Читать книгу Angela's Business - Henry Sydnor Harrison - Страница 12

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"I'd turn with you, but I have a class," said Mary, disappointed, and a little surprised, it seemed. "I wish you'd stroll on with me!"

"I've something to do at my room—some business to attend to, really."

"Then let's walk this afternoon, do! Shall I come for you?"

"How nice of you! I'd like to so much."

On which the girl was gone, stepping on light feet down the side street. In the momentary lapse of talk, Charles's eye went after her. He saw something mysteriously withdrawn in that gray figure, something set forever apart.

And then, while he and his friend walked on six steps in silence, the young man wondered, with a sudden fierce annoyance, what Mary thought she was doing exactly.

Of Miss Trevenna he knew only what the world knew, which was little enough. One of several daughters of a prosperous family, she had been known as a reserved, and somewhat dreamy girl, indifferent to social life, and much addicted to curling up at home with books of poetry; Shelley's poetry or some such bewildering stuff; altogether a queer person. She even wrote poetry herself, it was damagingly alleged after the crash, and it was recalled that in women's meetings she had sometimes risen and expressed, in the quietest sort of way, ideas which disconcerted even the Hodgers of her day. Duly there had come to town the entirely typical dashing stranger: Robert McKittrick, this one was, an architect in government employ, who came with excellent letters. Mr. McKittrick was seen in public, a time or two, with Mr. Trevenna's quietly peculiar daughter; it was known that a sane and sound Mrs. McKittrick existed in Philadelphia, or some such place; there may have been a little mild talk, but it was very little and very mild. And then one fine day, the town was startled with the news that these two had taken the great jump together, by the last night mail train north.

It was the sort of thing you read about in every novel nowadays, especially if written by an Englishman. But this time, unluckily, it had really happened, and in a community not too large for a homogeneous public opinion. Moreover, life does differ just a little from the novels, in that it possesses no invisible author to shut the book splendidly, the moment the case is proved. Life did not leave Mr. McKittrick and Miss Trevenna forever singing in the honeymoon heyday. It merely kept them in the back of the town's mind for two years, a tidbit or a terrible warning, according as you looked at it, and then it brought Miss Trevenna back to us again, alone.

It might have seemed the oldest and the vulgarest story in the world. The weak, trusting maiden, the handsome, promissory villain, the flight, the rude awakening and Conviction of Sin, and then the piteous Return (Act III, Curtain) to Forgiveness, a black shawl, Quick Decline, and Death: these things have wrung the gallery's scalding tears from farther back than we can remember. But well Charles Garrott understood that Miss Trevenna's "case" had nothing to do with this cheap business. He thought it right enough, of course (theoretically speaking), that Mary Wing should sympathize with a sister in distress. And yet.... Well, no one, certainly, had "deceived" or "betrayed" Miss Trevenna. Quite probably she had proposed the excursion herself, like one of the glorious heroines at the moment educating British maidenhood. Miss Trevenna had gone with her lover because she had a Right to Her Happiness; she had gone to fulfil the Unwritten Law of Her Being; she had gone to Strike a Blow for Freedom. It was absurd to look for remorse in a black shawl here.

And still, glancing after that oddly cloistral figure, the young man felt that the net effect was not so different from the sorry old melodrama, after all.

He spoke suddenly, with a manner proving that he did not pride himself on wearing a mask for nothing:—

"Did you know that a woman's occipital condyles are less voluminous than a man's,—yes, considerably so,—while her zygomatic arches are more regular? Well, then, take my word for it, for they are."

Miss Wing rewarded him by coming out of her abstraction with a laugh. She asked him in what great tome he had learned that fascinating fact.

"Ah, that's my secret. By the way," said Charles, "how's that charming little cousin of yours, Miss Angela?"

He spoke in his most natural voice, as if no thought of conflict had ever risen between him and the best of New Women. All the same, the cousin's name fell rather oddly on the advanced air.

Mary Wing said that she hadn't seen Angela since the Redmantle Club; she said she must try to go there this afternoon. He remarked that being pulled up by the roots, and transplanted, was hard on the young, but that Miss Angela would make friends fast enough. Having a passion for biography, especially the biographies of women, he wanted particularly to learn something about this girl, who had given him, Charles Garrott, a phrase. But the talk now took another turn; it wasn't a day for discussing Home-Making clearly. Miss Hodger and Professor Clarence Pollock went walking by, across the sunny street, and Mary, having greeted them much too pleasantly to suit his taste, said:—

"Do you know this is the third time I've seen those two together lately? It begins to look like an affair."

