  They had all cautioned her, her father, her brother, the nice man who sold the gasoline, to pick the quietest streets, and to go very slowly. So, from the alley-mouth, her safe progress had been by Gresham Street straight to peaceful Mason, where the traffic was so reassuringly light; and now, as she rolled securely out Mason Street, there began to dawn within her a first shy confidence. She went as slowly as her well-wishers had meant, at least; prudently close to the known haven of the sidewalk she kept at all times; now and then she stopped short, just to see if she could, and always she could. Through all, was the indescribable thrill of really doing it for herself now; lingering incredulity but gave a sharper savor to delight. And she was continually excited with the consciousness of large new possibilities here, of personal power in quite a new dimension. It was possible to go on indefinitely out Mason Street, but at Olive (always a quiet thoroughfare) she was seized with a sudden adventurousness. She decided to turn up Olive, in short; not meaning to stop at the Wings', of course, but just thinking that if the Wings were looking out the window as she went by, it would be quite a pleasant thing. The enterprise, once conceived, was carried out with perfect technical success; but at the moment of passing the Wings', unluckily, an enormous ice-wagon came lumbering close by, riveting her attention, leaving her not so much as an eyelid to wink toward people's windows. Hence, she never knew whether the Wings were looking out or not. But her confidence waxed. At Center Street the rumble of a street-car warned her to stop a moment—just in time, too, for the car was hardly two blocks away—and when the car had passed, what must she do but roll boldly across the tracks and into the altogether unexplored regions beyond! What prompted her to do this? Of course, the natural thing was to turn down Center Street a block and get straight back to quiet Mason, which had been duly tried and not found wanting. Afterward, she remembered distinctly that she had been on the point of doing just that. Was it the new adventurousness that beckoned her on, instead? Was it something yet subtler and more mysterious? At any rate, here she was pushing into a quarter of the city where she had never set foot in her life, where, in all human probability, her foot alone would never have brought her. And lo, she had not gone a block into the undiscovered country when a wonder befell, and with a little jump, all but a little cry, she saw the lost member of her coterie rise suddenly before her. He had come round the unknown corner just ahead, and was walking straight toward her. She became aware of the beating of her heart. All this, it must be understood, was the very first time that Angela had taken out her Fordette alone. Mr. Garrott was just off the train. Two hours in a day coach might have cramped his long legs; there might have been cinders down the back of his neck. Nevertheless, he advanced with an unmistakably lively tread, continually slapping his leg with a folded periodical of a size and shape like "Willcox's Weekly." Nor was the coterie member's presence on the Wings' street mere blind chance, either. Those remarkable articles in the magazines about Cousin Mary, which had but popped as a rumor into one of Angela's ears and out the other, had naturally occupied a somewhat more prominent place in the thought of their creator. He remained, indeed, dazzled by the completeness of the write-ups' triumph. Charles had stayed in the country four days longer than he had intended. And in his extended absence his whole mine of publicity had gone off with a brilliant suddenness that had startled him. The successful sale of the third write-up before he left town had assured a decisive coup, but the quick action the weeklies had given him went beyond all reason. He had not hoped that even the first of the write-ups could see print before the middle of the month, say; on the contrary, he had discovered the last and best of them—the one signed Charles King Garrott—on the train just now, in "Willcox's," for January 10th. In short, in the space of a Christmas holiday he, Charles, had spread the vindicating feats and features of his "demoted" friend to the four corners of the globe. Literally that, for did not the combined circulation of "Willcox's," the "Saturday Review," and "Hervey's National" exceed two million copies weekly (this on the word of the circulation managers themselves, a class of men whose consecration to the austerest veracity has passed into proverb)? Surely there remained few literate persons in the world to-day who could plausibly pretend that they had never heard of Mary Wing. And Mary (as Angela had noted) had appreciated these extraordinary services