Chapter XV

In which she goes to New York, and is very Happy indeed.

Mrs. Willing was twenty-four, handsome, expensive, lively, and intensely fond of what she thought was pleasure. Willing was thirty-two, and had a close-clipped mustache: there were ten thousand men in New York whom you might have mistaken for him at twenty paces. He was assistant something on a nineteenth story downtown, and his scale of living continually crowded his income to the wall. The Willings--there were, of course, but two of them--had the kind of home which farmers' daughters so envy the heroines of "society" novels. They lived in a showy apartment hotel in the West Fifties, kept a motor-car, and went out for dinner. In fact "out" was the favorite word in the establishment: the Willings did everything but sleep "out."

"I can't bear to stick at home," said Mrs. Willing to Carlisle. "I've always _loved_ to go places."

And places they went from one end of Carlisle's visit to the other. 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. Pure restlessness, it seemed, had entered her blood: she was no sooner fairly settled in the Wrexham than she began to wish herself back home again. The vague thought pursued her, even at the places, that she was missing something; that she had stepped aside from, not into, the real current of her life. Dazzling indeed were some of the dining-places to which the experienced Willings took their guest, but somehow none of them seemed so really interesting, after all, as home. What was happening away off there on Washington Street? Suppose Mr. Canning should return ahead of time for his farewell visit--return and find her not there?...

"You're changed somehow, Cally," cried Florrie Willing, on the third or fourth day--"I can't just put my little patty on it, but I can see it all the same."

They had just rushed up from breakfast, which the Willings took in the apartment café, and were now dressing furiously to go shopping. Cally, surprised with her mouth full of hatpins, said of course she had; she was getting frightfully old.

"You never used to rest a cheek on a pensive hand, and stare five minutes at a time into eternity. Out with it!" said Florrie. "You're disappointed in love."

"That's it, too. I loved a tall pretty soldier, and he rode away."

"_We'll_ never ride away, at this rate. Get a _move_ on, Cally! We've slews and slews of places to go to."

Cally, who considered that she already had a move on, did her best to get on another one.

Young Mrs. Willing added: "Whatever became of the gay young thing with the eyelashes you flirted so outrageously with, the time we were up at Island Inn? What was his name--oh--Mr. Dalhousie?"

Carlisle winced a little in spite of herself.... Banquo could not have been more impossible to forget than this.

"Oh--why, he and I had the worst kind of smash-up--and he went away somewhere. I never like to think of him any more.... Let's fly!"

Fly they did, that morning and many others. It was all very different from life at home. Born and bred in a town where social life is large, constant, and gay, Carlisle could not help being struck by the fact that the Willings, roughly speaking, had no friends. One other young couple in the same hotel, the Jennisons, appeared to be about the limit of their intimate circle: a phenomenon, no doubt at least partly explained by the fact that the Willings moved every year, or sometimes twice a year, "to get a change." Thus, in the huge rabbit-warren, they were constantly cutting themselves off from their past.

"I can't endure to poke about in the same little spot year after year," said Florrie Willing. "If I don't have something new, I simply froth at the mouth and die."

However, Mr. Willing of course had his connections downtown, and knowing his duty in the premises, he would frequently "bring up" men in the evening, brisk, lively, ambitious young fellows like himself. One of the men so brought up fell abruptly and deeply in love with Carlisle, which helped considerably to pass the time away.

"You'd better hold on to Pierce," said Florrie, talking seriously as a married woman: "He's one of the coming men--dead certain to make a pile of money some day."

Cally said she'd dearly love to hold on to Pierce, but to herself she smiled, thinking if Florrie only knew. By this time she had been a fortnight in New York, and had decided to leave at the end of another week. Whatever else the visit was or was not, it had more than justified itself by providing her with just the perspective she needed, to see things once again in their true proportions. Distance seemed wonderfully to soften away all the horridnesses. Nothing had really happened. On the contrary, against this stimulating background it was reassuringly plain that everything was agreeably settled at last, or very soon to be so settled. More and more, as April drew steadily nearer, Mr. Canning towered shiningly in the foreground of her thought.

