Читать книгу Angela's Business - Henry Sydnor Harrison - Страница 13

Table of Contents

The emergency schedule withdrew Charles from the streets; he lunched in twenty minutes at Mrs. Herman's and spent the hour gained at his writing-table. With the completion of the short fiction, he resumed his walks to Berringer's. And now on Washington Street, the principal scene of his social life since he became a regular author, he saw again Miss Angela Flower. In five days, suddenly, he saw Miss Angela three times.

Twice, as it happened, the two passed on opposite sides of the street, moving in contrary directions. But the third time he fairly overtook her, not a dozen steps from the door of the rich little Deming boys, to whom he taught the Elements all morning.

He was pleased with the agreeable coincidence. He greeted Mary's so different cousin with a genuine warmth, springing spontaneously from his personal sense of a bond between them. And Miss Angela, it seemed, was not less glad to see him.

"You don't know how nice it is," she laughed, a tinge of color in her smooth cheeks, "to see a familiar face, after blocks and blocks of strangers. And you're almost the only person I know, too!"

Suiting his long stride to hers, he assured her that this state of affairs would pass quickly.

"I got only a glimpse of you yesterday," he pursued. "Do you take your constitutionals at this time, too?"

But she said, elusively, that she took them at all sorts of times.

"It's my chief form of recreation at present, you see! But—I thought I might meet father up here—it's his time for coming home to lunch from the college. Only I seem just to miss him every day."

He and the Womanly Woman walked a good half-mile together that day, and the authority enjoyed himself thoroughly. It was in the course of this walk that he evolved another phrase of scientific justification, viz.: "The Business of Supplying Beauty and Supplying Charm."

The talk turned naturally upon the girl herself. Having failed to get any biography from the embattled Miss Wing, Charles proceeded to the source. Under his agreeable, yet artful promptings, Miss Angela sketched with a charming simplicity the story of a commonplace family life: how she and her brothers had grown up at Hunter's Run, a crossroads post-office four miles from Mitchellton; how they had moved into Mitchellton, which had seemed like heaven at first, but had palled after seven years; how all the boys of Mitchellton grew up and went away, one by one, to make their marks in the world (though there was one exception, it seemed, a Mr. Dan Jenney, who was still in Mitchellton—Aha! thought Charles); how lonely she was after Tommy, her older brother, had thus gone away; how her father had had quite a large practice in Mitchellton, but didn't seem much interested in getting patients here; and so on. Tommy, it was learned, had married money in Pittsburg, but appeared to be happy all the same. As for the younger brother, Wallie, his ambition was to go to college and be an electro-chemist, and he was now at work downtown, gathering funds for that purpose. Mary Wing had got him a position, it seemed.

Miss Angela's conversation, as has been noted, was not remarkable as conversation. But what mattered that? Into an atmosphere too heated by the Trevennas of this Unrestful world, her girlish unsophistications blew like a primrose zephyr. Moreover, she had her moments, you may be sure; her vivacities as honest as wit. She said that Mitchellton was like a town in war-time.

"That's the way a man described it to me once, a surveyor from the North, when he'd only been there three hours! He declared he hadn't seen a male between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five. They'd all gone off, you see—"

"And then the surveyor went off, too?"

"He did!—exactly! Hopped on a funny little calico pony he had, the minute he said that, and trotted off down Main Street. We never saw him again."

Charles, laughing, looked down at her. She wore a plain blue suit and a simple hat with a yellow quill, obviously inexpensive both, and not new. She was characterized, sartorially, only by that unobtrusive yet exquisite neatness whose practice some women bring to a fine art. Pretty and sweet she looked, none the less; feminine, too, without a doubt.

And, quite unconsciously, she was giving by piecemeal an answer to that fundamental question of her Modern critics, How do you spend your time? A considerable part of Miss Angela's time went, it seemed, to the actual care of the house. With her leisure she really had little to do as yet, because of her lack of acquaintance. Even the table of bridge with Cousin Mary had not developed so far. She walked a great deal, usually alone, but mentioned having met Mr. Manford the other day; the impression was left that she and Donald hadn't specially taken to each other. She kept her mother company; she often went into the shops, "just looking"; once or twice she and Wallie had been to the moving-picture shows. She read also, it seemed, for she had just finished "Marna"—a gift to her, this was—a certain late New Woman novel which Charles himself meant to give an hour to some day. Her account of her domestic business the old-fashioned girl concluded thus:—

"I don't know very much about housekeeping yet, but I do the best I can. I think mother enjoys the rest."

