Henry Sydnor Harrison

“ So Cally Heth, the often loved and lovely, was strong to feel on her wonderful day. Beneath the maiden's invincible reserve, under the mad sweetness of this unrest, clear upon that Future which was so enveloped in a golden haze, she felt a pride in her own human worthiness, as one who now does the best thing of her life. She had always wanted to love above her: how time and this man had invested her ideal with a richer meaning!... Was not this the touchstone of that change within herself she had sought, that day when Colonel Dalhousie's rod had chastened her? ”

“ Canning, bowling proficiently up Washington Street, spoke of his honored maternal grandmother, the great lady Mrs. Theodore Spencer, and her famous Brookline home. Beside him, Carlisle, listening with one ear only, considered the strangeness of life. Transfigured within, she had seemed to look out upon a new universe, yet was not this somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then, were clubs? When were things ever settled, if she could be conscious of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?... ”

“ Perhaps the girl's vague thought was that the feelings roused in her in the bunching-room had, after all, been unreasonable, even hysterical, as Hugo had plainly enough stated, as Hen herself had partly argued. Perhaps it was merely that all that trouble would keep, to be quietly pondered over at a later time. But rather, it seemed as if a mist had settled down over the regions of practical thought, hiding problems from view. The Works had somehow been swallowed up in that apologia she had made, Cally Heth's strange apology to Mr. V.V. for herself and her life. ”

“ Cally knew the world's rough judgments, where all is black or all is white, and ifs and buts go overboard as spoiling the strong color scheme. And well she knew the way of horrid gossip; none better. That she, Carlisle Heth, had deliberately lied merely to save her name from public association with young Dalhousie's, and by this lie had ruined a boy who in his way had loved her well: such would be the story which the angry Colonel (perhaps coming to shoot papa besides) would throw to the four winds, to be rolled in the mouth of gossip forevermore. ”

“ Oh, I'm sick of men," cried Cally.
"You're sick of men!" echoed Mattie, aghast as at a blasphemy.
Cally nodded slowly, her lovely eyes on her friend's tremulous face.
"Oh, it's the men who make us put in all this time tricking up ourselves to look pretty. You know it, too, for you just gave yourself away.... Oh, Mats, wouldn't it be great to appeal to somebody sometimes in some other way!"
Mattie, apparently on the verge of tears, murmured her complete inability to follow Cally's strange talk. Observing her, Carlisle gave a reassuring little laugh and rose abruptly. ”

“ To this day, her mind's eye called up a great white marble palace, something like the New York Public Library, only bigger, from the front of which, through an enormous cornucopia, poured a ceaseless flood of golden dollars....
"I've no patience with Socialism," said Mrs. Heth, rising. "Where do you want your things put, Willie? Divide all our property up equally with the lazy and drunken classes, to-day, and by to-morrow the hard-working, well-to-do people would have won every bit of it back again. I'm surprised everybody can't see that, aren't you, Mr. Canning?" ”

“ Staring fearfully into the dusk, Carlisle pictured herself as hearing such a story about Evey or Mattie: she perceived at once, with sickening sensations, how intensely she would be interested in it. Yes; once started, it would sweep through drawing-rooms and clubs like fire. With what glee would the world's coarse tongue make its reprisals upon brilliant success! Town-talk the lovely Miss Heth would be, spotted all over with that horrid tattle from which she (and Hugo) had ever so shuddered and shrunk.... ”

“ She was mamma's daughter, Hugo Canning's betrothed, fighting for her own: and now that movement upstairs warned her that she had no moment to lose.
Carlisle seized the slum doctor's arm with a resolute little hand. Her voice, though panicky, was as inexorable as mamma's own.
"Promise me," said she, "that you will never repeat to anybody what I told you in confidence."
The face of the young man, which was usually so harmless-looking, had suddenly become quite stern. He looked as if he might ask God to pity her again, given a very little more. ”

“ At the mention of the name of ill omen, Canning's strong heart had missed a beat. He had thought the old corpse buried past exhumation; the sudden rising of the ghost to walk had staggered for an instant even his superb incredulities. But with that sudden tremulousness of hers, he was himself again, or almost, with a new light upon her whole strange and unreliable demeanor. Small wonder, after such an encounter, if she was brought to the verge of hysteria, her feminine reason unseated, her mind wandering mistily over the forgotten past.... ”

“ More than the strains of the lovesick waltz beat in the girl's veins to-night. For this present there was no hope even of connected conversation. In the midst of the gay company the invasions of privacy were constant.
"All these nice people, and all so eager to be friendly with you!" laughed Carlisle, with some want of naturalness, as she for the dozenth time detached herself and him from a little surrounding group. "And yet you've complained to me of loneliness!"
"There are times, Miss Heth, when one is never so lonely as in the midst of the crowd." ”