The days passed quickly enough. She and Florrie spent many absorbing mornings in the shops, Carlisle for the most part "just looking," under the coldly disapproving eyes of the shop-ladies. But her intentions were serious at bottom, in view of three hundred dollars which papa had privately given her, at the last moment, companied by a defiant wink. (The wink indicated collusion against mamma, whose design it had been to cut her daughter off penniless for the trip.) After a great deal of looking, for she was a thrifty buyer, Cally expended one hundred and twenty-five dollars for a perfectly lovely two-colored dress, bewitchingly draped, and seventy-five dollars for a little silk suit. Both were dirt cheap, Florrie agreed. She looked four times at a dear of a hat going begging for seventy dollars, but with only three hundred you have to draw the line somewhere, so Cally simply purchased a plain gray motor-coat lined with gray corduroy, which she really needed, at sixty dollars. She also sought a gift for papa, in recognition of his liberality, and finally selected a silver penknife as just the thing. The knife, luckily enough, could be got for only $2.50.

The young broker who had fallen in love with Carlisle came up four times with Willing, called five times in between, and became host at two of the "out" evenings for the party of four. Carlisle forbore to give him any encouragement, though she rather liked his eyes, and the way his mouth slanted up at the right corner.

"I'm wild about you," said he, on her last evening,--his name, if it is of the smallest interest, was Pierce Watkins, Jr.,--"I'll shoot myself on your doorstep to-morrow if it'll give you even a moment of pleasure."

Carlisle assured him that she desired no suicidal attentions.

"You're the loveliest thing I ever looked at," said he, huskily. "God bless you for that, anyway. And no matter what else happens to me, I'll love you till I die."

"Don't look so glum, Mr. Watkins dear," said Cally.

They did not go to any matinee on the last afternoon, the reason being that it was Monday and there weren't any, except the vaudevilles, which were voted tiresome. Florrie and Carlisle lunched quietly at "home"; had a rubber of bridge afterwards in the apartment of Edith Jennison (who produced for the necessary fourth an acquaintance she had made last week in the tea-room of the Waldorf-Astoria); and rushed from the table for hats, veils, and a drive on the Avenue.

Carlisle was to leave at ten o'clock. Her trunks were packed; her "reservations" lay in the heavy gold bag swinging from her side. Home, somehow, beckoned to her as it had never done before. Besides, New York, with its swarming population (mostly with palms up) and its ceaseless quadruple lines of motor-cars, began to oppress her.

"It's too full of people," she laughed to Mrs. Willing as they shot down in the lift. "It's too big. Some day it will swell up and burst."

"Why, that's the fun of it, rusticus! How I love the roar!"

"I like it, too," said Carlisle. "But I do think it's nice to live in a city where you can _some_times cross Main Street without asking four policemen, and then probably having your leg picked off, after all."

They dashed across the onyx lobby for the main entrance, as fast as they could go, Mrs. Willing remarking that they were almost too late to catch the crowds as it was. From the small blue-velvet parlor, across the corridor from the clerk's desk, a tall man rose at the sight of them, and came straight forward. For a moment Carlisle's heart stopped beating as she saw that it was Hugo Canning.

He advanced with his eyes upon her, brought her to a halt before him. If the imps of memory must have their little toll at this remeeting, the flicker passed through her too quickly for her to take note of it. It woke no palest ghost of rebellion, to walk now. The girl's heart, having missed a beat, ran away in a wild flutter....

"Did my cards reach you?" said the remembered voice, without preface. "They just went up, I believe. But I see you mean to go out."

He looked a little pale under the lobby's brilliant lights, but never had he seemed so handsome and impressive. Carlisle looked up and looked down, and the sight of him there was an exaltation and heavenly fulfilment and a garland upon her brow.

"We must have passed them as we came down," said she. "How do you do? I had no idea you were in this part of the world."

He said that he was just off the train. She presented him to Mrs. Willing, who hardly repressed a start as she heard and identified his name.

"Will you come with us for a little drive?" said Carlisle. "We were just starting out to take the air. Or ..."

Florrie Willing looked intensely eager. Canning hesitated. The feminine intuitions, of which we have heard so much, naturally divined the cause of his hesitation, and Florrie rushed into the breach.

"You're excused from our engagement, Cally!" said she, with archness, and some nobility, too. "I know Mr. Canning doesn't care to parade the Avenue in our last year's model. You shall have the city to yourselves. Why not go up to the apartment?"