to the full. The letter she had written him in the country, after the appearance of the "Saturday Review" article, was uniquely grateful. A beautiful letter Charles had thought it; he had it in his inside pocket now. And the interesting thought it had raised was this: If his usually independent friend could be as grateful as that for the write-ups, what would she say when his whole plan worked out, and his Public Opinion had overwhelmed the School Board for her? Thus, on the train, after reading "Willcox's" piece three times, and now as he strode up the quiet back-street from the station, the author was intently plotting out the next, or practical, stage of his campaign, still unsuspected by her: the stage of the reprinting of the write-ups in the local papers, in fine, of repeated editorial endorsement of the same, of the outburst of letters from "Indignant Taxpayers," "High School Graduates," and "Old Subscribers"—practically all, of course, written by Uncle George Blenso and himself. His thoughts proved increasingly stimulating to the home-come Charles. And when he came to Olive Street, he suddenly bethought him to turn up that way; not expecting to stop at the Wings', of course (for he had an engagement to call there this evening, much as if he hadn't been a modern at all), but merely thinking that if he should happen to meet Mary it would be quite a pleasant thing.... Having turned, the buoyant young man presently sent, as it were, a scouting eye on ahead. And it fell, not upon the friend he had made famous in a night, but upon an Object approaching. The object was a conveyance, a little vehicle of the self-propelling type. It was an automobile, clearly; a runabout, you would have to term it, though certainly of a pattern adopted in no recent year. So steep and bobbed was this runabout's little body, so quaintly archaic its contour, that it stirred in the beholder dim recollections of the early days of the horseless age, of strange pictures seen in scientific magazines back in the nineties. Very slowly the little vehicle approached, but very loudly, too, with an increasing bias toward the sidewalk, with queer rumblings and groanings, with the oddest snorts. Charles's puzzled eye lifted. And so it was that it encountered again the soft gaze that he had last seen misted in tears, upon a sofa. And so he heard the pretty voice, that had once referred to him as a brute, saying:— "How do you do, Mr. Garrott!... I—I'm very glad to see you back!" "Why—Miss Flower!" Sheer surprise had halted him in his tracks, and the self-propelling runabout, which had been almost stationary all along, became entirely so, right at the curb. "When did you get home?" Miss Flower was finishing, laughing, a becoming color in her cheeks. "I'm just in—this minute! How are you? I—ah—didn't realize at all that it was you." He had taken the small hand she offered, momentarily flustered, despite all effort, by the utterly sudden re-meeting. He was aware that the girl looked a little conscious, too. But something in her gaze seemed to be trying to tell him that bygones were bygones now; and she went on with reassuring naturalness:— "I hope you had a nice holiday? I've wanted very much to see you, and thank you myself. About Wallie, I mean—your offering to teach him—" "Oh!—Why, that!" "It was really the nicest thing. I—haven't seen you since, but you don't know how much I—we all appreciated—" With recovered poise the young man easily brushed aside these thanks. "But I'm awfully glad," he added, "that he didn't wait for me, after all." "Oh!" she exclaimed. "You heard, then?" He mentioned his letter from Mary Wing, causing her to say, "Oh," again.—"Wasn't it wonderful! I knew you'd be interested...." She was prettier than he remembered—or was it merely that the new hat (trimmed but yesterday) was more becoming than the old?—and her gaze, though not reproachful a bit, had for him a quality subtly appealing. Of the lives and loneliness of young womanly women—of that forced waiting which dams up all energies unused, and hangs the spirit to thrash about in a void, working over each small event to a towering importance—of such matters, a man, even Charles, the authority, knew only through the powers of his imagination. Charles did observe, however, that this girl seemed very glad to see him. And he felt that he now reciprocated these feelings. "But," said he, with a hypocritically pleasant look at the vehicle, "Santa Claus seems to have remembered you, too! This is something new, isn't it?" said Charles, though feeling that new was hardly the word. "Yes,—aren't you surprised? My brother in Pittsburg gave it to me. I've just learned to run it! It was so exciting!" And then, in a pretty, hesitating way, she said: "Won't you let me drive you—home, or wherever you're