“ So easily does forty horse-power traverse the mile between Houses of Heth and Houses of Dabney. Cally Heth rolled up to the door of the abandoned hotel. Large and dismal it looked in the slanting rain. Archaic, too, so the modern of the moderns thought, glancing upward over the face of the shabby pile as the car halted, and William, who was ever attentive to his young mistress, sprang out with the umbrellas. It was an odd place for anybody to live, certainly; an even odder place to draw in storm the world of fashion foregathering to its bosom. ”

“ After that moment of barrier-less intimacy in the drawing-room, how could he bear to be so hard?
Her vesper thoughts veered a little, moved from Vivian to Director Pond, who had also brusquely rebuffed her. It was Mrs. Page's experience that Cally had had this afternoon, and she too found it humiliating. She had lately caught a distant glimpse of "work" in terms different from those which the dull word had worn heretofore: vaguely discerned activities in which the best women were coöperating usefully with men--coöperating equally as human beings, and no nonsense; not as women at all. ”

“ And she involuntarily rose in the Cooney parlor, feeling the oddest, suddenest, most unreasoning impulse to go at once into the dining-room, after all, and be with Looloo, and watch them play checkers for a little while....
It was the surprise of it; nothing more. And Carlisle overcame that impulse. She remained standing motionless, reconsidering as by lightning flashes the quite complicated point of etiquette that so suddenly confronted her. What was a lady's proper attitude toward a nobody who has called her father a shameless homicide and herself a God-pitiful poor little thing? ”

“ Having run away, could she not at least enjoy a runaway's peace? Why backward glances now? She had escaped Dalhousie. She had escaped Dalhousie's friend. She stood in this room the safest person in the world. No one on earth could betray her except herself.
The watch ticked loud, steadily drawing Hugo, and mamma and Flora. Up through the windows came the twilight and the rumble of the vast heedless city. Carlisle snapped on the lights. ”

“ The car started from Saltman's door, and Cally glanced at her watch: it was just three o'clock. Probably at this moment Dr. Vivian and papa were shaking hands in the office at the Works. Why, oh, why, hadn't she said that she would go, too, as she had so much wanted to do? Surely she could not have harmed that meeting; she might even have helped a little.
About her were the bustle and clangor of busy Centre Street. People hurrying upon a thousand errands, each intent upon his own business, under the last wrapping each soul alone in the crowded world. ”

“ Not in forty years had the ancient hostelry so resounded with the steps of the best people. Without, there stood lines of motor-cars in the shabby and unaccustomed street, ten times as many as there had been in May. Within--to prove at a stroke the tone of the gathering--J. Forsythe Avery himself stood conspicuously at the very door: not merely stood, but labored behind a deal table for the cause, distributing Settlement pamphlets, brochures or treatises, to all comers. He irresistibly reminded Carlisle of one of those lordly men in gold-lace outside a painless dentist's parlors. ”

“ Of the two, in that disruptive moment, Canning was far the more visibly perturbed. If women think with their emotions, Carlisle's emotions, rebelling at long overstrain, had now run away with her. She was never a docile girl, as her mother well knew. To Canning she had dealt the ultimate unbelievable buffet. Through all her incredible obstinacy, through all his knowledge of the capabilities of her spirit, he had hardly doubted that one hint of betrothal restiveness would be sufficient to bring her to her knees. ”

“ She, with her tireless energies, was not one to cry forever over milk hopelessly spilt. But neither was she one to temper justice with too much mercy, and her final word on the matter was a final one, indeed: "But of course you can never make it up to me, Carlisle, never...." And Carlisle, rising, knew even better than mamma how sad and true this was. There was only one thing that her mother had wanted of her, and that thing she had not done. Life, even on this day of song and mist, was seen to be inexorable.... ”

“ Stares passed between the dim trio.
"I am Miss Heth."
"Could you possibly let me speak to you--for a moment, Miss Heth? I realize, of course, that it's a great intrusion but--"
Canning started up, annoyed. Carlisle, without knowing why, was instantly conscious of a subtle sinking of the heart: some deep instinct rang a warning in the recesses of her being, as if crying out: "This man means trouble." She glanced at Mr. Canning with a kind of little shrug, suggesting doubt, and some helplessness; and he, taking this for sufficient authority, assumed forthwith the male's protectorship. ”

“ All thought of putting down his foot faded at once from Canning's mind, obliterated in a wave that went through him, half passion, half pure tenderness. Indifferent to Mrs. Heth, he advanced and took the girl in his arms, speaking in a manly way the sympathy with her distress which rushed up in him at that moment. And then he said words that went with Carlisle as a comfort all through the night.
"Your trouble is my own, Carlisle. I'm with you in everything now, happiness or unhappiness. Whatever happens, you know my heart and strength are yours through all time." ”