Carlisle glanced at Canning, who said: "You are very nice and kind, Mrs. Willing." Mrs. Willing looked at him as much as to say, "I can be five times as nice as that, if you only knew...."

When she had rushed off, Canning said: "Do you feel like a little walk?"

"Oh, how nice!" said Carlisle.

"Let's stroll up to the Plaza and have tea."

They went out, turned east and came into the Avenue, where, the afternoon being fine, one million people were methodically stepping on each other's heels. However, these were people without existence, even when they jostled into one.

The moment they were out of earshot of the listening clerk, Canning said, looking straight in front of him:

"Haven't you missed me at all, Carlisle?"

"Oh, yes! I seem to have done hardly anything else."

"I've been learning your name, you see," said Canning, after five steps in silence. "You won't mind?... Miss Heth would be a sham, after thinking nothing but Carlisle all these weeks."

She said that she didn't mind. His presence here beside her seemed to fill every reach and need of her being: here was what her soul had cried for, through all the empty days. It did not seem that she could ever mind anything any more....

"I'm very lucky to see you," she went on, quite naturally, "for I'm going back home to-night. Your six months' sentence isn't quite up yet, is it? Is it business that brings you?"

"What do you call business? Of course I've come," said he, "only to see you."

He went on, after a glorious pause: "And this is the second time--or is it the fourth or fifth? Did you happen to hear of me at Eva Payne's in January?"

"Oh, yes! Only not till four hours after you were gone."

"You'd hardly guess, though, how I've been torn between my--wish, and what it pleases me to call my pride.... I was in Florida and going on to Cuba for February, at least, by special request of Heber. I thought I should like to see you again before I got so far away. Only when I came in sight of your door once more, I couldn't bring myself to knock...."

One interesting coincidence about the reasoning of beautiful ladies is that it is sometimes right. Continuing as they swung up the crowded street, Canning said:

"It seemed to me that ... However, that's no matter now. Unfortunately I've the devil's own temper. To be packed off so, and then to surrender without a condition--I needed more weeks of silent self-communion for that. I've had them now, under pretty skies where the moon shines bright o' nights. I believe the breezes have blown my humors away. I'm happy to be here with you, Carlisle."

"I like it, too.... How on earth did you ever find me?"

"Kerr's been writing me notes from time to time, you know. In one of them he mentioned that you were away from home. I wired him yesterday from Tampa for your address."

"Dear Willie!" said Carlisle. "Do you know I'm mad to be at home again?"

They came to the shining hotel, and passed into the tea-room, which was now rapidly filling up. The doorman greeted Mr. Canning by name. An obsequious majordomo wafted him and his lady, with smiles, to the little table of his choice. Many eyes were drawn to the young pair. He was a man to be noticed in any company, but in presence and in air she was his not unworthy mate. He himself became aware, even then, perhaps more than ever then, that this provincial girl stood transplanting to a metropolitan setting with unimpaired distinction....

"And tea-cakes, ma'am?" implored the loving waiter.

"Muffins," said Canning, and abolished him by a movement of his little finger.

Carlisle would have preferred the tea-cakes, but she loved Hugo's lordly airs.

He dropped his gloves into a chair, and there descended upon him a winning embarrassment.

"Tell me now, for my sins and my penitence," he said in a low voice, his strong fingers clasping a spoon, "that you have blotted away what is past."

She said that she had blotted it all away.

He went on, with considerable loss of ease: "I suppose the accursed dilettante habit has got into my blood. I needed these unhappy days and nights, for my soul's good--"

"Oh, please!" said Carlisle, her eyes falling from his grave face. "Let's not talk of it any more."

He stopped, as if glad to leave the subject; but after a silence he added with entire continuity:

"Your spirit's very fine.... It's what I've always admired most in women, and found least often."

The loving waiter set tea and muffins. Peace unfolded white wings over the little table. A divine orchestra played a dreamy waltz that had reference to a beautiful lady. Carlisle poured, and remembered from Willie's apartment that Canning liked one lump and neither cream nor lemon. He seemed absurdly pleased by the small fact. The topic of the Past having been finally disposed of, the man's ordinary manner seemed abruptly to leave him. His gaze became oddly unsettled, but he perpetually returned it to Carlisle's face. He appeared enormously interested in everything that she said and did, yet at the same time erratically distrait and engrossed. He became more and more grave, but simultaneously he gave evidences of a considerable nervous excitement within....

