V. V.'s Eyes Part 66

Hugo's presence in the body had brought up vividly that matter upon which they had broken in May. Of that matter he had said nothing, either yesterday or to-day. His manner and bearing took the clear position that he and she had simply had a lovers' quarrel, in which both had said and done things that they did not mean. But Jack Dalhousie had stood in the background of Carlisle's mind all day, and her feeling was that something rather definite should have been said about him. Possibly Mrs.

Berkeley Page had something to do with this; that lady had left behind her an indefinable suggestion of invisible standards, of apprais.e.m.e.nts differing from mamma's, say. Measuring herself unconsciously with Hugo to-day, Cally had become aware that in carrying out her will in opposition to his last year, she had derived, not merely strategic, but in some way personal, strength. The old inequality had mysteriously disappeared....

Mrs. Heth came gliding through the portieres from the hall. Her face was one vast inquiry, lit by beams; it made an uproarious demand such as a child of three could have understood. Still, to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding, mamma briefly gave voice:

"Well?"

Cally laughed, and held up her betrothal finger, which was unadorned.

"I'm not," said she.

Mamma's face fell.

"Don't look so blank!" said the daughter, with a little laugh and shrug.

"It's all going to happen next week, by the book.... Don't you know I'm perfectly safe?"

Mr. Heth heard Cally's business news with open indignation. She made her report to him that night, just after dinner; and she saw her father's business manner emerge sharply from beneath his genial domesticity.

The "new law" was an old story to the owner of the Cheroot Works. He kept apprised of the signs of the times; and he happened to know in some detail the provisions of the pernicious legislation the Labor Commissioner was cooking up in secret,--"that'd confiscate two years'

profits from every near mill in town," said MacQueen. But the rest was news, and highly unwelcome news. To fight blackmail legislation against progressive business was comparatively simple; but a string of lies in the newspapers made a more insidious a.s.sault, injuring a man's credit, his standing as a conservative financier, his ability to inspire "confidence": valuable possessions to the President of the Fourth National Bank, and already indefinably impaired by the sensational family matter last spring....

"Vivian!--That fellow!" he exclaimed, recalling not only the Severe Arraignment, but the cataclysm in the House....

"Why, Cally! I thought you considered him sort of a friend of yours!"

"Not that, exactly," said Cally, at a considerable loss. "Still, I was very much surprised.... Do you mind about the--the articles, particularly, papa?"

"I do."

"Isn't there something you can do--to have it all stopped? Couldn't you have a suit--or--?"

Her father exploded. She had touched a sore point.

"Sue! Sue a lot of paupers that haven't got a shirt to their backs! Put 'em in prison?--likely with a lot more paupers on the jury, thinkin' a successful business man's anybody's meat. _Sue_!--and what'll you get?

I'll tell you! An impudent--offensive--malicious muckraking of your own private business...."

Cally, looking at papa's indignant face, felt much drawn to him.

However, the business conversation was here interrupted, Cally being called away to the telephone. She went, wondering intently if she could not somehow help in this threatened trouble. She had felt an impulse toward doing something useful. What more useful than a.s.sisting to shield her father from undeserved abuse?...

"It's only me, Cally," said Henrietta c.o.o.ney's voice, "or I, as they've got it in the grammars. I just called up to tell you not to forget the meeting to-morrow."

"What meeting, Hen?"

"I see I did well to call," came over the wire, on the wings of the c.o.o.ney laugh. "The Sat.u.r.day meeting at the Woman's Club, cousin, that I engaged you for the other day. I've just heard that V.V.'s going to speak, too, which made me want you specially. Don't say no."

"Of course not. I want to go, very much."

The two girls lingered a moment to chat. Henrietta appeared characteristically cheerful, though reporting half the family sick, and Cousin Martha Heth quite low in mind with her flatfoot. And Cally's manner to her poor relation was quite friendly to-night, without any special effort. Her summer-time suspicion that Hen was actually trying to "cheer her up" had by now become a certainty (Hen did not know about Hugo, of course); and which of her own girlhood intimates had done as much? Further, the words of comfort that the hard-worked stenographer had said to her, the day she got home from Europe, had recently been endorsed, as it were, in a most distinguished quarter. A strange thought this, that there was a point of similarity between Hen c.o.o.ney and Mrs.

Berkeley Page....

But when Cally left the telephone she was not thinking of these things at all. She was thinking that to-morrow she would both hear and see Dr.

Vivian, her father's enemy, the hard religious fellow who could so easily forget the troubles of others. Her duty on the occasion seemed to become quite clear to her. She must speak to him, try to induce him to give up his newspaper articles, or at least to leave her father's name out of them.

The day of lovers' reunion was somewhat blurred by ending with thoughts such as these. Hugo, as Carlisle had said, could not pop back after months, and repossess her mind and heart at a bound. He did it pretty successfully during the evening, while she entertained Robert Tellford and James Bogue, 2d, who cordially hated each other, in the drawing-room. But before she fell asleep that night, Cally's thoughts had turned more than once to, V. Vivian, of the old hotel which was now a Settlement. Why had he asked her to go to the Works some day, and why had he done it with that strange look?