going? I'd like to, so much. I—want so to tell you all the news." He protested that he could not think of using Miss Flower as a taxicab. But when she urged it, in pleasing, ingenuous sentences, and explained that she was out only to drive about anywhere, for practice, it did not occur to him to maintain the churlish negative. And, indeed, this was exactly what he had desired from the moment of reading her perfect note last month—sweet reconciliation in just such a casual way, admitting or entailing next to nothing. So the returning author of the write-ups was to be seen carefully squeezing himself, and "Willcox's," into the seat of Tommy's delightful gift. "Let's see—the engine's still going—isn't it?" said she, rather superfluously, it seemed, in view of the uproar. "Then I have to kick that and push this over...." As the girl said, so she did, her look a little anxious, her young face flushed with excitement. And, sure enough, the vehicle, of a self-propelling type, suddenly shook itself with a few loud snorts, and jumped forward with a jar. "And what sort of car is this?" resumed Charles, dissembling intense curiosity as mere sympathetic interest. "It is a Fordette," replied Angela, not without pride. As they wobbled round the corner, narrowly missing the sidewalk, she added in the same proud manner: "And this is my very first drive by myself." The taking of the corner (she explained that she could not turn round alone yet) meant that he was not going to pass the Wings', after all; but Charles hardly noticed that. He had himself to look to, in his somewhat unusual position. However, the drive to the Studio, though noisy, was very short; her completely feminine inefficience as a driver, their snail's progress, could not extend it over many minutes; and the whole thing proved as easy and reproachless as could possibly have been wished. Light friendly talk was the note, flowing without embarrassment now. Angela told of the two great happenings in her family, seeming to count upon his interest, and getting it genuinely enough, too. He was glad, sincerely, that Luck had smiled on this girl, who had seemed to him not to be having much of a chance. But she was not one, even so, to take all the conversation to herself; it was a trait that he had noted, and liked, in her from the beginning. "Mr. Garrott," she said, at the first little pause, "aren't you going to have some stories out pretty soon now? You know you told me you were writing some—before you began your book?" How gladly Mr. Garrott would have reported a little luck, too! But no, he was still known to Tables of Contents only as the author of write-ups. Somewhat ruefully, he explained to Angela his position about the editors; namely, that the sooner the lot of them came under the eye of a lunacy commission, the better for all concerned. She became the comforter: "But perhaps they've accepted some of your stories while you were away so long!" He, however, knew that there was nothing in that. "Well, no—no. You see, my—my relative who lives with me, Judge Blenso, looks after my mail when I'm away. And he's been sending me the casualty lists from time to time." "But that story I liked so much—you told me a little about it one day—about Helena and her husband, don't you remember, who went off to the desert island—" "Oh, that? That's been declined—yes, declined three times, if I remember rightly—" "Really! But how could they! I should think they would have jumped at it! Why, I thought it was just wonderful...." Her instinct for supplying charm was not amiss, it seemed. "By the way," said the young author carelessly, as they curved into his own street, "have you happened to see this?" And he not only showed Angela his "Willcox's," with the write-up in it, but bestowed it upon her, for her own. It developed that he had extra copies in his pocket. Angela was very grateful for the magazine. Everything was as pleasant and friendly as possible. And at parting, she said, with only the slightest return of self-consciousness:— "This has been a very short drive, Mr. Garrott! I hope we can have a real one some day soon." To that the young man, standing on the sidewalk before his own door, replied with a courteous generalization. Wariness was reflexive with him, so to say. But then, as he looked at the soft young face, he seemed to become suddenly conscious of the essential caddishness of his past behavior, and of yet another feeling, too, less coolly judicial. Had not the Kiss, in fact, set this girl somehow apart from others, remaining as a subtle bond after all? Pressing her slender hand, he added: "Meanwhile, I've enjoyed this one very much! You've been—extremely good to me." "Willcox's" had given Mary the Freewoman a fine spread. The write-up occupied all of one of its large pages, with three