Angela's Business Part 15

"Yes, but I don't want a monument after I'm dead!"

She laughed, without self-consciousness, and said: "Oh, if I'd tried, of course, I couldn't have put a better club into Mr. Mysinger's hands.

Ideas!--I'm really amazed I wasn't electrocuted on the spot. Of course it isn't as if I were a man, you see, with a right to have ideas. That's my real fault, from the beginning--at least with Mysinger. I'm a woman, and so should never have been suffered 'to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.' Dear St. Paul!"

It was rare to find bitterness in Mary. Charles asked hastily if there had been much talk about the building to-day. She said that the School had been buzzing with it.

"It's almost been worth having it happen, to see how many friends I've got. And the children are the best, of course. All afternoon my boys and girls have been streaming in here, in threes and fours--just to say they're sorry I'm going...."

A shadow fell on her oddly fragile-looking face, and the author struck the writing-leaf with a large fist.

"By George, you shan't go!"

"By George, I've got to," said Mary.

"Well, by George, you'll come right back. Listen to me."

Leaning forward over her desk, he eagerly unfolded his leading plan, elaborated by him in the night season. This plan involved an immediate appeal to the State Board of Education, which body had the power of overriding all acts of local school boards. Chalmers Brown, the young Attorney-General of the State and Charles's good friend, was an _ex-officio_ member of this august body. Brown would arrange to have a meeting called at once, ostensibly on other business, if necessary. Mary Wing would find herself triumphantly back in this office within two weeks from to-day. And as for--

But at the first mention of the State Board, Mary had begun to shake her head, and before Charles had got his plan fairly set out she interrupted him, rather (it seemed to him) as an older brother interrupts.

"No, I've thought that over very carefully. Mysinger's pull has me beaten there before I begin. I'd only be playing into his hand, don't you see--giving the State Board a public opportunity to indorse and approve my punishment."

"But, great heavens! Mysinger's not the whole show here. You overrate--"

"He is, and he isn't. Some good men, like Creamer, are against me now, it's true. And yet, if Mysinger let either Board know that he wanted me back here, I'd come back to-morrow. He's that much of the show, Mr.

Garrott."

Charles argued warmly. He was chagrined at the ease and decision with which the sure young woman brushed his arguments aside. Nor did the consciousness that she was probably sound in her positions soothe his masculine sense of the fitness of things at all. With a subtle loss of enthusiasm, he broached his second plan; and it too was summarily thrown out of court. That plan had called for an investigation of the "due cause" by the City Council--an intention attributed by the generous "Post" reporter to the well-known citizen, unnamed. Finding his supporting shoulder thus rejected, Charles demanded what was _her_ plan, then. And it seemed that Mary's plan was merely to wait until May, when the terms of three members of the local Board expired (all of them Mysinger men), and then to see to it that these places were filled with men friendly to her.

The plan seemed to the young man so feeble and remote, so uncharacteristic and tame, as to indicate a certain indifference in her.

He sat eyeing her a moment with intent speculation, and then said deliberately:--

"That's good enough for publication purposes, I suppose. But--you're thinking of something very different, aren't you?"

"Am I?--what do you suspect?" said Mary, continuing her labors of paper-sorting.

"It's occurred to me that you have rather a brilliant revenge up your sleeve all the time. What'll you care for little pigs like Mysinger, when you go off as General Secretary of the League?"

The self-contained young woman surprised him by throwing both arms above her head and saying, pa.s.sionately. "If I only could! Oh, oh! If I only could!"

Charles's gaze became fixed. "But you're going to, aren't you?"

Her arms fell and she said, in another voice: "No, I don't think I'm going to land it, you see!"

"Not going to--! Why, I thought you were practically sure!"

"That's the worst of it--I _was_, for a few wild weeks. Now I'm positive I'm not."

"Why!--but what's happened?"

"Oh," said she, light and calm again, "merely reading between the lines of Dr. Ames's letters. I hear from him all the time about the State work--once a week, at least. But he's never referred at all to the talk we had--about my being Secretary--from the first. Of course, I've wondered. And then yesterday--no, day before--I had a letter asking if I expected to be in New York any time before fall. He said he'd like to talk with me about my work here."

