V. V.'s Eyes Part 79

Life in the House moved on. There was a caller or two, who found the ladies excused; there was a telephone summons from Miss Evelyn McVey, whose desire it was to entertain Mr. Canning at dinner, but who now met only with a maid's message; and then, toward seven, there came mamma herself, who was, of course, not so lightly to be disposed of.

But Cally had fortified herself for the little visit, and pa.s.sed the inspection without mishap. Mrs. Heth was acquiescent enough in her daughter's desire to dine upstairs, which saved the bother of hunting up another man in Hugo's stead, though involving regrettable waste of two covers already prepared. Mamma lingered for fifteen minutes making arch, tactful inquiries about the afternoon; but she noticed nothing more than was accountable for by the slight headache to which Carlisle frankly admitted. The little general's side remarks conceded no doubt whatever that Hugo would present himself very shortly indeed after dinner, for resumption of the agreeable matter in hand. They should have the library to themselves, she promised, company or no company....

Cally dined at a reading-table, set by the fire. Later, when the tray was gone and she was alone again, she relapsed into thoughts which had gained unwonted lucidity and vigor.

She had been thinking of the night, a year ago this month, to which everything in her life since seemed to run straight back. She had not certainly calculated the ruin of Dalhousie that night: rather her lack was that she had hardly cared what she did to him. In that narrow circle of engrossments where she had moved, mistaking it for the living universe, the great want, so it seemed now, was that she had never been asked to measure herself by moral standards at all. What she got: this was all that people looked at here, and according to this she had well managed her affairs, snug in the snugness of the horse-leech's daughters. She had been all for the walled little island,--as she had heard it called,--the island of the upward bound, where self-propelment was the test of right or wrong, and a marriage well above her the touchstone of a girl's sound morality. On this island such as Jack Dalhousie had no merit. What simpler than to kick him off, and turn away with your fingers in your ears?...

Improbable people these, no doubt, if you were of those who judged people by what they did, and never by what they had; h.e.l.l-cats, perhaps, if you happened to be a father thus made sonless....

Her abas.e.m.e.nt now fairly met the portrait of her sketched by a stranger two hours since; outran what another stranger had said to her, one night in a summer-house. She looked back over a year, and seemed to see herself as truly one empty within, a poor little thing; common in her whole outlook, vulgar in her soul.... Yes, _vulgar_. Let her hug the hateful word to her bosom. How else could she have been made to feel so again and again, by an obscure youth who had no power over anybody but that he had kept his own face turned toward the stars?...

And when Cally's thoughts turned toward this present, struggling to show beyond doubt that that girl and this were not one, they ran perpetually into that new cloud of her own weakness which had unrolled above her to-day, and now spread and blackened over the skies.

And yet she felt that it was not cowardice that tied her hands against the fainting girls in the bunching-room. Her strung nerves had carried it all deeper than that. She had spied on her father, found him out in guilt; he, it seemed, must for years have been leading a double life that would not bear looking at. How bring herself to confront papa, who had always been so affectionate and generous to her, with his discovered secret?...

If she but had some right, even, some standing from which to speak....

And here her new resolve was that when she saw Dr. Vivian at the Settlement next week, she would consult him directly: now asking him to say, not that she had no responsibilities about her father's business, but that she had them in abundance.

But deeper than this, beneath all the flutterings of her mind, there ran the increasing sense that, whatever the logic of it might be, responsibility was on her nevertheless: the supreme responsibility put upon free beings by the trust of a friend....

Hugo, it was presumable, would be detained with his Mr. Deming until the latter's departure, or near it. He could hardly appear before nine o'clock, or even nine-thirty; and perhaps he might not come at all.

Cally had felt unable to agree with her mother's theory that she was required to sit awaiting Hugo's convenience there. At all events, she had early resolved to settle the point by definitely "retiring" before his possible arrival; relying upon a worse aching head to justify her with mamma, who was not of the few to be favored with fuller confidences.

But a little after eight, when this resolve was almost ready to shape into the deed, the sensible reasoning on which it was based was suddenly upset. The maid Flora came, bringing a new message from the preoccupied lover, brief but decisive.

The business entanglements, it appeared, had only got worse with talking. Hugo, beyond all expectation, found himself compelled to go back to Washington with his law-partner to-night; possibly to go on to New York to-morrow. Would Carlisle accordingly arrange to see him now, for a few moments?

"_Now?_"

"Yas'm, he say as soon as you c'd make it convenient."

The girl had risen sharply in the first complete surprise of Flora's message; she walked hastily across her floor. But having done these things, she did not at once give the obviously due reply. She stood by her dressing-table, staring fixedly at the colored woman, the aimless fingers of her left hand continually pulling out and putting back the silver top of a squat cut-gla.s.s bottle. She appeared to be thinking, weighing pros and cons: processes surely unnecessary to a pasteboard actor, sliding smoothly toward a manifest destiny.