And whatever criticism narrow utilitarians might have brought against her management of her fifteen hours a day seemed to be morally destroyed by that unconscious stroke. Mother enjoys the rest. Imagine Miss Hodger, for instance,—to come no nearer home,—casually mentioning: "I don't want to do this, but I will. I want to go there, but I won't." "Why, Miss Hodger?" you would ask her. "Why must you mutilate your Ego thus?" "Well,"—you are to fancy Miss Hodger saying,—"you see, I think mother'd enjoy the rest!"

But the girl herself remained delightfully unconscious of the reactions she set in motion.

"Mr. Garrott," she said suddenly,—"I hope you don't mind my asking, but—when are you going to have some stories coming out? I'm crazy to read one of them!"

"Oh!" laughed Mr. Garrott. "Well!—I can't say definitely, at the moment. I'm trying," he said, modestly, "to write books, you know, and it's a slow business, with the little free time I have. My first one, that I've just finished, took me four years."

"Four years! How wonderful! But isn't it going to come out soon?"

"I'm—ah—negotiating with a publisher now."

"It must be fascinating! I—I never knew an author before."

He warmed, expanding.

At the parting of their ways, these two paused, talking like old friends; and no parting took place here, after all. Angela said, with a charming hesitancy: "Mr. Garrott, if you really want to read that book,—'Marna', I mean,—I wish you'd let me lend it to you. We've finished with it—for good!—and if you have time to stop a minute—" And he, who never called, who had a special rule against borrowing things from ladies, restored his hat to his head at once, accepting with pleasure.

So they turned out of Washington Street toward Center, and she continued, with a laughing, sidelong glance:—

"Do you know who Marna reminded me of? Quite a friend of yours!—somebody you admire a great deal!"

Knowing the nature of the book well from the reviews he was incessantly reading, the young man smiled: "I wonder if you can possibly be alluding to one of your most distinguished cousins."

"It did, just a little! At first, I mean—where Marna goes away to lead her own life, and everything.... Mr. Garrott, do you think she's really going to take the position in New York, Cousin Mary, I mean?"

"Take it! Why, of course she will, provided she can get it! It would be a remarkable thing for such a young woman, and a great opportunity besides."

This the girl seemed to understand. She remarked, however, that Cousin Mary and Mrs. Wing seemed so wrapped up in each other. Her extreme domesticity was peculiarly refreshing to Charles just now; nevertheless, he now took up the cudgels for Modernity, though in the gentlest way: Why should not daughters have the same right to leave home for work that the sons of Mitchellton had, for example? Daughters had always left homes for another reason. Suppose Marna had married the first whippersnapper that came along, and he had carried her off to Australia, etc.

But Miss Angela seemed to feel that, for her part, she would look long at any lover who wished to separate her from her mother.

Center Street, at this point, was a place of car-tracks, cobblestones, and threatening small establishments of those personal sorts which are always first to appear in a waning "residence district." At the corner stood a Human Hair Goods Works. The Flower house was not intrinsically pretty. It was one of a block of six, all just alike and evidently built some time ago; rather dingy little brick houses, with weather-beaten small verandahs set only a step or two above the sidewalk, and scantily separated from it by grassless "lawns." However, Charles was not repelled by poverty, to which he had been well used.

Within, he had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angela's father, who was encountered in the hall, in the act of removing his overcoat. Angela left the two men together, while she tripped upstairs to get "Marna."

Charles found the medical father a decidedly queer individual. A very tall, thin, seedy man he was, with a neglected sandy mustache, and a long neck punctuated with a very large Adam's apple, which he jerked with a sort of nervous twitch as he talked. With his lusterless eye and spare, remote manner, he looked like a man who had let himself dry up from within. Yet, if Charles remembered aright, the Medical School had counted this gentleman a distinct acquisition.