The straightforward sentences carried a painful conviction. Charles's eyes fell from his friend's face. For this crowning disappointment of hers he was distressed enough, indeed; and yet he was perfectly conscious that there was a side of him which could not lament at all.

Publicly speaking, he had not honestly viewed the secretaryship as a "revenge"; since to get Mary out of the schools, by hook or crook, was the exact object in life of her adversary, Mysinger, who so earnestly held that woman's place was the Home. And then, there were those more personal and secret reactions in him, which had somehow recoiled from this development of the Career from the start.

"How long have you felt this way--that you weren't going to get it?"

"Oh--for two months now, at least."

"Two months! Why, you've never said anything about it to me!"

"Well, I don't remember your asking anything about it."

"No, because I supposed it was virtually settled--"

"Oh, no, indeed. In fact--oh, it was just a mad dream for me, of course!

I'll live and die a Grammar School teacher."

"No! I swear you'll not!" And, seeing the way cleared of all extra-complications now, the young man flung out with unwonted exuberance: "You trust _me_! You'll come back here so quickly you'll not remember you ever went!"

But the male protectorship, he should have known well, scarcely thrived in this atmosphere. Mary tied a package of papers, gave him a look and smile, and dropped it efficiently into the suitcase at her feet.

"Well, that's on the knees of the G.o.ds as yet. Meanwhile--there's no use crying over spilt milk."

"My point is, don't you see, this milk shan't stay spilt! _I'm_ not going to wait till May to have you back here."

It was on the tip of his tongue to confide to her then, for her comfort, the third plan he had for her, a plan more circuitous and elaborate than either of his others, but yet, given time, his personal favorite from the beginning. However, Mary's little laugh checked him. The laugh may have been the best cover she had for feelings deeply bruised, after all, perhaps: but the breath of it chilled the young man's ardors effectually.

"I'm afraid you must, though! This milk--"

"I decline. Trust me, I say. I intend to help you here."

But her reply was to put into words of one syllable, at last, what her manner had been saying plainly from the beginning:--

"My dear friend, you _can't_ help me, in this."

She added, quietly snapping on a light: "Don't worry your head about it any more, please. Whatever, can be done,--I can and will do it, you may be sure."

It was odd how completely this silenced the young man. It was as if she had suddenly blown up the whole line of their communication.

And it seemed to Charles, all at once, that Mary had accidentally stated exactly what was the matter with her, as a woman and a friend. It seemed to him suddenly that ever since he had known this girl he had been going to her and saying, "Look here, I'll help you do such and such," and she, in one way or another, had always been replying, "Why, _you_ couldn't help ME!"

The conversation between the two old friends thus abruptly thinned out.

It became almost desultory on his part, not untouched with dignity. And as they so chatted of Lee Grammar School and its unfavorable location, he, the authority, was eyeing Mary Wing askance, unmistakably reacting.... Was hardness, then, the necessary corollary of "independence"? Was it true, exactly as Old Tories said, that a woman could not grapple long with actuality without rubbing away that natural sweetness and charm of hers which, it might be, the grim world needed more than duplicate Careers? Certainly there was no charm for him in this slip of a girl's self-a.s.sertion: "I'm a better man than you, don't you know it?" Splendid, indeed, was her Spartan calm in a defeat serious in every way, and with the peculiar sting conferred by Miss Trevenna's fame. Why was it that he would have warmed to her so infinitely more, have felt quite a new depth of affection for her, if, rather, she had turned to him helpless and wildly weeping, "Help me! Help me, friend, or I perish!"

"And at least you'll get out much earlier in the afternoons," he was observing courteously....

But his secret thought continued to engross him, this fantastic thought of Mary weeping. Now he remembered Miss Angela's girlish outburst last night, after the bridge-party; and he saw that there was something subtly fitting, engaging on the whole, in a woman's weeping over her troubles. But Mary, of course, could not weep; she simply didn't have the plant, as you might put it. No--you could picture Mary asking you to sit on the sofa and look at her ring, more easily than weeping.