V. V.'s Eyes Part 67

"Somewhere up at the front,--I _hope_!... He wasn't one of the regular speakers, you know...."

Hen added in a faint whisper: "I doubt if he knows he's going to be called on--"

Being duly presented to the expectant women, his Honor the Mayor spoke first. He was a middle-aged, mustachioed Mayor, who had achieved a considerable success by being all things to a few men, but those the right ones. His reputation as an orator was well deserved, but his ability to make one speech serve many occasions had been commented upon by carpers here and there. See the files of the "Post," _pa.s.sim_. To-day his thesis was organized charity, lauded by him, between paragraphs of the set piece, as philanthropy's great rebuke to Socialism. And thrice his Honor spoke of the glorious capital of this grand old commonwealth; twice his arm swept from the stormy Atlantic to the sun-kissed Pacific; five times did he exalt, with the tremolo stop, the fair women of the Southland....

"The dinner-bell of the house!" said Hen, _sotto voce_, as the orator sat down, smiling tiredly amid familiar applause. "Don't be discouraged yet, Cally."

Director Pond, having been most flatteringly introduced, received an ovation, half for the man and his work, half from the wish of a kindly people to bid the stranger welcome. He spoke half as long as the Mayor, and said four times as much: so much s.p.a.ce did he save by saying nothing whatever about the fair women of the Southland, and by absolutely avoiding all metaphors, tropes, synecdoches, or anacolutha. Mr. Pond a.s.saulted the Mayor's apotheosis of charity, particularly as applied to his own inst.i.tution. He described the Settlement, not as a dispensary for old clothes, but as a cultivated personality, an enlightened elder brother gone to live with the poor. It aspired to enrich life through living, said he, to bring light to the disinherited and the gift of a wider horizon....

Mr. Pond followed his thought with more imagination than one might have thought him to possess, and with a glow on his dark face such as had not been observed there the other day. Cally, from the next to the last row, listened attentively enough; she recalled that she would see Mr. Pond this evening, perhaps sit next to him, at mamma's Settlement dinner.

However, she reserved her chief interest for Hen's friend V.V., who was so merciless in his att.i.tude toward those who were not poor. Mr. Pond spoke straightforwardly, not to say bluntly. But she pictured Vivian as shaking the rafters with his shameless homicides and G.o.d-pity-yous....

"Once the bread and meat question's settled, money is of secondary importance," said the Director's deep voice. "Let's get that well into our heads. What the poor ask is that they shall not be born under disadvantages which the labor of their lifetimes can never remove...."

Only these two speakers had been announced. When Pond sat down the formal exercises were over. But as his applause died away, the president of the club rose again, sure enough,--while Henrietta excitedly nudged Carlisle,--and announced an added speaker, a guest of the club to-day, whom she described as the young father of the Settlement. The president--a tall, placid-faced woman, with a finely cut chin and a magnificent crown of silver hair--had something to say about the spirit of pure idealism; and was sure that the members would be glad to hear remarks on the subject of the day from young Dr. Vivian, the missionary doctor of the Dabney House....

The few kind words elicited somewhat perfunctory plaudits, despite Hen c.o.o.ney's single-handed attempt to stampede them into a triumph. The Clubbers, truth to tell, were by now disposed to leave oratory and the uplift for small-talk and tea.

"_There he is_!" said Hen, clapping splendidly.

V. Vivian stood on the platform, beside a tall oak-stand and a water-pitcher, gazing out over phalanxes of women. His youthfulness was a matter of general notice. By contrast with the Mayor's seamy rotundity and Pond's powerful darkness, he looked, indeed, singularly boyish and fair. He was undoubtedly pale, and his face wore an odd look, a little confused and slightly pained. This, combined with his continuing silence, gave rise to a general suspicion that the young man had fallen a victim to stage-fright. However, the odd struggle going on in him at his unexpected opportunity was not against fear....

Carlisle regarded Vivian intently, over and through scores of women's hats. She was inwardly braced for epithets. Somewhere in the air she heard the word "anarchist"; but a woman sitting near her said, quite audibly,--"_Looks_ more like a _poet_," ... meaning, let us hope, like a poet as we like to think that poets look; and not as they so often actually look, by their pictures in the magazines....

"I suppose the beginning of helping the poor," suddenly spoke up the young man on the stand, in a voice so natural and simple as to come as a small shock, "is to stop thinking of them as the poor. There are useful people in the world, and useless people; good people and bad people. But when we speak of poor people and rich people, we only make divisions where our Maker never saw any, and raise barriers on the common which must some day all come down."

The speaker pushed back his blond hair with a gesture which Cally Heth had seen before. However, all else about him, from the first sight, had seemed to come to her in the nature of a surprise....

"The things in which we are all alike," said the tall youth, with none of the Mayor's oratorial thunder, "are so much bigger than the things in which we are different. What's rich and poor, to a common beginning and a common end, common sufferings, common dreams? We look at these big freeholds, and money in bank is a little thing. On Washington Street, and down behind the Dabney House--don't we each alike seek the same thing? We want life, and more life. We want to be happy, and we want to be free. Well--we know it's hard to win these prizes when we're poor, but is it so easy when we're rich? To live shut off on a little island, calling the rest common and unclean--is that being happy and free, is it having life abundantly? I look around, and don't find it so. And that's sad, isn't it?--double frustration, the poor disinherited by their poverty, the rich in their riches.... Don't you think we shall find a common meeting-place some day, where these two will cancel out?... when reality will touch hands with the poet's ideal--

"And the stranger hath seen in the stranger his brother at last, And his sister in eyes that were strange..."