"What!" he cried, disgusted. "Why!—why, she'd bite his head off in a week!"

And then, while she protested argumentatively, he was silent for a space, struck with the thought that here was an opening not unsuited to his need.

While the plan for his new work was by no means settled yet, beyond doubt this matter of Miss Trevenna had given strong impetus to the conservative wave. And meanwhile, there was the personal side. To lecture Mary Wing openly was a thing scarcely to be thought of. Yet, having felt the unmistakable reactions himself, the young man found himself itching, literally itching, to get his hands on Mary and make her react a little, too.

He said in his pleasantest way:—"Did it ever strike you, by the way, that she's got the propaganda in the purely archaic form?"

"Archaic?—Hodger!"

"She still imagines that the object of this Movement is to make women more like men. Of course, the object of the Movement is to make women more like themselves."

Her silence seemed to applaud his epigram. Charles felt that it was generous of him to add: "I bagged that somewhere. Sounds like Havelock Ellis to me. But," he added, frankly, "I've improved the wording. Why do you say I'm unjust to her? On the contrary, I'd be delighted to fork over all those rights of hers she was demanding the other night. By the by, what are Hodger's rights exactly?"

"I suppose she's entitled to human rights, even if you, as a man, don't find her especially attractive."

Charles winced, and then smiled faintly.

"Human rights—security and protection, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? She's got them, hasn't she? I thought what Hodger was yelling for was special privileges, rather exceptional privileges in the way of freeing her Ego from—"

"As a woman, she hasn't even all the human rights, you know very well. As a human being, she would feel that she's entitled to exceptional rights, because she's an exceptional being. She would take the ground that her public work—"

"She would take that ground, of course. But," said Charles, amiably, "possibly others would not agree with her. That is just the trouble, isn't it? The doctrine that the world belongs to Exceptional People has that fatal weakness."

"In your opinion," she qualified him—"what?"

"We'd need a great board, a sort of Super-Supreme Court of really godlike understanding, to tell us which are the Exceptional People."

Seeing that he had her temporarily at a loss, Charles continued his agreeable prattle:—

"And hand them out their little certificates, you know. I remember, this chap Chesterton said a fairly bright thing once—a little piece I read somewhere. He said he'd always wanted to hear somebody—anybody—preach 'personal liberty' with one small qualification. Said he'd waited and waited to hear one person state the creed something like this: 'Men and women of genius must not be bound by ordinary laws. But I am NOT a man of genius, and therefore I will keep the law.' Chesterton said he'd been waiting for years."

He was aware that Miss Wing was regarding him in a curious sort of way, and now she said, directly:—

"Do you know, this doesn't sound like you at all?"

"Doesn't it?—why not? I've always believed in taking a good look around, every now and then. Constant discussion," said Charles, "constant canvassing of rival theories—"

"Well, those theories are only good for people who think that the way to advance is by standing still."

As she spoke these positive words, the two were overtaken and passed by Henry Mysinger, of all people. Mr. Mysinger was at once Mary's principal at the High School and her special adversary in the Schools, against whom in years past she and her friend Garrott had how often schemed and plotted. His salute now was pleasant, with reference to Charles, but the eye he cast upon his assistant was distinctly not approbatory.

As for Mary, it did not appear that she bowed at all.

"But the way to advance is by advancing," she continued, declining to lower her voice at all, "and it's only the exceptional people who are capable of superintending these advances. That, by the way," said the school teacher, "is probably the very definition you are looking for."

He flatly rejected her definition; disputation followed. With increasing pointedness, Mary Wing pressed the case for "exceptional people," Self-Developing People who recked not of Homes and being Sisters and Daughters. And presently she said, with only a small air of hesitation:—

"And please remember that enlightened people cannot possibly point the way without courage, and—a certain amount of pioneering experiment."

Mr. Mysinger had mercifully withdrawn himself around the corner of Third Street. There his assistant would turn, too, parting from her friend; and really, that appeared to be just as well. Forgetting his mask, the young man was beginning to betray signs of exasperation. No more than Mysinger, of course, had he ever been deceived by the delicate girlishness of Mary's face; but the positions she seemed to be taking now passed anything he had ever thought of her addiction to the New. Was this mere argument for argument's sake?—or did she seriously imagine that the regeneration of society was to be accomplished by the antics of a few wild female Egoists—lawless Egoettes?

