Chapter XX

In which Jack Dalhousie wears a New Dignity, and the Lame
Stranger comes to the House of Heth.

Dalhousie had been worthless while he lived. Now he had achieved the last supreme importance. The inconsiderable of yesterday wore a mute and mighty power. So he reached over the spaces, and broke the brilliant dinner-party at the Café des Ambassadeurs. So Mrs. Heth and Carlisle Heth disputed, by this new great dignity that was his, and talked in the hotel bedroom, and hurriedly changed evening attire for travelling suits. And so Hugo Canning, abruptly widowed at a railway station, was left to toss wakefully that night, ridden by deepening anxieties....

For Cally had carried her extraordinary point; now that Jack Dalhousie was henceforward indifferent to all these matters.

She had said, with the deadly flatness of the mood which her mother so dreaded, that she wanted to go home to-night, and there had been no reasoning with her. Go home for what? Mrs. Heth had asked it twenty times, battling desperately against the menacing madness, now with argument and threat, now with tears and wheedlings. And Cally, proceeding dry-eyed with her dressing and bag-packing, had proved unable to produce a single solid reason.

Still, it became clear that lock and key would not keep her. The options ensuing were whether her mother should go with her, or Hugo should go, or Cally be allowed to go alone. Small choice here, indeed.

Of that evening the events following the hurried departure from the Ambassadeurs were always blurred in Carlisle's memory. To Mrs. Heth each detail remained crystal-clear as long as she lived. Upon her shoulders, as usual, fell the burden of managing everything so that the least harm should befall. Defeated, and consequently hatted and cloaked, she emerged from the bedroom at quarter-past nine o'clock, commissioned by her daughter to tell Canning everything. But what was everything, and what the mere gibberish of nervous insanity, to pass forever from the horizon with a good night's sleep? Mrs. Heth, seated before her living Order of Merit in the sitting-room, interpreted her commission with a mother's wise discretion.

Canning, at this point, knew only that Carlisle was unnerved by news of the death of a friend. In the drive from the restaurant he had been cautioned to ask no questions, hysterics being intimated otherwise. Now Mrs. Heth gave him certain selected particulars: of a man who had been in love with Carlisle some years ago, though she had always discouraged him; of a misunderstanding that had arisen between them, which he, the man, had never got over; and now of his sudden decease, which came as a shock to the poor girl, awakening painful memories, and giving rise to a purely momentary sense of morbid responsibility.

"But why," said Canning, more and more mystified as he listened, "should she want to go back home?"

"I regard it," answered Mrs. Heth, "as a tribute to the dead."

"Why, she doesn't know what she's doing!... You must simply forbid her going."

"Forbid her!" groaned the little general, like one flicked upon a new wound.

And, before proceeding further, she was actually artful and strong enough to make the young man arrange--provisionally, she said,--about reservations, a matter which valuably consumed time.

If the good lady had now believed that all was lost, she would have instantly invoked Canning's authority, telling him everything. But as yet she would not risk that, clinging hard to the hope that Cally's sanity might come again with the sun of a new day. To-night she was for the greatest suppression possible, one eye perpetually on the little travelling-clock. However, the telephoning at last over, more details could not be avoided. It perforce transpired that the dead man was the villain of that unfortunate episode at the Beach, which Hugo possibly recalled,--he did,--and finally that it was worry over his disgrace, aided by unremitting potations, that had brought him to his death....

The faint frown on Hugo's brow deepened, became more troubled. He paced the floor.

"And still," said he, "I fail to see why Carlisle must go home to-night. What does she expect to do when she gets there?"

What, indeed? Mrs. Heth mentioned again the tribute to the dead. The girl, in her shocked state, considered it unfeeling for her to remain here enjoying herself with Hugo, as if nothing had happened. Foolish?--who saw it better than she, Mrs. Heth? But that was Cally, sweet and good at heart always, yet liable to emotional fits in upset moments when opposition only made her ill. Let her have her morbid way to-night, and she would return in twenty-four hours, her own sweet natural self....

Canning liked it less and less. Was not this clearly a moment when the strong mind of a man should assert itself over foolish feminine hysteria?

"How did she happen to get this news just now?" he asked, abruptly. "Who was it she called up, about what?"