paragraphs "Continued on Page 49," among the Men's Ready to Wear Clothing. Out of the middle of the text, the best of the portraits supplied by Fanny Warder gazed back steadily at the two relatives in the Studio. The famous Mary was seated in a flowered armchair, and seemed just to have looked round over her shoulder. Her delicate, quite girlish, face wore her characteristic look of faint, grave interrogation; her eyes were intent and fine. "Gad, you know!" said Judge Blenso, who had seen Charles's name in print for the first time with an exclamation of pride and pleasure. "Why, it's stunnin', my dear fellow! Simply stunnin'!" But the mind's eye of Charles, looking down at the life-like presentment, was seeing that confident gaze averted; the ear of his fancy was hearing the low sounds of womanly emotion in this quarter at last. That, of course, was just after he had gently said to her—why, it might be next week!—"Do you remember telling me one day that I couldn't help you at all? Why, Miss Mary, did you really suppose I'd let you go on as a Grammar School teacher till May!...." "Bring 'em out as a holiday book—that's what I say! Why, good gad, Charles!—we only got twenty dollars for that piece there!" The young man laughed absently, and removed his overcoat. A glance at Big Bill showed that it was just four o'clock. He had examined the mail, heard the secretary's unfavorable reports. The Studio, after nearly three weeks' holiday, suggested the necessity of work undoubtedly; he was as far from settling upon his Line as ever. But it seemed that he didn't feel like plotting scenarios to-day. The "Post," the "State," the "Chronicle"—why shouldn't he go down there now, get the thing started at once?... "Oh, Judge, by the way! Do you know whether Miss McGee ever brought back that book I lent her?—fat red book, called 'Marna'?" "'Marna,' 'Marna'? Never heard of it. Yes, that's so, she did! Here it is!" said the Judge, and forthwith plucked Miss Angela's long-kept loan from the bookcase close by. "That's it! Let's lay it here on the mantel. Then maybe I'll remember—" "And borrowed a lot more, too!" exclaimed the Judge, suddenly laughing loud and long. "Gad, I lent her an armful, fact!—night we had the sleet-storm!" "You did?—good! We'll convince her we're her true friends yet." His secretary, having gazed at him a moment with brilliant blankness, suddenly exclaimed: "Why, Charles, my dear fellow, you're looking like a fighting-cock! You must have put on a stone—fine! Here, let me feel your muscle!" Charles tried to evade that ceremony, but it was, of course, no use. Having caught him going through certain setting-up exercises one night, and being misled by the light remark he let fall, Judge Blenso was irrevocably convinced that the sedentary Charles had an affair of honor on his hands. The night he made this discovery—the very night Charles secretly began the exercises, of course, the night of the day he had seen Mysinger on the street—the Judge had become almost dangerously excited, springing from bed and walking about a long time in his pajamas, saying over and over: "The old blood'll tell! Gad, you know! It's the old blood!" All attempts to explain, then and since, had been utterly without effect. However, a knock on the door interrupted the proceedings, and Mrs. Herman came walking into the Studio—a dark, round, rosy little body, beetle-browed but beaming. "Such a popular man I never saw!" said she, roguishly. "One lady meeting him and driving him up from the station, another calling him up before he's hardly arrived, and goodness knows who'll be next!" "Why, who's calling me, Mrs. Herman?" "It's Miss Wing!—waiting at the phone! And no wonder, with all you and the Judge have done for her, I'm sure! Judge, I hope you find your new chair comfortable?" Having received the unexpected summons with a peculiar start of gladness, the young man descended the stairs with the most agreeable anticipations. To do a valuable service for a friend is, with some natures, to become fonder than ever of that friend; and Charles, from the moment of reading her unprecedented letter, was aware that his original services to Mary had distinctly had these sentimental reactions. (For of course such natures are sentimental, disgustingly so, and real Men—not to say realistic men—invariably hate and despise their friends, and speak to said friends at all only with a view to taking away their money or their wives.) So, sitting down at the little telephone-table in the dark rear-hall, Charles smiled to himself and said, in a false voice:— "Pardon me, but is this the famous Miss Wing, who—" And Mary's voice seemed to spring toward him through the receiver, like an embrace: "Oh, King Charles!" It was a little name she had made long ago by turning his first two names