"That's true, to a point, of course," he said, with control. "Yet don't you suspect people who talk about their Duty to the Race, while overlooking entirely their duty to that part of the race which should be nearest and dearest to them?"

"I'd suspect even more people who daren't call their souls their own, for fear they might be criticized by somebody who knows nothing about the facts."

And then she exclaimed suddenly. "Oh, why don't you say at once that you've been talking at poor Flora Trevenna for three blocks!"

He was considerably taken aback, but spoke calmly: "Not at all—or at least only in a general way. One of the problems of the day, as we say at the Redmantle Club."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say then, man to man, as it were: "Miss Mary, you have a great work ahead of you, in a special field. Isn't it a pity to confuse your good cause with one that perhaps is not so good?" But, of course, you hardly gave advice of that sort to Mary Wing.

"But since you seem to invite my opinion," he continued, "I will say that I do think there is a logical connection between Hodger's kind of talk and Miss Trevenna's—ah—pioneering experiment."

"Of course there is! Who denied it?" said she, with a forthrightness that increased his wonder at her.

And then, as they came to a standstill at the corner, she added, after a grave speculative stare:—

"If it'll do you the slightest good, Mr. Garrott, I'll tell you exactly what finally decided Flora to forget her duty to her sisters, aunts, uncles, and so on, as you consider. Prepare yourself. It was a sentence in a book."

"A sentence in a book!"

Miss Wing nodded, several times. "As she's a reserved girl, and I appear to be her only friend now, of course this is a confidence."

"I can name the book!" cried Charles; and he did.

"However," he resumed, with bitter urbanity, "if she'd happened to read a few pages further, she might have noticed that the Lady in Sweden took every bit of it back."

To his surprise, Mary Wing laughed.

"Do you know, that's just what I told her, in almost those very words? And what do you suppose she said? 'Well, I'm glad I didn't read as far as that.'"

Continuing to look at him and continuing to laugh, the annoying young woman added: "I'm afraid you don't begin to understand women as yet, Mr. Garrott! No, you don't begin to. Au revoir!"

It was noted that Charles's bow was characterized by a certain stiffness.

He went on his way alone, to Berringer's, and the good solid man-talk. The strongest thought in his mind now was that the end of these things was not yet. And here, at least, he was by no means deceived.

The next day was Saturday. At two o'clock on that day, each week, Charles took train and went down to his mother's place in the country, there to remain till early Monday morning. This was an invasion of his writer's time, with which he let nothing interfere. Returning to town, and finding "Bondwomen" not yet heard from, he became absorbed in a short story—for the "line" of his new novel could not be laid in a day or a week, of course—and went suddenly upon his emergency schedule, as Judge Blenso had named it. This schedule called for the omission of all exercise, other than as tutoring necessitated, and a general withdrawal from the world of living women. But he couldn't get away from their Unrest, even so.

Late Thursday afternoon, as he was working out the last pages of the time-killing fiction, the door of the Studio opened without a knock, and Donald Manford walked in. Donald certainly continued to make himself very much at home here.

"Get out," said Charles, tired and cross. "What do you think this is, a Wheelman's Rest?"

The tall engineer said that he was passing and thought he'd drop in. But with the aid of an eyebrow he made known, over Judge Blenso's snowy head, that he desired private converse in the bedroom.

The public talk between the two young men, continuing, was that Donald wanted to borrow a white waistcoat from Charles, which Charles was rather reluctant to lend him. Thus, gradually, they faded from the Studio, much to the annoyance of the Judge, who had ceased typing on purpose to listen, while ostensibly merely engaged in picking lint from his types with a brass pin.

When the door of the bedroom was shut, Donald Manford said, in low hurried tones:—

"Have you heard all this talk about Mary? I tell you the town's buzzing with it!"

Charles had heard no talk; he was disturbed, if scarcely surprised. But when it became clear that the purpose of Donald's visit was to get him, Charles, to "drop a hint to Mary," he refused at once, point-blank.

The engineer was pained and astonished.

"You don't understand the situation," said he, stewing. "I tell you Mary's gone to work to make a heroine of that woman! Recommending her for good jobs, with her morning, noon, and night, having people in to meet her at tea! Now, of course, she just doesn't understand what she's doing. She's too innocent; she's ignorant of the practical meaning of this business. And it's my duty to protect her from her ignorance...."