He assured Dr. Flower that he had long desired this pleasure, and explained:—

"Your cousin, Miss Wing, is an old friend of mine."

"My wife's cousin," said the Doctor, seeming to make a distinction. "Quite so! Certainly!"

"I believe it was she who first brought the Medical School to your attention?"

"Ah, yes! I fancy it was. Quite so. Have a cigar, will you? However," continued the father, jerking his long neck, "you don't offer that as something to be urged against her, I assume?"

The young man, though surprised, smiled politely.

"Possibly you're no more enthusiastic about teaching than I am, say?"

"Ah, well!... It wants excitement, you maintain?—lacks the spice of brilliant variety? You find no romance in it, you suggest? Well—"

Dr. Flower fell silent, brushing his hat with the sleeve of his worn coat, while he stared cheerlessly at nothing. Charles wondered at him, with a certain sense of mild mystery. If he felt that way about teaching, why had he thrown over his practice and left Mitchellton?

"I believe," said he, with discretion, "your—that is, Mrs. Flower's cousin, Mary Wing, is the only teacher I ever knew who could really be called a 'fan.'"

"Quite so. You won't have a cigar, you said? But even in that case, it doesn't amount to a complete exhaustion of the energies, you would feel? You'd contend there's an unused store for other enterprises, even there?"

"Quite so," said Charles, considerably puzzled.

But then Miss Angela came skipping and smiling down the narrow stairs, book in hand, and slipped her arm through her father's. She said that Mr. Garrott could keep "Marna" as long as he liked, but that she would be so interested to hear what he thought of it. The trio stood chatting a moment together.

Angela's last word, in her soft and pretty voice, was, "Don't forget, we're going to have that bridge game some night soon!"

So he took leave of her, not only with the book, but with the promise of a party shortly to come. And, curiously, that was the first thing this simple Nice Girl had ever said that the authority felt inclined to criticize somewhat: the use of the word "that," now. Skilled and wary he had grown since he became a regular writer, and he could not recall having agreed to give a valuable evening to playing bridge soon. The engagement had just developed along, it seemed.

But that was a trivial matter, early lost sight of. Continuing his walk to Berringer's and the good man-talk, Charles pondered upon the nature of a Home.

La Femme, as we know, was all over for this young man; through too much knowledge he had analyzed the charm away. He did not (of course) exaggerate Miss Angela's values, magnify anything about her whatever. Of course she was but a Type, and a familiar one. Only, for him she had happened to personify, with unexpected freshness, that aspect of the Question which, he was more and more convinced, scientific thinkers fallaciously slurred over: the business aspect of Home-Making, to wit. Though few of the sounder authorities openly advocated the suppression of Homes, was it not true that they—and he once among them—practically did so by denying any value in their schemes to those emotional and spiritual contributions which alone turned a house into a Home? There lay the heart of the whole great problem. "Four walls," mused Charles, as he swung rapidly down Center Street, "and three meals a day, and even the banisters dusted, to boot—these mere utilities can never make a Home."

And he made a mental note of the sentence for his conservative Notes in the exercise-book of the old lady.

But this day, as it fell out, was memorable in the Studio for more than meditation.

When he left Miss Chorister's at four-thirty, which was when the tutorial day ended, the author did not make straight for the Studio, according to habit, but turned downtown again, instead. He had personal affairs to attend to to-day, an accumulation of small shopping and sundry errands that could not be longer procrastinated. They took much valued time. It was after six, in the winter night, when he got home.

At the foot of his own steps he encountered his and his relative's new fellow-lodger, and their only one. Possibly he was still thinking scientifically of Miss Angela, for it instantly occurred to him that here was Miss Angela's full opposite.

"Oh, good-evening, Miss McGee!"

He spoke as pleasantly as possible, but the lodger only answered "Evening," and turned her back at once.

"How do you do to-night?"

"Tired as a dog."

"And no wonder, working such long hours!"

No answer from the lodger.

"You are later than usual this evening, aren't you?"