XXVI

Concerning Women who won't remember their Place, and a Speech to Two Hundred of them, by Mr. V.V., no less; also revealing why Hen c.o.o.ney never found V.V. in the Crowd around the Platform.

It was an interesting time to be alive, as Hen c.o.o.ney remarked again next day. Absorbing matters were afoot in the old town, provided that you had an eye in your head to see them. One thing led to another with startling rapidity. Only the other day, it seemed, some one had risen and flung against the ideals of generations the discordant cry of Votes for Women. Rebukes for the unseemliness were copious and stern enough.

Many spoke acidly of the lengths to which childless females would go for lack of occupation. Droll fellows of a pretty wit giggled and asked who would mind the baby while the madam went out to vote. Serious-minded persons of both s.e.xes disposed of the whole foolishness forever by saying (and wondering why n.o.body had ever thought of it before) that woman's place was the home. But few there were who perceived a symptom here; not even when the League grew with unintelligible rapidity, and croaking diagnosticians here or there professed to see other manifestations not unrelated.

Ca.s.sandras remarked that women wearied of thinking "through their husbands." The census revealed to the close student that some women even had no husbands. It was a fact that year before last women had appeared at legislative "hearings" for the first time in the history of the State. These women, plague on them, failed to fortify the wags by powdering their noses in front of pocket mirrors while they talked, or making sweet-eyes at the chairmen of committees. They appeared, to tell the honest truth, with late reference-books under their arms, and in their heads the faculty for asking the most annoying sort of questions.

More than one honest Solon was seen to stammer and turn red under their interrogations, so often stiffened by a date and a little figure or so.

And these troublesome "thinking women" had not retired when the legislature did. Editors nowadays were often surprised in their sanctums by committees of three from some pestiferous unwomanly club or other, and they had not come, alackaday, to have their handkerchiefs picked up with courtly speeches, graced with an apt quotation from "Maud." The Civic Improvement League, with a woman president, was taking a continuous interest in matters of playgrounds and parks, clean streets and city planning. The Society for Social Progress, almost exclusively feminine, was continuously astir about pure milk and factory laws, birth-rates and infant mortality, sociology and eugenics. And now here was the conservative Woman's Club, which had been purely literary and social for a quarter of a century, holding a largely attended symposium on How Shall We Help the Poor?

This latter meeting, attended by Carlisle Heth and her cousin Henrietta the day after Canning left, was no doubt a trivial and obscure occurrence. Not an earthly thing could be said for it, except that it was a bubble on the surface of an unrest which would one day change the face of human society....

The two cousins, having come a little tardy, were content with seats in the next to the last row. The Woman's Club inhabited an old family mansion on Washington Street,--bought in the legendary age when land was not computed by the square foot,--and its a.s.sembly-rooms were the one-time parlors, with the dining-room thrown in by an architectural dexterity. Perhaps two hundred women could be seated here, and all seemed to be present to-day. Cally regarded serried rows of feminine backs, some of which she recognized. The little platform at the farther end of the rooms remained empty, and the place was abuzz with murmured talk. Not a back was silent, not even Henrietta's. Hen was saying enthusiastically that nothing like this could have been seen ten years ago....

Cally caught widening glimpses of the c.o.o.ney meanings. She had been like a rider thrown from a gay fixed steed in a merry-go-round, who, having picked himself up and mended his wounds, looks about, and gets his first view of the carousel as part of a larger moving scene. Cally, for the first time in her life, had been glancing over the fair-grounds. Not even the knowledge of Hugo's love could now wholly turn her gaze backward.

Pending the beginning of the oratory, clubbers and guests talked to the contentment of their hearts. Cally said suddenly:

"Hen, why is it that men are so opposed to this sort of thing?"

"It's human," said Hen, "if you have the upper hand, not to want to give it up."

"You mean that men have the upper hand now?"

"Haven't they?"

A tiny little woman in the row ahead of them turned round and smiled faintly at Henrietta. She had a face like a small doll's, a b.u.t.ton of a nose and the palest little china-blue eyes imaginable. Nevertheless, this woman was Mrs. Slicer, president of the Federation of Women's Clubs, and those weak eyes had once stared a Governor of a State out of countenance.

"Hen, they have," said she, in a fairy voice; and so turned back to her own affairs, dropping from these pages.

Henrietta presently said: "But why should they oppose it, really, Cally?

If you were a man, would you insist on the privilege of marrying a helpless dependent, your mental and moral inferior? Seems to me I'd rather have an intelligent comrade, my superior for choice--"

But Hen discovered that her voice all at once sounded very loud. There was a sudden lull in the conversational hum, and then a burst of hand-clapping. The lady president of the Woman's Club had entered at the head of the rooms, followed by the orators. They ascended the platform; and when Cally saw but the Mayor of the city and Mr. Pond of the Settlement, she said at once to Henrietta:

"Why, where's your friend V.V.?"