“ But there came a time when this resource was denied her; when the human bars closed, as it were; in short, when all the society in reach must sorrowfully put on his tall hat and go. And then there came the nocturnal stillness of the house, and then the solitariness of the bedchamber, and after that the dark.
Now the question that had rumbled all evening cloud-like in the background of her consciousness, swam and took shape in the midnight shadows, dangling before the eye of her mind in gigantic and minatory capitals:
WOULD HE TELL? ”

“ Cally hesitated.
"I'm sorry, Hugo--but I think I should like to go home, if you don't mind."
"Home?"
"I really don't feel quite like a drive now. I'm very sorry--"
Canning gazed down at her in dismay.
"I knew you didn't feel quite yourself yet. You couldn't deceive me ... But don't let's go home! Why, this air is the very thing you need, Carlisle. It will set you up in no time." ”

“ Mattie was hardly less out of the question: a girl with many excellent merits and her best friend, but the last person you would ever dream of giving yourself away to. But then you really could not trust anybody as far as that. In all the world there was no one to whom she could go and freely pour out her unhappiness and her heart.
A self-contained and self-sufficient girl, she now felt lonesomely that it would be a great comfort to talk everything over with somebody. Things seemed only to get worse by being kept locked up so tight in her own bosom. ”

“ Vivian, slapping one impetuous hand into the other. "Yes, and came running and sweating to the desert, just to get a tongue-lashing from him--the very same old scribes and Pharisees that drive motor-cars down Washington Street to-day! And they'd run to him to-day, never fear! I tell you, there's a voice the heart is never deaf to! And that's what this age needs, Sam,--since you ask me,--a big, fierce prophet on the outskirts of the city; a great, grim, uncompromising hater, with a tongue that bites like a blacksnake whip. ”

“ Canning's odd but evident antagonism to the man she herself had such cause to dislike was agreeable to her, but the topic was not. She had had enough of the Vivians of this world for one night. She led the way through the dark drawing-room, and at the switch beyond the door turned the light into two soft-tinted dome-lamps. The library was massive rather than "livable"; it had books, which is more than can be said for some libraries; but they were chiefly books in stately sets, yards and yards of them just alike: a depressing matter to the true lover. ”

“ Canning's demeanor was only what was to be expected. He was the proudest of men, and (that awful night at the Beach) she had expelled him from her presence like a schoolboy. Naturally he had been annoyed and offended--stung even into the rudeness of abandoning her in a summer-house to an entire stranger. How could you possibly wonder (unless feline) that he, great unsocial at best, had thereafter remained silent inside his fort?...
"How like a man," breathed Mrs. Heth, glancing at her watch, "to pick out this day of all others to be detained at a bank." ”

“ The shops in the morning, downtown on a rush to lunch with Willing, back to Broadway for a matinee, back home at the double-quick to dress for dinner, to the theatre after dinner, to supper after the theatre. There was always hurry; there was never quite time to reach any of the places at the hour agreed.
"That's the fun!" said Florrie Willing. "Rush, rush, rush from morning to night. That's little old New York in a nutshell."
Carlisle had expected to be thoroughly diverted by the rattle, bang, and glitter in which the Willings lived, but in this she was only partially gratified. ”

“ The thick hot room seemed swarming with women, alive and teeming with women, women tumbling all over each other wherever the eye turned. Tall clacking machines ran closely around the walls of the room, down the middle stood a double row of tables; and at each machine, and at every possible place at the tables, sat a woman crowded upon a woman, and another and another.
Dirt, noise, heat, and smell: women, women, women. Conglomeration of human and inhuman such as the eyes of the refined seldom look upon.... ”

“ I'm so glad to know you, sir."
Thus the fearless young voice at her side. But Cally was gazing, transfixed, at her father, on whose face the friendly greeting air was giving place to astonished displeasure, not untouched with indignation. He had stopped short in the middle of the floor, and the hand he had been automatically putting out fell dead at his side.
"Oh!--Ah!--Dr. Vivian!" said Mr. Heth, with the stiffest inclination. And then, his look going from one to the other of the two young people, he added, as if involuntarily: "Vivian?... Ah! I'd--have expected a different-looking man!" ”

“ And back into her smooth young cheek trickled that color so loved by her betrothed, who had not bought the Settlement House after all....
She was a brilliantly successful girl, the chosen wife of the most shiningly eligible of men; and he was a lame slum doctor in a worn-out suit, beneath her notice as a man altogether. And yet, as Hugo stood above her in all those material aspects which had always summed up her whole demand of life, so this man stood above her in some more subtle and mysterious way. ”