Charles sat down on one of the parallel white beds—the Judge's. And little as he sympathized with Miss Trevenna's Blow for Freedom, he seemed to sympathize even less with his young friend's proprietary absurdities.

Whatever this stalwart youth was, Mary Wing had made him. An orphan and poor, he had been taken to the bosom of the kindly Wings; and Mary, a girl of twenty then, had been from the start his second mother. She had fed and clothed Donald, helped pay his bills at college; she had trained him, taught him, filled him with her own ambition. She had got him his first opening, pulled wires for him, hewed out his ascending steps. Fine and confident as Donald stood there, Mary Wing had made him. And now to see him, as to her, clutching on the toga of the primitive male, to hear him, the ignorant, ridiculously claiming overlordship in a field which should have been supremely woman's.

"Go ahead," said Charles dryly. "Protect her all you want."

But Donald angrily told him not to be an ass. It was a delicate matter—for him—he declared; besides, Mary wouldn't listen to him. He wasn't advanced.

"But you're another matter. You've got some influence with Mary, and—"

"Stop right there! I've got more influence with the Weather Department than I have with Mary Wing."

Glowering at him over the foot of the bed, the engineer demanded reasons for his strange unpractical behavior. Charles offered a few simple selections from his complex feelings.

"First, your cousin's personal behavior is none of my business. Second, I'd have no respect for her if she gave up her principles because you asked me to ask her to. Third, I despise a person who's scared out of his wits by fear of what the neighbors'll think."

Donald appeared momentarily speechless. Perceiving this, the author fitted a cigarette into a holder Mary Wing had given him on his birthday, and resumed his few remarks:—

"Of course your mistake is in supposing that Miss Mary is acting through ignorance. She's acting from principle, as I say, and doing a plucky thing, too. For she doesn't think that because a poor silly girl has once made a mistake, the thing to do—"

But Manford recovered his voice with a bound.

"Mistake! I'm surprised at you, Garrott! I did you the justice to think that all this advanced rot of yours was just talk. Come!—say right out you think it's a mighty plucky thing for a girl to go off and live with a married man!"

Charles smiled, and then hesitated. It was odd how instantly Donald Manford modernized him, killing all reactions: But what was the use of arguing with a fellow who honestly believed that a woman had but one "virtue," who spoke of her frankly as "the sex," allowed her no honor but "woman's honor," had but one question to ask about her "character"? This youth had not budged since the fifth century.

"The only way to punish this is by the disgrace of it, I tell you!" he was arguing. "There's no punishment at all when you make a heroine of the woman."

"There'll be enough to punish, don't fret, without Mary Wing's taking a hand."

"Now look here, Charlie," said Donald, encouraged. "Just look at the matter in a sensible way. You can feel sorry for her and all that. But it isn't right, by George, it isn't decent and moral, to stand up and practically say you admire a notorious bad woman! Just think of the effect on other women! They'll argue, 'Well, if that's the way people feel about it, there's no use being good any more.' And think, Charlie!—what'll become of Society if all the girls get to skipping off and living with married men!"

Charles laughed and rose. "Of course I'd not dream of speaking to Miss Mary about this."

The young engineer exploded. But presently he gave it up.

"Then I'll have to speak to her myself," he declared, and looked as if he expected the hazardous audacity of such an enterprise to touch his friend's heart, even then. "And you remember this," he added, angrily, "when Mary's friends are all dropping her!"

"Nobody who drops her for this was ever her friend."

"More New Thought! And what about Mysinger? Suppose your idea is that this plucky business will boost Mary's standing in the schools like the devil?"

"My dear fellow, you're seeing things! You never heard of politics, I suppose? Nothing can shake us in the schools. 'Cause why? We own the Board by two votes."

Donald regarded him with the strongest disapproval. "Do you know you make me sick?"

"By the way," said Charles, pleasantly, "didn't I see you go by here with Miss Flower the other day? Where did you—"

"Absolutely sick, and I've—"

"Meet up with her, old fellow? Isn't she a—"

"Sick!" roared Donald, and banged the door.

He was a hopeless ignoramus, and Charles was the peer of the greatest authorities, living or dead. But the subject, beyond doubt, was the most complex and baffling in the whole field of Womanology. And Charles, standing and staring at that shut door, was possessed with the odd feeling that Donald had got the best of the argument, after all.

Why must Mary always be as independent as the Declaration, and more militant than a Prussian?