V. V.'s Eyes Part 51

"Do!" said mamma, further encouraged. "Sleep a little if you can, my dear. It's just what you need...."

But Cally did not sleep. It had seemed to her that she must be alone for a time, to try to think out what was to happen; but now she saw that she had no need to think. Of the complex nervous and emotional reaction which had brought her flying home, she had, indeed, seemed to understand nothing except that it was irresistible; her mind was like a dark cloud, refusing to yield up its meanings. Nevertheless, there seemed to be no doubt as to what she must do now....

Mrs. Heth, having remained downstairs half an hour longer, ascended quietly, the beginnings of great grat.i.tude in her heart. They were feelings born but to die. Just at the head of the stairs she encountered Cally, emerging like an apparition from the door of the family sitting-room. The girl spoke in a small voice:

"Mamma, I want to send for Dr. Vivian--to come and see me."

Mamma, just thinking that this madness was finally disposed of, was taken suddenly. Even the birthmark on her temple, which was partially exposed, seemed to turn pale....

But once more Carlisle carried her extraordinary point. Ever since she was a little girl she had been subject to these incalculable fits, when punishment made her ill, but did not conquer the seven devils that possessed her. Mrs. Heth, frantic after nearly an hour's thundering, vanished into the telephone-booth, bent upon reaching Mr. Heth while there was yet time. But even now her strongest thought was that Cally was a sensible girl at heart, in the last pinch simply incapable of self-destructive folly.

Cally, also, had thought of the telephone. But the sight of it, after last night, unnerved her. She withdrew to the little desk in her bedroom.

So the word of the Lord came to the Dabney House, by the hand of an old negro gentleman.

He was standing in the middle of the floor, when Carlisle went down, an inconsonant figure amid the showy splendors of the Heth drawing-room. So much appeared to the most casual observation. Far deeper to the understanding eye went the inconsistency of this man's presence here, in an hour of appalling intimacy.

Carlisle, entering through the uncurtained doorway, halted involuntarily just over the threshold. Her eye, at least, saw all. And she was abruptly and profoundly affected by the sight of him in her familiar background, the author of the Beach opinion of her, who truly had never meant anything but trouble for her since the first moment she saw him.

Time, indeed, had given the religious fellow his last full measure of revenge....

Prepared speeches of some dignity and length slipped from her. Cally spoke from her heart and her fear, without greeting, in a nervous childish voice:

"I--I wanted to see you, to--to ask you--to talk with you--as to what must be done...."

Jack Dalhousie's friend bowed gravely. There was no victory on his face, neither was there any judgment.

"I understood," he said simply, "and was grateful to you."

He, certainly, seemed aware of no discordance in himself. He advanced with a beautiful consistency, looking as if he wished to say more. But Cally, her hand gripping the back of a spindly gold divan, her gaze fallen, seemed suddenly to find her own tongue unloosed.

"It's been so terrible," she hurried on in the same flat, unpremeditated way--"no one could know.... I was in New York, and we were to sail for Europe in a few days. Everything was arranged, all our plans were made, oh, for months and months. And then.... And now I've come home--and everything is so upset--and so dreadfully complicated. And I haven't seemed able to think somehow--to decide--"

"Try not to think about it at all," said the man, with some firmness.

"That's the great compensation, that you can begin to forget about it now. Won't you sit down?"

She sat down obediently, quite as if it were natural for him to be taking charge of her in her own drawing-room. And staring down at her locked hands, she fluttered on with no reference to him, with a kind of frightened incredulity, like a bird in a trap.

"It seems so unjust--so terribly _unfair_.... That all this could come from one little puff of wind!... He had gotten out of the boat. He was swimming away. And then there came one little gust. I had tied the sail, you see. He had frightened me. And now, after all these months.... But of course I never thought--I never dreamed of--of--"

"I know; I understand. No one dreamed it. You must keep sure of that,"

said Vivian, in his natural voice. "I knew Dal very well indeed, you know; and I felt certain that he was--safe from this. You--you mustn't think of it as something that could have been foreseen...."