about, but reserved for rare occasions only. Rare also was it to hear this commonly contained voice so deeply stirred. "Welcome home! I hope I didn't interrupt your work, but it seemed I couldn't wait! And, of course, I haven't half thanked you yet, haven't begun to tell you how much—how much—I appreciate all you've done for me...." Once more, the fortunate Charles was brushing aside a lady's gratitude—rather generously, considering the infrequency of grounds of gratitude here. He laughed gaily into the receiver. "The real point is, why under the sun did you connect me right away with the remarkable outburst of popular admiration? Hartwell went gossiping about, I suppose?" "I didn't need Mr. Hartwell to tell me anything about that! But—" "Aha! So Fanny told you about the photographs—" "She never breathed a word—" "Good-evening, Miss Holmes!—old Watson speaking! Will you kindly explain your—!" "Why, of course there wasn't but one person on earth who could have done such a beautiful thing for me!" All alone in the hall, Charles felt himself coloring with pleasure. However, the unwonted flush was not for long. "I have to pinch myself," the girl's eager voice rushed on (did it sound just a thought more triumphant than even the author of the write-ups could have expected?),—"for every magazine I pick up is full of nothing but Me! I've just seen 'Willcox's'—oh, you don't know how much I liked that! You've simply taken my breath away! And then to come in and find this!—everything beautiful happening to me at once! I—" "What? More honors, celebrity?" "The greatest!—the most wonderful! Mr. Garrott, what DO you suppose?" Mr. Garrott hardly liked the slant the conversation was taking. The understanding was that whatever beautiful things happened to the Career were to happen exclusively through him now. "Why!—I can't guess! Not—Has the School Board—" "Pish for the School Board," cried the voice that was wont to be so calm. "You're talking to the new Secretary of the League!" "I'm.... What?" "The person you're conversing with, if you please, is the General Secretary of the National League for Education Reform!" Her happy laugh rang on the wire: "Are you staggered? Well, I am, too! I simply can't begin to take it in...." Had Mrs. Herman's house fallen about his ears, the young man at the telephone-table could, indeed, scarcely have been staggered more. His sense was of one falling headlong through space. He gripped the edge of the table with a large left hand, and for the instant there was no speech in him. "I found the letter from Dr. Ames when I got in just now—oh, the nicest letter, explaining everything! And of course I wanted to tell you right away—you've been so good about wanting to help! Don't you remember, it was you who spoke of this as my brilliant revenge? We little thought then ..." Wanting to help! Doubt not, that was the body blow. "No—no! And I—I really don't take it in—even now," he was saying, struggling desperately for his mask. "I—ah—I'd given up all—idea, you see! Why, I understood that was all off! I—" "Of course—so had I! That's what makes it such a wonderful bolt from the blue! There was another candidate, you see—a college president, imagine!—and Dr. Ames says he felt he ought to be very discreet and reticent till it was all settled. But I was elected unanimously, and must be in New York to take charge of the office on March 1st...." It was the complete collapse of his triumph and his hope: he would not be going to the newspaper-offices now. But that sentence, that concrete date, took the whole matter deeper still. Charles Garrott took a firmer grip on Mrs. Herman's little table. Now his voice came firmer, too:— "The first woman secretary they ever had!... Why—it's immense!" In the ensuing dialogue, in which, for pride's sake, he sought to strike just the right felicitatory note, there was an instant when the possibility flashed upon him that the stunning event was itself but the unimagined by-product of the write-ups. The directors had decided not to give the distinguished post to an obscure provincial teacher, when all of a sudden his great broadside of fame for Mary had come roaring in among them. The thought, in this moment of utter frustration, seemed actually welcome to him. But it had hardly fluttered before Mary struck it dead, in the most incidental manner: incidental—since, to be just, she, having no knowledge whatever of his secret plans, could hardly guess what annihilation she was dealing out to them. It developed, in short, that her election, though held back a few days to be ratified by the trustees of the League's endowment fund, had actually taken place on December 27th. And it was too readily recalled that the first of the write-ups had not appeared till the following day. "Yes—yes!... Fine holiday, thank you!