V. V.'s Eyes Part 38

Not clearly understanding it herself, how could she explain the impulse which had led her to offer Hen, without being dunned at all, her royal subscription? Perhaps she had a vague feeling that this would prove, to the complete satisfaction of the public, that she and her family were far from being shameless homicides, dead to all benevolent works. It appeared that mamma had already subscribed fifteen dollars to the Settlement, on personal solicitation of Mr. Dayne, but of course you could not prove anything much for fifteen dollars.

Hugo, having turned to look at Carlisle, lost interest in Settlements.

His gaze became fixed, and it said, plainer than ardent print, that, if he had many possessions, here was far the best and dearest of them....

"Where's that ripping little hat you wore yesterday? You know--a brown one, sort of a toque, I suppose--all old rose inside?"

"Why, Hugo!... Don't you like this hat _extremely_?"

"Rather! Only, if there is a choice, I do think I'd vote for the toque.... You've gone and spoiled me by giving away how you can look when you try."

Carlisle laughed merrily. She was glad to have her lover so observant of what she wore, even though he did not know nearly so much about clothes as he imagined.

"It's not a toque at all," said she, "but I'll wear it for you to-morrow, provided you promise me now to run away from that tiresome secretary and come to lunch."

"Done! At one-thirty o'clock."

"That's the exact luncheon hour, as it happens, but I notice that many of the best fiances make it a practice to report for duty at least half an hour before the gong. It _looks_ so much better."

"Running and eating's no better than eating and running, you allege.

There's some small merit in the contention.... What of those sterling fiances who punch the time-clock a full hour before the whistle?"

"Oh, dear me, Hugo, are there any like that?"

"There's but one now in captivity, I believe. I--h.e.l.lo!... Missed him, by Jove!"

"What was it? A cat?"

"Didn't you see? Our old hoodoo--that camp-meeting chap!..."

"Oh!"

"I wonder what ill wind he's blowing this time.... Poetic justice if I'd knocked him into the middle of next week."

Carlisle had involuntarily looked back, struck with a sense of coincidence, and also with the odd feeling of having received a douche of cold water. They were, it seemed, rolling along through old South Street, and behind her, sure enough, she saw the looming shape of the ancient hotel, which the Settlement a.s.sociation could have for twenty-five thousand dollars cash. Of the "camp-meeting chap," however, she saw nothing: presumably, having evaded justice, he had already disappeared into his lair. Nevertheless she was effectually reminded that this man was still in the world.

"Is this where the fellow lives?" said Canning, also glancing back down the dingy street. "I thought somebody said he'd come into money from his lamented uncle."

She confirmed the conjecture, and Hugo then observed:

"Well, I'll give him a month to discover that it's his duty to G.o.d to remove to a more fashionable neighborhood."

"Oh! Do you think so?"

"Have you ever known one of these smooth religious fellows who wasn't keen after the fleshpots when his chance came?"

Carlisle laughed and said she hadn't, having indeed known few religious fellows of any kind in her young life. But she was struck with this new proof of Hugo's essential congeniality with her. His penetrating comment, born, it seemed, of that curious antipathy which she had noticed before, fell in astonishingly with trends of her own.

Many weeks had pa.s.sed since Carlisle had decided to oust this religious fellow definitely from her thoughts, as belonging so clearly to that past upon which she had now turned a victorious back. And in these expulsive processes, she had found herself greatly a.s.sisted by the young man's confession of hypocrisy, as she regarded it, on this very subject of giving away money. Perhaps this had seemed a frail club once; she herself had hardly put much strength in it in the beginning; but she had been resolute, and time had strengthened her convincingly, according to her need. For if the man was a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones within, then clearly his opinions of people and their families were not of the slightest importance to anybody, so what was the good of anybody's thinking of them?...

Not to let the conversation lag, she had remarked, with no pause at all:

"It's strange our nearly running over him, just then and there. That old shack is the Dabney House, and you know it's he who got up the Settlement idea."

"No, I didn't know it," said Canning, slowing down to take a corner which led on to civilization. "Still," he added, "I shan't let that stay my generosity. I resolved three blocks back to subscribe five hundred--just to throw you in the shade--and I will not be deterred."

Having been duly applauded for his prodigality, he inquired: "How much, by the way, is the good doctor donating out of his forty thousand?"

"Not a cent!" said Carlisle, who had questioned Hen on this very point.

It was thus, indeed, that circ.u.mstances had given demolishing weight to her club. "If I had money I'd probably hang on to every cent," the man had said, that winter morning on his uncle's doorstep; and now he had money, a lot of it, and hanging on he undoubtedly was. Hen herself had confessed it, with a certain defiance, trying to create the impression that the man was merely reserving his funds for some other good purpose....

The triumphant ring in Carlisle's voice might have struck Canning as odd, if he had happened to notice it. Still more obscure, however, were the inner processes which led him to say:

"Does he make any charge for the thought?... Well, it's a fine thought, all the same; a fine work. On reconsideration I raise my subscription to a thousand. Hang the expense!..."

