Angela's Business Part 36

Charles wondered afterward if the opportune Tilletts had not subtly a.s.sisted his own withdrawal; but for the moment it rather seemed otherwise. While Angela spoke to the servant, he had turned hastily toward his overcoat; and now her hand fell upon his arm, with just a touch of the spoiled darling air, or at least with that added confidence which comes to a girl with these concrete evidences of her success.

"No, you mustn't! Don't go yet. _Please!_"

"I'm compelled to, unluckily. I very rarely allow myself the pleasure of calling at all, you know, and--"

"But you _have_ allowed yourself the pleasure, now, Mr. Garrott!

Oh!--don't be so _firm_! Come in--for only a minute! You can surely spare me a minute--when I ask you to specially--"

"It is literally impossible."

Angela had extended her small hand to lead him into the parlor. Now she let it fall at her side, and stood looking at him with a conscious expression on her face, a pretty expression, but one that he scarcely liked. Of course both of them knew that it was by no means literally impossible for Mr. Garrott to come in, for only a minute. But doubtless a womanly girl could be trusted to find an explanation for his peculiar speeches that plucked their stingers from them, as it were.

"You're so strange. You're displeased with me, I can see that.

Why?--because I wasn't in when you called? Why, I'm nearly always out on fine afternoons!"

"I know that," ventured the young man.

"If you'd just told me in advance.... Don't you know I'd never have gone out with Dan Jenney, if I'd dreamed you were going to call?"

He knew this also, only too well; but this time he only said: "A caller must take his chances, of course. By the way, let me thank you very much, again, for lending me that book. I found it immensely interesting."

"Oh!--'Marna'? I didn't want you to come just for that.... Did she make you think of Cousin Mary at all?"

He smiled distantly, turned away, and put on his overcoat.

This was done in entire silence; Angela urged him to stay no longer. But when he turned, hat in hand, to say good-bye, she stood confronting him again, very near. There was a faint flush on her smooth cheek; her woman's eyes were very bright; her look upon him was sweet, self-conscious, and wistful, oddly appealing. Rarely had he seen her look more girlishly desirable.

"Mr. Garrott, why have you always been different to me since that night--of my bridge-party?"

"Different?" queried Mr. Garrott.

"Oh, you know you have! You know you've never really got over what I said to you--and all that dreadful misunderstanding!"

And he knew then that this nice girl would go to her grave thinking of him as a lover whose confidence in his suit had been reft from him by a too sharp rebuke. Well, so be it. He was content that she should have that satisfaction: let that stand as a further liquidation of the old obligation, a bonus payment on the esteemed Kiss.

"You know you've never forgiven me!"

"I've never had anything to forgive you, Miss Flower."

"Then you've never believed I've forgiven you! I've tried to show you that I have, that I've truly appreciated all the nice things you've done for me--but you've still been different."

It was doubtless his imagination, but she seemed to be a little nearer as she said, with a pink and winsome hesitancy:--

"Can't I make you believe that I--I've really always been the same?"

Extending his hand, the voluntary celibate replied, with cheerful rea.s.surance: "I believe it now, Miss Flower. Absolutely. Positively. And now I must run."

Angela did not seem to see the hand he offered. She continued to look at him, and something seemed to die out of her face,--a momentary expectancy, was it, or the mere native optimism of youth? Her gaze turned away from his face, turned back again; and then she suddenly gave a little laugh, an odd laugh, half angry, half sad:--

"Oh, I do think you're absolutely--_obtuse_!"

And Charles then knew that, whether she realized it or not, Angela was giving him up.

But still she did not see his farewell hand. Her eyes, going past him again, had become fixed with a new expression, arresting him, and now she said, in another tone, what he found perhaps the most interesting remark in the duologue:--

"Here's Mr. Manford back!"

Charles wheeled, with a little jump.

And sure enough, there, beyond the gla.s.s of the door, was the form of the young engineer, incredibly returning. Yes, there he came back again, poor, vain, grinning, flattered fool, who only the other day had said: "Charlie, she worries me."

With one last look at Mr. Garrott, Angela turned to open the door for Mr. Manford. The greeting smile succeeded the good-bye reproach. And even in this disturbed moment, the writer's mind was subtly struck with the symbolism of that gesture: and once again this girl was a type to him, sister of a million sisters. Even so, must the womanly Spinster, through all her seeking days, turn from the man who does not desire her little offerings of beauty and charm, to the man who--well, possibly may. And it really wasn't right, wasn't fair....

"Old Sherlock!--sees the Fordette outside--guesses who's at home now!"

the man who possibly might was saying, with a tone of buoyant intimacy and a repellent smirk. "I thought you weren't going to forget me altogether!... Oh! And there's Charlie-boy, too! Feeling better, old top?"

Charles looked through him in silence.

But when Angela drifted by them into the parlor--for she avoided any formal farewell with her former princ.i.p.al friend--and he was pa.s.sing Donald to the door, he bent and flung into the youth's long ear one futile taunt:--

"Fool, I suppose she lent you the sequel!"

Before the dingy little house of the Flowers', there stood a line of waiting vehicles. The pa.s.ser would have said that a reception, or perhaps a wedding, was going on within.

To the left, Mr. Tilletts's s.h.i.+ning sedan still stood at the broken curb. The driver, having paused to exchange badinage with Walter Taylor, was just mounting to his seat. Full in front of the house stood a conveyance more in character with the unpretentious street: Charles Garrott's aged hackney-coach, in short. On the other side, at the nose of the hack-horse and properly leading the procession, stood the stout little Fordette, resting now from its labors. There only lacked a bicycle for Mr. Jenney, and something--a donkey, let us say--to stand for Donald Manford.

And Angela, indeed, had accomplished this; here was her true creative work, here her self-expression made visible. She it was who, poor and obscure, with n.o.body to help her, had drawn these vehicles and these gentlemen thronging about her door.

"Where toe, suh?" cried Walter Taylor, flouris.h.i.+ng his whip.

"Number 6 Olive Street."

The fare spoke all but automatically, out of his new genuine disquiet.

However, he corrected himself at once: "No--wait a minute."

If his position that she was just the wife for Donald lay silently abandoned somewhere behind him: if the business could no longer be viewed as Donald's idle-hour amus.e.m.e.nt, but all at once had come to look decidedly serious: still, what under heaven was the use of giving Mary another and more rousing warning? He had warned Mary once, and what was the result? Two calls from Donald to Angela in the course of a single afternoon. No; if the labor of taking off was now to follow "putting on," it was clear that some hand far subtler than the too manly Mary's would have to do the job. And he knew whose hand was plainly indicated, too....

And then the young man remembered, with a surprising uprush of relief and freedom, that this day was Friday, and Donald was off to New York to-night, within an hour or two. And the foolish youth would be gone a solid week, too, with Mr. Jenney and Mr. Tilletts left in possession of the field.

Thus, Walter Taylor, on his box, received a small surprise. Instead of giving him a new number, Mr. Garrott unexpectedly produced a dollar-bill from his pocketbook, and tossed it up to him with a sudden laugh.

"That's all, Walter. _I'll walk!_"