—fine! But of course—no triumphs like this to report!..." "Well!—I mustn't keep you now, of course!" said the victorious voice. "I'm looking forward to seeing you ..." No, it was sufficiently clear that he had but labored to heap coals in Newcastle. It was just the case of the old write-up, last year; only now a thousand times worse. Often before, this desire in him to help, this spontaneous protecting instinct which seemed to be always flowing out here, had been rebuffed and defeated. But this time, his defeat seemed to be final. And, hanging up the receiver at last, the young man sat silent with the feeling that something valuable and important had suddenly departed from his life. He felt that he had been rather imposed upon, but that didn't matter particularly. He felt beaten, as he had never been beaten before, and that seemed to matter a good deal. With an odd and profound sense of blank chagrin, he recognized, at last, that when Mary Wing had said that she didn't need his help, she had been merely stating a literal and obvious truth. How he had been such a fool as ever to think otherwise? But deeper than all this, it seemed clear from the beginning that he was disappointed in his friend, personally. Had he not read into her all along, and put into the write-ups, a rather finer quality than she, in fact, possessed? Spinsters were entitled to a man's freedom to follow away their work—of course. But it seemed that he had never been able to imagine Mary as actually seizing this Right. And now, here she was doing it, with joy—the end of next month. Now behold her, whose praises he had so superfluously sung round the world—just an ordinary Redmantler after all, it seemed, exultantly striking off mother, home, friends; a female Egoist, no more, visibly engaged in "fiercely hacking away".... He could, indeed, scarcely take it in. And stoutly he assured himself that his whole feeling about the matter would have been different—if only she had showed, at once, that this would be a wrench for her, that her thought was colored by a sense of values not connected with her Self. But no; it seemed that the new General Secretary had no thought to spare for the immaterial business of being a sister and being a daughter. So Charles's call at the Wings' on the evening of his homecoming wore a complexion not contemplated by him when he had arranged the matter. He had made this engagement, under the general misapprehension, in his reply to Mary's grateful letter last week. And now he had to keep it, however malapropos, resolved as he was that she should never sense any criticism or disapprobation in him. To seek to "influence" her, naturally never entered his mind. No, he was her casual spectator now and henceforward; he had dipped his oar in her affairs for the last time. But the call was hardly much of a success, despite all efforts. Mary, having now had time to recapture her usual poise, no longer impressed one as being so unreservedly overjoyed with herself. It was noted that she kept referring to the write-ups, kept assuring him how delightful she found it to be a celebrity as well as a Secretary, etc., etc. The caller's intellect coldly gave her credit for "being very nice." However, no niceness could help much to drape the stark obtruding facts; no civilities seemed fitted to cope with the intangible wall suddenly sprung up in the old friendship. And if there had lingered in Charles's mind some revolting incredulity, some reactionary insistence that Mary could never really carry out the typical exploit of the Egoette, the talk this evening finally killed it. The famous educator's sentences made it clear, once and for all, that she was Leaving Home for good—for her own good, of course—on the 1st day of March succeeding. Charles was determinedly "sincere" throughout the brief call, continuously and spuriously hearty. Inwardly, his resolve grew more and more fixed that this young woman, who was so rarely competent to Lead Her Own Life, should be permitted to lead it quite unassisted henceforth. For himself, he decided that his life should go to the unremitting service of pure Letters. But of such matters, of course, he permitted his agreeable chatter to yield no hint. Taking his departure upon a new wave of felicitations, he could but congratulate himself upon the trained adeptness of his mask. And Mary, having shut the door upon her caller, stood leaning against it, her arched brows drawn together in a faint frown, her fine eyes faintly bewildered. "Now what," she said, half aloud, "have I said or done, or left unsaid or undone, this time?" And then she went slowly back to her mother's bedroom, where she found her mother with stockings to darn, and (taken unawares) her eyes a little red. |
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