There was another gay burst of felicitation, after which Carlisle became somewhat silent. Canning, bowling proficiently up Washington Street, spoke of his honored maternal grandmother, the great lady Mrs. Theodore Spencer, and her famous Brookline home. Beside him, Carlisle, listening with one ear only, considered the strangeness of life. Transfigured within, she had seemed to look out upon a new universe, yet was not this somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then, were clubs? When were things _ever_ settled, if she could be conscious of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?...

"Who was that?" said Canning, suspending conversation to bow, with Carlisle, to a pa.s.sing female pedestrian.

"Oh," she laughed, a little vexedly, roused from her meditations--"just one of my poor relations."

"Ah?" said he, a trifle surprised.

A far cry, indeed, from the celebrated dowager, friend of diplomats and presidents, to Miss c.o.o.ney of Saltman's bookstore, in a three-year-old skirt. And how like Hen, instead of quietly looking the other way, to yell out some c.o.o.neyesque greeting and wave that perfectly absurd umbrella....

To Hen it was, a day or two later, that Carlisle mailed the two Settlement checks, hers for a hundred and Hugo's for ten times that amount. She licked the stamp with intense satisfaction. However, the rewards of her generosity seemed somewhat flat. Hen, indeed, called her up immediately upon receipt of her communication, and contents noted, with excited thanksgiving. However, that was all: the checks were turned over to Mr. Dayne, and there the matted ended. Carlisle was oppressed with a sense of anti-climax. She even thought of sending another and larger check straight to Dr. Vivian.

Canning, it developed rather to Carlisle's surprise, took his business quite seriously. His indolences of the sick-leave period were now sloughed from him. He had returned this time, not merely with his favorite car and mechanic for the afternoon excursions, but accompanied by mysterious "papers" and a man stenographer; and, occupying rooms in the New Arlington Hotel, gave his mornings and even some of his evenings religiously to work.

"Why, Hugo, are you a _lawyer?_" cried Carlisle, when he first explained these matters to her.

"I am, and a pretty keen one," said he.

"And do you know how to reorganize _banks?_"

"I can reorganize 'em like the devil," said Hugo sincerely; for if a man does not want a woman to boast a little before now and then, he does not want her at all....

His papers and his telegrams, his periods of engrossment in business and telephone-calls from his secretary, seemed to invest him with a certain new dignity. A subtle change in his manner was now perceptible. It was as if he had moulted some of the gay plumage of the wooing-season, and unconsciously begun to gather something of the authority of the coming head of a great house. Like many men who have long enjoyed but eluded the wiles of lovely woman, Canning clearly contemplated the married estate with profound gravity. In his absence he had communicated his good news to both his parents, though one was in Boston and the other, his father, in Washington: testifying, in short, before a Congressional Investigation Committee. He was not especially detailed as to what they had said, beyond their general expressions of pleasure; but it was clear that he regarded it as of the first importance that they should be pleased.

Matters now, indeed, began to a.s.sume a distinctly serious and responsible complexion. The days of purely idyllic romance seemed to slip behind; the engagement more and more took shape as the gateway to an alliance of inst.i.tutional consequence, entailing far-reaching reactions in various directions. Mamma's remarks made it plain that, with Cally's establishment as Mrs. Hugo Canning, her own career of brilliant aspiration had reached its final goal. Even papa's future seemed to be affected to its roots. Already he spoke with satisfaction of taking a smaller house next year; ultimately of "retiring" to an undefined "little place in the country," toward which in recent years his talk had slanted somewhat wistfully....

Mrs. Heth and Carlisle were to go to New York on the 20th of May, do a few days' preliminary shopping there, and sail on the 26th. Canning's visit lasted till near the middle of the month, running over his allotted two weeks. And deepening intimacy only brought into stronger relief his great advantages of position, antecedents, and experience; only showed Carlisle the more clearly how distinguished, cultivated, and superior a man she had won. With her pride, there came now, it seemed, a certain new humility. She was aware that never in the days of the thundering feet had she been so desirous of pleasing Hugo as now: when he was no shining symbol or distant parti, but the exceedingly personal and living man who was so soon to call her to the purple. She caught herself at times, with some amused surprise, in the deliberate processes--editing her vocabulary, manner, and wardrobe, for example, in the light of the preferences she intuitionally read in his eye. So, as the husbandly dignity descended upon him, she found herself possessed by something of the wifely duty....

Whenever was this ticklish business of the dovetailing of two lives accomplished without some small mutual effort? No more could be said than that Carlisle felt, in rare and weak moments, a certain sense of strain. An immaterial subtlety this, properly out of the range of mamma's concrete observations. But papa's heart was tender: did he possibly suspect that his darling might feel herself just a little overshadowed at times?

He called Cally into the study one evening before dinner, and with a mysterious air handed over to her a bulky packet of very legal-looking papers.

"Why, papa! What is it?"