He had lost sight of this point in the general flurry of sensation. It struck him now just too late to bring results. At the moment, the door from the bedrooms opened--exactly as it had two hours earlier, only with what a difference!--and Carlisle appeared on, the threshold, very pale and subdued, but to her lover's eye never more moving.

"I'm so sorry to bring you into all this trouble, Hugo," she said, in a strained little voice.... "And when we were having such a happy time...."

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."

Carlisle, too deeply moved to speak, thanked her lover with a look. The moment's silence was broken by Mrs. Heth, resolutely blowing her nose. And then all opportunity for talk was lost in the rush for the train.

* * * * *

To herself she seemed to lie endlessly between sleeping and waking: and the rhythmic noises of the train sounded a continual cadence, Dalhousie's unquiet requiem. But she must have fallen sound asleep without knowing it; for her eyes opened suddenly with a start, and she was aware of the clanging of bells, the waxing and waning of men's voices, the hiss of steam and the flaring of yellow lights. Looking out under the blind, she saw that they had come to a city, which must be Philadelphia. Two hours nearer home....

Now her wakefulness had a sharper quality; Cally lay wide-eyed, in a dazed chill wonder. Once in the night she pushed up the curtain, raised herself on an elbow in the stateroom berth; and her splendid gay hair, loosened with much tossing, streamed downward over her shoulders. Outside was a world of moonlit peace. The flying trees had tops of silver; meadows danced by in splotches of light and shade; once they sped over a lovely river. Strange to think, that if she had but said on that far-away day, "He frightened me so, I didn't want to call him hack,"--just those words, how few and simple,--she would not be hurrying home now, with everything ahead so dark, so terrifying. And, though she seemed to try a long time, she could not think now why she had not said these words, could not weigh those slight fanciful tremors against this vast icy void....

She fell asleep; woke again to more clanging and hissing; slept and dreamed badly; and suddenly sat up in the berth, confusedly, to find it broad day, and the sun streaming through the little crevice beneath the curtain. Her mother was standing braced in the aisle of the little room, dressing systematically.

"We've passed Penton. You'd better get up," said the brisk familiar tones.

And she eyed her daughter narrowly as she asked if she had slept.

Home again. This time yesterday, who would have dreamed this possible?...

And then, after just enough time to dress, they began to pass landmarks, and presently to slacken speed; and then they were stepping down from the train, out into the hotch-potch gathering on the sunny station platform.

Both women were heavily veiled. Mrs. Heth's furtive glances discovered no one who was likely to hail them, demanding what in the world these things meant. A ramshackle hack invited and received them. And, jogging over streets crowded with a life-time's associations, the Heths presently came to their own house, whose face they had not thought to see again these four months....

Mr. Heth was away, fishing, in a spot dear to his heart, but remote from railroad or telegraph. The House of Heth looked like a deserted house; its blinds were drawn from fourth story to basement. However, there was old Moses, bowing and running down the steps to open the carriage door and assist with the hand-luggage. He greeted the ladies with courtliness, and inquired mout anybody be sick. Answered vaguely on this point, he announced that he had breakfast ready-waiting on the table; this, though Mr. Canning's telegraph never retched him till nea'bout eight o'clock. His tone indicated a pride of accomplishment not, he hoped, unjustified.

Having removed the more superficial stains of travel, the two women sat at table in the half-dismantled dining-room. It was a meal not easily to be forgotten, made the more fantastic by Mrs. Heth's determined attempts to act as if nothing in particular had happened. From her remarks to the ancient family retainer it appeared that she and Miss Carlisle had returned home to attend to a business matter of no great consequence, overlooked in the rush of departure. And she demanded, quite as if that were the very business referred to, whether the plumber had come to stop the drip in the white-room bathroom.

The butler's reply took a not unfamiliar direction. The plumber, and his helper, had come and 'xperimented round: but they had not yet stopped the drip....

Mrs. Heth ate heartily, with a desperate matter-of-factness. It was half-past nine o'clock. Nothing had happened yet, at any rate. Beside her, Carlisle had more difficulty with her breakfast, hampered by her continuing mind's-eye picture of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back on a floor somewhere. Might it be that, as this horror made telling so much harder, it also altered the whole necessity? There were plenty of arguments of mamma's to that effect....

