Angela's Business Part 5

He spoke suddenly, with a manner proving that he did not pride himself on wearing a mask for nothing:--

"Did you know that a woman's occipital condyles are less voluminous than a man's,--yes, considerably so,--while her zygomatic arches are more regular? Well, then, take my word for it, for they are."

Miss Wing rewarded him by coming out of her abstraction with a laugh.

She asked him in what great tome he had learned that fascinating fact.

"Ah, that's my secret. By the way," said Charles, "how's that charming little cousin of yours, Miss Angela?"

He spoke in his most natural voice, as if no thought of conflict had ever risen between him and the best of New Women. All the same, the cousin's name fell rather oddly on the advanced air.

Mary Wing said that she hadn't seen Angela since the Redmantle Club; she said she must try to go there this afternoon. He remarked that being pulled up by the roots, and transplanted, was hard on the young, but that Miss Angela would make friends fast enough. Having a pa.s.sion for biography, especially the biographies of women, he wanted particularly to learn something about this girl, who had given him, Charles Garrott, a phrase. But the talk now took another turn; it wasn't a day for discussing Home-Making clearly. Miss Hodger and Professor Clarence Pollock went walking by, across the sunny street, and Mary, having greeted them much too pleasantly to suit his taste, said:--

"Do you know this is the third time I've seen those two together lately?

It begins to look like an affair."

"What!" he cried, disgusted. "Why!--why, she'd bite his head off in a week!"

And then, while she protested argumentatively, he was silent for a s.p.a.ce, struck with the thought that here was an opening not unsuited to his need.

While the plan for his new work was by no means settled yet, beyond doubt this matter of Miss Trevenna had given strong impetus to the conservative wave. And meanwhile, there was the personal side. To lecture Mary Wing openly was a thing scarcely to be thought of. Yet, having felt the unmistakable reactions himself, the young man found himself itching, literally itching, to get his hands on Mary and make her react a little, too.

He said in his pleasantest way:--"Did it ever strike you, by the way, that she's got the propaganda in the purely archaic form?"

"Archaic?--Hodger!"

"She still imagines that the object of this Movement is to make women more like men. Of course, the object of the Movement is to make women more like themselves."

Her silence seemed to applaud his epigram. Charles felt that it was generous of him to add: "I bagged that somewhere. Sounds like Havelock Ellis to me. But," he added, frankly, "I've improved the wording. Why do you say I'm unjust to her? On the contrary, I'd be delighted to fork over all those rights of hers she was demanding the other night. By the by, what are Hodger's rights exactly?"

"I suppose she's ent.i.tled to human rights, even if you, as a man, don't find her especially attractive."

Charles winced, and then smiled faintly.

"Human rights--security and protection, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? She's got them, hasn't she? I thought what Hodger was yelling for was special privileges, rather exceptional privileges in the way of freeing her Ego from--"

"As a woman, she hasn't even all the human rights, you know very well.

As a human being, she would feel that she's ent.i.tled to exceptional rights, because she's an exceptional being. She would take the ground that her public work--"

"She would take that ground, of course. But," said Charles, amiably, "possibly others would not agree with her. That is just the trouble, isn't it? The doctrine that the world belongs to Exceptional People has that fatal weakness."

"In your opinion," she qualified him--"what?"

"We'd need a great board, a sort of Super-Supreme Court of really G.o.dlike understanding, to tell us which are the Exceptional People."

Seeing that he had her temporarily at a loss, Charles continued his agreeable prattle:--

"And hand them out their little certificates, you know. I remember, this chap Chesterton said a fairly bright thing once--a little piece I read somewhere. He said he'd always wanted to hear somebody--anybody--preach 'personal liberty' with one small qualification. Said he'd waited and waited to hear one person state the creed something like this: 'Men and women of genius must not be bound by ordinary laws. But I am NOT a man of genius, and therefore I will keep the law.' Chesterton said he'd been waiting for years."

He was aware that Miss Wing was regarding him in a curious sort of way, and now she said, directly:--

"Do you know, this doesn't sound like you at all?"

"Doesn't it?--why not? I've always believed in taking a good look around, every now and then. Constant discussion," said Charles, "constant canva.s.sing of rival theories--"

"Well, those theories are only good for people who think that the way to advance is by standing still."

As she spoke these positive words, the two were overtaken and pa.s.sed by Henry Mysinger, of all people. Mr. Mysinger was at once Mary's princ.i.p.al at the High School and her special adversary in the Schools, against whom in years past she and her friend Garrott had how often schemed and plotted. His salute now was pleasant, with reference to Charles, but the eye he cast upon his a.s.sistant was distinctly not approbatory.

As for Mary, it did not appear that she bowed at all.

"But the way to advance is by advancing," she continued, declining to lower her voice at all, "and it's only the exceptional people who are capable of superintending these advances. That, by the way," said the school teacher, "is probably the very definition you are looking for."

He flatly rejected her definition; disputation followed. With increasing pointedness, Mary Wing pressed the case for "exceptional people,"

Self-Developing People who recked not of Homes and being Sisters and Daughters. And presently she said, with only a small air of hesitation:--

"And please remember that enlightened people cannot possibly point the way without courage, and--a certain amount of pioneering experiment."

Mr. Mysinger had mercifully withdrawn himself around the corner of Third Street. There his a.s.sistant would turn, too, parting from her friend; and really, that appeared to be just as well. Forgetting his mask, the young man was beginning to betray signs of exasperation. No more than Mysinger, of course, had he ever been deceived by the delicate girlishness of Mary's face; but the positions she seemed to be taking now pa.s.sed anything he had ever thought of her addiction to the New. Was this mere argument for argument's sake?--or did she seriously imagine that the regeneration of society was to be accomplished by the antics of a few wild female Egoists--lawless Egoettes?

"That's true, to a point, of course," he said, with control. "Yet don't you suspect people who talk about their Duty to the Race, while overlooking entirely their duty to that part of the race which should be nearest and dearest to them?"

"I'd suspect even more people who daren't call their souls their own, for fear they might be criticized by somebody who knows nothing about the facts."

And then she exclaimed suddenly. "Oh, why don't you say at once that you've been talking at poor Flora Trevenna for three blocks!"

He was considerably taken aback, but spoke calmly: "Not at all--or at least only in a general way. One of the problems of the day, as we say at the Redmantle Club."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say then, man to man, as it were: "Miss Mary, you have a great work ahead of you, in a special field.

Isn't it a pity to confuse your good cause with one that perhaps is not so good?" But, of course, you hardly gave advice of that sort to Mary Wing.

"But since you seem to invite my opinion," he continued, "I will say that I do think there is a logical connection between Hodger's kind of talk and Miss Trevenna's--ah--pioneering experiment."

"Of course there is! Who denied it?" said she, with a forthrightness that increased his wonder at her.

And then, as they came to a standstill at the corner, she added, after a grave speculative stare:--

"If it'll do you the slightest good, Mr. Garrott, I'll tell you exactly what finally decided Flora to forget her duty to her sisters, aunts, uncles, and so on, as you consider. Prepare yourself. It was a sentence in a book."

"_A sentence in a book!_"

Miss Wing nodded, several times. "As she's a reserved girl, and I appear to be her only friend now, of course this is a confidence."

"I can name the book!" cried Charles; and he did.

"However," he resumed, with bitter urbanity, "if she'd happened to read a few pages further, she might have noticed that the Lady in Sweden took every bit of it back."

To his surprise, Mary Wing laughed.

"Do you know, that's just what I told her, in almost those very words?