He was looking down at her lowered face closely as he spoke; and went on without pause:

"You see--what upset him so was beyond your control or mine. I've heard nothing since the telegram last night. But--you may remember that he spoke of a girl in his letter, whose opinion he seemed to value. It must be that when he saw her again, she was very hard on him--so hard that he lost his grip for a moment. I can't account for it in any other way.

There is another thing, too.... Do you think it's a little close in here, perhaps? May I open a window?"

She a.s.sented without speech, and he walked away with the step of his disability to the long windows. Into the dim great room stole the breath of the May morning, sweet with the fragrance of the balcony flowers.

The tall young man came walking back.

"There was one thing I wanted particularly to tell you. I sent Dal a message--a telegram--on Monday night...."

Startled, Carlisle looked up.

"On--_Monday_?... Why--I--"

"Not breaking your confidence, of course--just telling him, in a general way, to keep his courage up, that I--I thought good news was on the way.... It was without authority. I realized that. And yet I felt so sure that--when you had had a little time to think--that would be what you would wish. In fact, of course I knew it...."

Their eyes met, almost for the first time, and a sudden constraint fell upon the girl.

"But I don't see," she said, with some difficulty--"if you telegraphed him that--on Monday--I don't understand--"

"The telegram went astray. I went to the office here last night and had them find out. It should have reached Weymouth the first thing yesterday morning. It didn't arrive till about three in the afternoon. But even then.... You see, he could hardly have expected a reply to his letter till Wednesday. That's to-day--"

These two sat looking at each other: and Cally's tongue was no longer free as a hurt child's. She seemed not to find it possible to speak at all now. The young man from the other world was going on, with his strange composure.

"So you see how much was pure blind chance, that couldn't be guarded against. If he had only waited.... If he had only trusted you--two hours longer...."

Surely he had more to say, much more; yet he ended abruptly, speech being evidently not desired of him. The girl had suddenly dropped her face into her hands.

Cally did not want to look at this man any more; could not bear it indeed. His eyes, which had always seemed gifted to convey hidden meanings, had well outstripped the words of his mouth, triumphing strangely over all that he knew about her. Quite clearly they had said to her just then: "_I_ would have trusted you, you know...." And somehow that seemed sad to her, she did not know why. Why, indeed, should Jack Dalhousie have trusted her?...

Something moved in Cally in this moment which might have been the still small voice, and her weakness grew apace. She turned precipitately, put an arm on the back of the gold divan where she sat, and buried her face in it. Her struggle now was against tears; and it was to be a losing struggle. She did not cry easily. It always seemed rather like tearing loose something within her, something important that was meant to stay where it had been fixed. There was pain with these tears....

The man from the Dabney House said nothing. His was a more than woman's intuition. There was a long silence in the drawing-room....

But after a time, when there were signs that the tension was relaxing and the sudden storm pa.s.sing, he spoke in his simple voice:

"You see your message would have been all that you meant, but for the terrible coincidence. You mustn't take it--so much upon yourself. That wouldn't be right. Think of that poor girl out there, who is reproaching herself so to-day. And then, besides, you must know I realize that I should have seen you last week.... You had every right to expect that, as I was--in a measure--Dal's representative...."

Cally hardly heard him.

Her back toward him, she had produced from some recess a small handkerchief, and was silently removing the traces of her tears. She had dimly supposed that there would be a long discussion; all at once it was clear that there was nothing to discuss. And she thought of Hugo, and a little of her mother, waiting upstairs....

"It was too much for one person to carry alone," continued the alien voice, sounding rather hard-pressed now. "I happened to be the one person in position to help, and I failed you.... I'd like you to know...."

But the girl had risen, ending his speech, her need to talk with him past. Her self-absorption was without pretence. Wan and white and with a redness about her misty dark eyes, she stood facing the old enemy, and spoke in a worn little voice:

"You said you'd see his father for me, didn't you?"

The man, having risen with her, looked hurriedly away.

"Yes--of course. I'll go. At once."

And then, as if pledged to speak, though well he knew that she had no thought for him, he added abruptly: "But you mustn't think of yourself as being alone with this. I promise you I'll keep the knowledge, to punish me, that if--if I'd been the sort of man you needed, you'd have settled it all long ago...."