"Keep me on purpose," muttered Miss McGee angrily (or something like that), climbing the tall stairs.

She was a dark young woman, darkly dressed and darkly scowling, it had seemed, at the mere sight of Charles. As he knew from a rare letter on the hall table, her official name was Mary Maude McGee, but to him she was always and simply Two-Book McGee, on account of her apparent habit of reading two novels a night, every night in the year. She had them under her arm now, with the labels of the circulating library showing.

Charles also had a book under his arm, "Marna": here was a topic!

"Do you," he inquired, continuing the social chat, "find many good novels these days?"

"No, I don't!" said she, so sharply that you would have supposed he was to blame for it. Imagine!

"You must really look over my stock some day, Miss McGee. I'm sure I have something you could read."

But the invitation brought only a mutter from Miss McGee, and the door of the Second Hall Back banged shut behind her.

"Help! help!" mused Charles, and straightway was struck with an interesting thought: How about taking over Two-Book McGee as a minor character in the new novel?

He considered the idea, mounting to his Studio. The lodger was known as a self-supporting female, allied with a tintype and "art photography" establishment. Certainly she seemed an odd sort of person to say "Look pleasant" to anybody. Friends, engagements, pleasures, she had none, on the word of Mrs. Herman. All day she helped to photograph the General Public; all night, till sleep overcame her, she sat alone in her very small room, reading novel after novel which she did not like. A dull life, it might have seemed; but then, you see, she had, to bless her, the priceless knowledge that she was a self-respecting and independent being, a person and not a parasite. The authorities could not doubt that Two-Book McGee was happy in her way.

Charles, however, seemed to be doing just that, at the moment. He conceived Miss McGee as one not joyful in her economic freedom; hence as an "illustrative character" for conservatism, sowing doubts in the minds of readers as to whether Leading My Own Life was, in fact, necessarily the other name for happiness. Climbing the stairs now, he invented words for Two-Book's mouth: imagining her as saying, "Oh, I'd marry anybody to get out of this!"—and again, with sobs, crying out to some modern arguer, "Oh, just to be a parasite again!—just to be a snug, comfortable little parasite!..."

So making fiction, Charles Garrott opened the door of his Studio. And full upon the threshold, he encountered the great surprise of his life.

The large room looked familiar and inviting. The lamp burned on the writing-table; the drop-light shone over the Judge's typewriter; the author's office-coat hung on his chair-back. By the typewriter stood the Judge, pink and shining from his evening bath. Wrapped in a beautiful lavender robe, he turned, smiling.

But on the writing-table, beyond the lamp, there lay a strange package. The author's eye had fallen on it even as he opened the door. Some instinct in him seemed to divine the incredible truth instantly, but something else within spoke loud and sharp:—

"What's that?"

Judge Blenso laughed agreeably, and lowered the bath-towel with which he was rubbing his fine white head. To the secretary, the literary business was still a sealed book indeed; so far as he was advised, a package of manuscript back by express was doubtless a very pleasant little occurrence.

"Why, it's Entry 2, Charles!" he chuckled. "Your novel—just come in! Must be! And gad, my dear fellow! Willcox wrote you a letter, too!"

The young man bounded for the table.

Long as he had deemed himself a writer, Charles King Garrott had as yet sent out little manuscript, "Bondwomen" having absorbed all his creative energies for years. Accordingly, the prevalent stupidity of editors and publishers, amounting ofttimes to mere madhouse imbecility, as every young writer can testify, was yet as a sealed book to him. With the ultra-modern message of the Old Novel, he, personally, might have become authoritatively dissatisfied; but that any publisher in his senses could fail to jump at it had, of course, scarcely entered his mind.

Hence, in the two seconds required to pounce upon and open Willcoxes' letter, his mind was tossing out other explanations of that package with the utmost lucidity and vigor. Willcoxes had been so pleased with the Old Novel that they had put it in type at once: this package was the proof. The package was the manuscript; but it had been sent back by an office-boy by mistake, and the letter rushed after it to implore pardon. Willcoxes, while delighted with the novel, had thought that possibly some of the ultra-modernism had better be toned down a little, in the interest of Homes; therefore....