If Carlisle noticed these eccentricities at all, she could have had no difficulty in diagnosing them, having observed them in the demeanor of young men before now. The case was otherwise with Canning, to whom his own unsteadinesses were a continuing amazement. Heart-whole he had reached his thirtieth year, and his present enterprise had furnished him with the surprise of his life. He was, indeed, a man who had lately looked upon a miracle. He had watched three humiliating rebuffs turn under his eye, as it were, to so many powerful lodestones. He himself hardly understood it, but it was a truth that no degree of cunning on the part of this girl could have so captured his imagination as her spirited independence of him (in mamma's vocabulary, her flare-up). A man who held himself naturally high, he had been irresistibly magnetized by her repulses of him. Rebuffed, he had sworn to go near her no more, and had turned again, an astonishment to himself, and tamely rung her bell....

Canning looked and looked at Carlisle across the little table, and it was as if more miracles went on within him. Not inexperienced with the snarers, he had learned wariness; and now, by some white magic, wariness seemed not worth bothering for. If marriage was to come in question, his dispassionate judgment could name women clearly more suitable; but now dispassionateness was a professor's mean thumb-rule, too far below to consider. Of a sudden, as he watched her loveliness, all his instincts clamored that here and now was his worthy bride: one, too, still perilously not broken to his bit. But ... Was it, after all, possible? Was it conceivable that this unknown small-capitalist's daughter, rated so carelessly only the other day, was the destined partner of his high estate?...

"I can't bear to think of your going to-night," he exclaimed suddenly, with almost boyish eagerness. "You know this town is home to me. I can't explain how perfect it seems to be here with you."

She mentioned demurely her hope of his return to the Payne Fort in a month or so: a remark which he seemed to find quite unworthy of notice.

"Stay over till to-morrow, Carlisle! Let's do that! And we'll take the day train down together."

"Goodness! With my tickets all bought? And my trunks packed since morning?"

Canning glanced hurriedly at his watch. "I can arrange about the tickets in three minutes. As for the trunks, Mrs. Willing's maid will be only too glad to unpack them for you. Do--do stay."

She laughed at his eagerness, though at it her heart seemed to swell a little.

"And if they've already gone to the station?"

"I can put my hand on ten men who will drive like the devil to bring them back."

"And if my mother confidently expects me for breakfast to-morrow?"

"I will write the telegram to her myself." He added: "Ah, you can't refuse me!"

Cally said: "I'm afraid you are one of the terrible masterful men that we read about, Mr. Canning. But--perhaps that's why I shall be glad to stay."

He thanked her with some unsteadiness, and said: "Where shall we dine?... And we could be excused from dressing, couldn't we? I can't bear to lose sight of you, even for an hour."

Of course he had his way there, too. In adjoining booths they did their telephoning, he to somebody or other about the reservations, she to leave a message for Florrie Willing. Later they dined in a glittering refectory, just opened, but already of great renown....

* * * * *

It was an unforgettable meal. So long as she lived, this evening remained one of the clearest pictures in Carlisle's gallery of memorabilia. Before the dinner was half over, Canning's immediate intentions became apparent to her. Doubts and hesitancies, if he had had any, appeared to recede abruptly from his horizon. With the serving of dessert, the words were spoken. Canning asked Carlisle to be his wife. He did it after an endearingly confused preamble, which involved his family and his natural pride in upholding and continuing the traditions of his house. Critically speaking, his remarks might have been considered too long and too much concerned with the Cannings; but of the genuineness of his love, Carlisle could not entertain a doubt. As she and mamma had planned it, so it had fallen out. She accepted Hugo with her eyes while an affectionate servitor offered her some toasted biscuit. She accepted the biscuit, too.

It was later agreed that the betrothal should not be announced for the present, except to the parents of the contracting parties. Canning had argued strongly for a day in June, but Carlisle at length carried her point that the interval was quite too short. It was now the 20th of March, The final decision, reached on the train next day, was that Canning should join Mrs. and Miss Heth abroad, in June or July, and the formal announcement of the coming alliance should be made then, from London or Paris. The wedding itself would take place early in October.