The slum doctor paused. The confused appearance was gone from his face; he looked now introspective, quite without consciousness of himself; rather like a man listening with somewhat dreamy approbation to the words of another. And Cally, having felt her antagonism mysteriously slipping away from the moment her eyes rested upon his face, now knew, quite suddenly and definitely, that she wasn't going to speak to him about the articles.

The knowledge, the whole matter, was curiously disturbing to her. Where was the hostile hardness of the religious fellow, justifying distrust and dislike? Why should her father's attacker make her think now, of all times, of that night in Hen's parlor, the morning on Mr. Beirne's doorstep, that rainy May-day in his Dabney House when he had overwhelmed her with the knowledge of his superiority?...

"And--and--I think women should be especially interested in all that makes for a new common freedom," observed the youthful speaker, "for they have suffered somewhat in that way--haven't they?... [Applause, led by Miss c.o.o.ney.] You know the processes of history--how men, first of all by superior muscle, have made it a man's world.... Till to-day, large groups of women find themselves cribbed and cabined to a single pursuit, marriage: surely the n.o.blest of all callings, but--perhaps you will agree with me--the meanest of all professions. I, for one, am glad to see women revolting from this condition, asking something truer, something commoner, than chivalry. For that, I say, steps the march to the great goal, a boundless commonwealth, a universal republic of the human spirit. It seems to me we need to socialize, not industry, but the heart of Man to his brother. Rich and poor, men and women--G.o.d, I am sure of it, meant us all to be citizens of the world...."

A certain self-consciousness seemed here to descend upon the tall orator. He ceased abruptly, and disappeared from the platform, having neglected to make his bow to the chairman.

Then the moment's dead silence was suddenly exploded with a burst of clapping, quite as hearty as Mr. Pond had received, and really something like the "storm" we read about. And in the din, Henrietta c.o.o.ney was heard crying, with a pa.s.sion of pride:

"Well, it's about _time_!... It's the first thing V.V.'s ever got--the first _tribute_.... A boy like that--"

Hen, curiously, was winking a little as the two girls rose. And she added in a moved voice, as if seeking to explain herself:

"Well, think of the hard life he has down there, Cally,--no pleasure, no fun, no companionship.... And this is the first notice of _any kind_ ..."

The meeting was over. The crowded parlors were in a hubbub. Colored servants entered, taking away the camp-chairs. A general drift toward the platform was in evidence. And Cally, standing with the others and ready to go, seemed to see no clear course at all among the disturbing cross-currents which she suddenly felt within her, impelling her now this way, now that. If she could not think of V. Vivian as hard now, exactly, a new "att.i.tude" was obviously needed, consistent with her duty to papa. It must be that the strange young man was obsessed by beautiful but impossible ideas about the equality of the poor and so on. Carried away by excessive sympathies, he took wild extreme views....

"Are you going to stay for tea, Hen?" she asked, amid the stir and vocal noises of two hundred women.

But Hen said no; getting tea for the c.o.o.ney invalids was her portion.

"We'll just stop a minute and speak to V.V.," she added, as if that went without saying.

But this time Cally said no, somewhat hastily. And then she explained that she must go home to dress, as mamma was having some people to dinner to-night. Hen looked disappointed.

"Well, there's no chance of getting near him now, anyway. Look at that jam around the platform.... Stay just a minute or two, Cally."

The two cousins, the rich and the poor, and looking it, strolled among the Clubbers, Henrietta speaking to nearly everybody, and invariably asking how they had liked Dr. Vivian's speech, Pond and the Mayor ignored. She also introduced her cousin right and left, and enjoyed herself immensely.

Cally, having matters to think about, again remarked that she must go.

She saw Hen glance hungrily over the dense lively crowd, densest around the platform, and promptly added: "But of course you mustn't think of coming with me."

Henrietta hesitated. "You wouldn't mind if I stayed on a minute? I _would_ like just to say a word to V.V."

Cally a.s.sured her. "And thank you for bringing me, Hen. I--had no idea it would be so interesting."

The two girls parted. Hen plunged into the Clubbers to speak to Mr. V.V.

Cally went out of the great doors, deep in thought. And having pa.s.sed through these doors, the very first person she saw was Mr. V.V....

It was incredible, but it was true. How he had escaped the handshakers was a mystery for a detective. But there the man indubitably stood at the head of the Club steps, alone in the gathering twilight, bowing, speaking her name....

Had he been waiting for her, then? A certain air of prepared surprise in his greeting rather suggested the thought.

"Is your car waiting?" inquired the orator, courteously. "May I call it for you?"

Cally's heart had jumped a little at the sight of his tall figure, but she answered easily enough, as she moved toward the steps, that she was walking.

"Then won't you allow me to see you home?... It's getting rather dark.

And I--the fact is, I wanted to speak to you."

And Cally said, far from what she had planned to say in thinking of this meeting:

"If you like.... Only you must promise not to scold me about the Works."

He gave her a look full of surprise, and touched with a curious sort of gratification; curious to her, that is, since she could not know how a well-known Labor Commissioner had taxed this man with "easiness."

"I promise," said he.

As they took the bottom step, he added, in a controlled sort of voice:

"Please tell me frankly--is it objectionable to you to--to have me walk with you?"

"Oh, no," said Cally.

Down forty feet of bricked walkway, through the swinging iron gates, out upon the public sidewalk, Carlisle walked silently beside the attacker of her father, the religious fellow whom Hugo Canning so disliked. About them in the pale dusk tall street-lights began to twinkle. Over them hung the impenetrable silence. It was but three blocks from the Woman's Club to the House of Heth. They had traversed half of one of them before Vivian gave voice: