than she, in fact, possessed? Spinsters were ent.i.tled to a man's freedom to follow away their work--of course. But it seemed that he had never been able to imagine Mary as actually seizing this Right. And now, here she was doing it, with joy--the end of next month. Now behold her, whose praises he had so superfluously sung round the world--just an ordinary Redmantler after all, it seemed, exultantly striking off mother, home, friends; a female Egoist, no more, visibly engaged in "fiercely hacking away"....

He could, indeed, scarcely take it in. And stoutly he a.s.sured himself that his whole feeling about the matter would have been different--if only she had showed, at once, that this would be a wrench for her, that her thought was colored by a sense of values not connected with her Self. But no; it seemed that the new General Secretary had no thought to spare for the immaterial business of being a sister and being a daughter.

So Charles's call at the Wings' on the evening of his homecoming wore a complexion not contemplated by him when he had arranged the matter.

He had made this engagement, under the general misapprehension, in his reply to Mary's grateful letter last week. And now he had to keep it, however malapropos, resolved as he was that she should never sense any criticism or disapprobation in him. To seek to "influence" her, naturally never entered his mind. No, he was her casual spectator now and henceforward; he had dipped his oar in her affairs for the last time.

But the call was hardly much of a success, despite all efforts. Mary, having now had time to recapture her usual poise, no longer impressed one as being so unreservedly overjoyed with herself. It was noted that she kept referring to the write-ups, kept a.s.suring him how delightful she found it to be a celebrity as well as a Secretary, etc., etc. The caller's intellect coldly gave her credit for "being very nice."

However, no niceness could help much to drape the stark obtruding facts; no civilities seemed fitted to cope with the intangible wall suddenly sprung up in the old friends.h.i.+p. And if there had lingered in Charles's mind some revolting incredulity, some reactionary insistence that Mary could never really carry out the typical exploit of the Egoette, the talk this evening finally killed it. The famous educator's sentences made it clear, once and for all, that she was Leaving Home for good--for her own good, of course--on the 1st day of March succeeding.

Charles was determinedly "sincere" throughout the brief call, continuously and spuriously hearty. Inwardly, his resolve grew more and more fixed that this young woman, who was so rarely competent to Lead Her Own Life, should be permitted to lead it quite una.s.sisted henceforth. For himself, he decided that his life should go to the unremitting service of pure Letters. But of such matters, of course, he permitted his agreeable chatter to yield no hint. Taking his departure upon a new wave of felicitations, he could but congratulate himself upon the trained adeptness of his mask.

And Mary, having shut the door upon her caller, stood leaning against it, her arched brows drawn together in a faint frown, her fine eyes faintly bewildered.

"Now what," she said, half aloud, "have I said or done, or left unsaid or undone, this time?"

And then she went slowly back to her mother's bedroom, where she found her mother with stockings to darn, and (taken unawares) her eyes a little red.

XIV

In the Home on Center Street, the shrunken curtain was rarely hooked back on the nail now. And on the ledge of the little window that gazed toward the Blest, the shabby opera-gla.s.ses gathered dust.

As is perfectly understood, Careers in the making are the stuff to make conservatives of others. Observing Egoettes, an authority, if male, inevitably reacts, thinking better and better of the gentle business of supplying beauty and supplying charm. Charles Garrott, in short, having repudiated all connection with the life of Mary Wing, was in just the proper frame of mind to applaud the life of Mary's so different cousin.

And Charles did applaud it--certainly. But, of course, such purely scientific endors.e.m.e.nt did not controvert another established known truth, namely, that, under certain circ.u.mstances and as applied to certain individuals, the supply of the soft commodities referred to may very well prove a little in excess of the demand.

The well-known thought first flickered back into Charles's mind on the third day of his homecoming. At the moment, he stood on the corner nearest Berringer's, having just dismounted there from Miss Angela's conveyance. On the fifth day of his homecoming, at the same corner, his reflections on supply and demand were a.s.suming an increasing definiteness.

"Well, then--good-bye!" he was saying, with his fatal pleasantness. "And thank you very much for the lift."

From the seat of Tommy's valuable donation, Angela was gazing up at him.

And he saw that her face, which had been smiling, was touched with a brief seriousness.