In short, Charles Garrott's mind executed exactly the processes that all young writers' minds execute at these moments, in instinctive recoil from the stupefying fact of Rejection. But when he got the letter open, all this activity was quickly stilled.

Dear Sir [it ran]:

We have given careful consideration to the manuscript of the novel, Bandwomen, which you were good enough to submit, but regret to report that the decision has been adverse. We fear that the publication of the story would not prove a financial success.

The manuscript is returned to you to-day by express. Thanking you for giving us the opportunity of examining it, we are

Yours very truly,

WILLCOX BROTHERS COMPANY.

In this stunning letter the stenographer's error seemed the crowning insult. Bandwomen! Charles, for once in his life, blew up.

The proceedings ensuing came as a complete surprise to the secretary, exciting in their way: he had really never thought that Charles had it in him. That commonly sedentary and controlled young man had abruptly become dynamic and vocal. Some of his remarks eluded the listener, as, for instance, the menacing cry: "I'll rent the Academy of Music some day to tell about this!" But on the whole Judge Blenso, who himself, in his prime, had been counted an accomplished commentator on the world's devilish ways, gladly gave tribute to Charles for verbal ingenuity and somewhat arresting vividness of metaphor.

But it was clear now to the secretary that this was no pleasant happening after all. When the storm began to abate, he spoke in mollifying tones:—

"Now, my dear fellow,—this unfortunate occurrence. Unfortunate! But as to that plan of mine—we might consider it now, Charles? What do you think?"

"What plan?" Charles said, in a let-down voice.

"I regret this, about Entry 2," said the Judge, with his brilliant black gaze. "'Bandwomen' is a fine novel, my dear fellow,—fine! But as to that little plan of mine—giving our undivided time and abilities henceforth to some more remunerative kind of work? Gad, Charles!—wouldn't it be wise?"

And then Charles, after staring blankly at his relative's odd handsome figure, suddenly burst out laughing....

But later he stood at his window, staring silently down into the lamplit street. A rare depression had suddenly closed over him. Oddly enough, it seemed to have little to do with his great repulse as a writer. After all, "Bondwomen," good though he felt it to be, did not represent his best thought now; moreover, that the next publisher would jump at it still seemed to him as certain as Judgment Day. The young man's deep dissatisfactions were with all the terms and conditions of his writer's life.

Long ago he had said to a friend once, "I can't afford to give my time to making money," and the remark, being repeated, had gained him the reputation of a fool's wit, none recognizing that he had practically bagged it outright from a fellow of the name of Agassiz. And there (he was thinking) was the measure of the degree to which he had withdrawn from the accepted ways of men, from all the currents of stimulating life. Making money, after all, was the "battle of life," and he—he had thought it often before now—had placed himself with the noncombatants. All day, downtown there, vigorous beings met and fought, crossed wills, locked minds, pitted strength against strength; while he, Charles, spent his days with women and children and his nights alone in this room, palely pondering over ethical subtleties. He remembered something Mary Wing had said to him one day last winter: "You're a great deal more like a woman than a man; don't you know it?" On the whole, Mary had meant that as a compliment, but the word had stuck in him like a knife.

He had bent his life to be a writer—and for what? Merely that those who knew him best might view him, tolerantly, as a member of the Third Sex.

"A writer ought to go out once a month and do something cruel," he thought moodily. "Assault and battery.... Blood in rivers...."

He was disgusted with tutoring and writing, with Woman and all womanish ways.

Nevertheless, the instant supper was over, he was found seated at his writing-table, "Notes on Women" open before him. In fact, the bee had stung this young man deep, whether he liked it or not. In sum, the unimagined rebuff to his principal opus did not diminish, but intensified the literary passion. Now he embarked upon his first attempt to plot out a definite scenario for his new novel, "Bondwomen's" subtle and superior successor. And it must have been that the novel thoughts generated at the Redmantle Club had rapidly crystallized through the days succeeding. For now it seemed to be quite clear in the author's mind that he would take, as the central figure in his greater work, an extreme specimen of lawless Egoette, against whom he would set, in subtle but most telling contrast, the best type of Home-Maker.