She stood this way so long and so silent that Flora prompted with a giggle and further information.

"Miss Cyahlile, he say if you was to answer no, to say could he please speak to you a minute on the 'phone."

Upon that Miss Carlisle was seen to replace the bottle stopper with consciousness of movement, and to turn her slate-blue eyes briefly toward the ceiling, with no movement of her head at all.

"Very well ... Say that I'll see him at half-past eight, for a few minutes."

Flora, naturally, was not a woman without understanding the sign language of her s.e.x. It might be that she had learned the color of the Canning money--and she had--but her dusky heart, like yours or mine, was not for sale.

"Yas'm--certny ... Yas'm. Or, Miss Cyahlile--I _mout_ just say we 're mighty sorry--but not knowin' he was expected, and you feelin' po'ly an'

all--you just this minute went to baid--an'--"

"No!--do as I say," said the young mistress, quite sharply. But, as her faithful friend turned away, she added in another voice: "You're a good girl, Flora.... Be sure to say just for a few minutes."

After the solitude and meditation came action at speed.

The maid vanished, the mistress slipped off her flowered negligee and drew hot water in the bathroom. She proceeded, with no want of experience or skill, to make herself beautiful for her lover: the lover who had seemed over a gulf from her this afternoon, and now what worlds away.... And if the rites were done somewhat hurriedly perforce, there was no lack of conscientiousness here. She, who had said that she had never paid her way through life, could only pay in what coin she had....

Events moved quickly. Flora, who was "on the doorbell" to-night because of the dinner-party, was soon back to say that Mr. Canning was in the library. She was sent ahead to make sure that the coast was clear.

Cally, in a soft black house-dress with an apricot waist-ribbon, went down the back-stairs. She pa.s.sed through the busy pantry, where Moses and Annie were just ready for an expert entrance with the fish; went through the back hall, where Flora stood flashing her teeth beside the closed door of the dining-room; came to the side door of the library.

This door Cally opened, and shut it again behind her....

It was a ma.s.sive and dark-beamed room, softened now with the light of lamps and fire. Hugo stood in the middle of it, turning quickly at the sound of the door. He, whose afternoon had taken a course so different from his planning, still wore the clothes he had had on then, a dark gray walking-suit which well became his fine-figured masculinity. Over his brow there hovered a vexed business frown, nor did this altogether vanish as he advanced upon Carlisle, a lover's welcome springing imperiously into his eyes.

"Isn't this the devil's own luck?... Deming insists it all depends on me."

"You go at nine-thirty?"

"He says he'll manacle me if necessary. It's confoundedly important, you see--there are large interests involved. You know I wouldn't go otherwise. Don't you?"

"And to-morrow you go on to New York?"

"No!--There's only the remotest chance. I'll go bail to be back here to-morrow at five o'clock."

"Oh!... I--the message I got--"

"I put that in only to make absolutely sure of getting you.... Growing cunning, you see."

"Oh--I didn't understand," said Cally, colorlessly, continuing to look down at her pink fingernails.

She seemed to think of nothing further to say, but that appeared to make no great difference. Hugo moved nearer. If he had remembered his thought about her being too sure of him, it may be that the sight of her had rushed his senses, as it had often done before.

"You were so unlike your natural dear self this afternoon," he said, on the wooing note; and suddenly he had possessed himself of both her hands. "To-night--and we've only such a little time--you are going to make it all up to me ... Aren't you?"

Finding herself captured, the girl hastily raised eyes dark with trouble, looking at her lover for the first time. And so looking, she took her hands from his grasp with a hastiness which might have been a little rasping to a morbidly sensitive man.

"Don't!--please don't! I--don't like to be touched.... I--I can only act as I feel, Hugo."

She turned away hurriedly, pa.s.sed him and went over to the fireplace.

There she stood quite silent before the dull red glow, locking and unlocking her slim fingers, and within her a spreading coldness.

Behind her she heard the thundering feet.

"I hoped, you see," said Hugo's voice, disappointed, but hardly chagrined, "that you would be feeling a little more--well, like your own natural self, after your rest ... Particularly as all our plans for these two days have been so upset."

She replied, after a pause, in a noticeably constrained voice: "I haven't said that I don't feel my natural self. That's only your--your interpretation of what you don't like.... I--that seems to be just the trouble between us."

"Now, now!--my _dear_ Cally!" said Hugo, soothing, if somewhat wearied to see still another conversation drifting toward the argumentative.

"There's no trouble between us at all. I, for one, have put our little disagreement to-day out of my head entirely. I do feel that there's not much happiness in these so-called modernisms, but don't let's spoil our few minutes.... Why, Carlisle!" said Hugo, in another voice. "Why, what's the matter?"

She had astonished him by suddenly laying her arm upon the mantel, and burying her face in the curve of it. So close Canning stood now that he could have taken her in his arms without moving; but some quality in her pose discouraged the idea that she might desire comfort that way.