"Mr. Heth got off all right, Moses?" demanded that resolute lady. "Take some more tea, Cally. You must really try to eat something, my child--"

"I have eaten--a great deal," said Cally. And pushing back her chair then, she added: "I think I--I'll try to rest a little while, mamma. I feel--tired after the trip."

"Do!" said mamma, further encouraged. "Sleep a little if you can, my dear. It's just what you need...."

But Cally did not sleep. It had seemed to her that she must be alone for a time, to try to think out what was to happen; but now she saw that she had no need to think. Of the complex nervous and emotional reaction which had brought her flying home, she had, indeed, seemed to understand nothing except that it was irresistible; her mind was like a dark cloud, refusing to yield up its meanings. Nevertheless, there seemed to be no doubt as to what she must do now....

Mrs. Heth, having remained downstairs half an hour longer, ascended quietly, the beginnings of great gratitude in her heart. They were feelings born but to die. Just at the head of the stairs she encountered Cally, emerging like an apparition from the door of the family sitting-room. The girl spoke in a small voice:

"Mamma, I want to send for Dr. Vivian--to come and see me."

Mamma, just thinking that this madness was finally disposed of, was taken suddenly. Even the birthmark on her temple, which was partially exposed, seemed to turn pale....

But once more Carlisle carried her extraordinary point. Ever since she was a little girl she had been subject to these incalculable fits, when punishment made her ill, but did not conquer the seven devils that possessed her. Mrs. Heth, frantic after nearly an hour's thundering, vanished into the telephone-booth, bent upon reaching Mr. Heth while there was yet time. But even now her strongest thought was that Cally was a sensible girl at heart, in the last pinch simply incapable of self-destructive folly.

Cally, also, had thought of the telephone. But the sight of it, after last night, unnerved her. She withdrew to the little desk in her bedroom.

So the word of the Lord came to the Dabney House, by the hand of an old negro gentleman.

* * * * *

He was standing in the middle of the floor, when Carlisle went down, an inconsonant figure amid the showy splendors of the Heth drawing-room. So much appeared to the most casual observation. Far deeper to the understanding eye went the inconsistency of this man's presence here, in an hour of appalling intimacy.

Carlisle, entering through the uncurtained doorway, halted involuntarily just over the threshold. Her eye, at least, saw all. And she was abruptly and profoundly affected by the sight of him in her familiar background, the author of the Beach opinion of her, who truly had never meant anything but trouble for her since the first moment she saw him. Time, indeed, had given the religious fellow his last full measure of revenge....

Prepared speeches of some dignity and length slipped from her. Cally spoke from her heart and her fear, without greeting, in a nervous childish voice:

"I--I wanted to see you, to--to ask you--to talk with you--as to what must be done...."

Jack Dalhousie's friend bowed gravely. There was no victory on his face, neither was there any judgment.

"I understood," he said simply, "and was grateful to you."

He, certainly, seemed aware of no discordance in himself. He advanced with a beautiful consistency, looking as if he wished to say more. But Cally, her hand gripping the back of a spindly gold divan, her gaze fallen, seemed suddenly to find her own tongue unloosed.

"It's been so terrible," she hurried on in the same flat, unpremeditated way--"no one could know.... I was in New York, and we were to sail for Europe in a few days. Everything was arranged, all our plans were made, oh, for months and months. And then.... And now I've come home--and everything is so upset--and so dreadfully complicated. And I haven't seemed able to think somehow--to decide--"

"Try not to think about it at all," said the man, with some firmness. "That's the great compensation, that you can begin to forget about it now. Won't you sit down?"

She sat down obediently, quite as if it were natural for him to be taking charge of her in her own drawing-room. And staring down at her locked hands, she fluttered on with no reference to him, with a kind of frightened incredulity, like a bird in a trap.

"It seems so unjust--so terribly _unfair_.... That all this could come from one little puff of wind!... He had gotten out of the boat. He was swimming away. And then there came one little gust. I had tied the sail, you see. He had frightened me. And now, after all these months.... But of course I never thought--I never dreamed of--of--"

"I know; I understand. No one dreamed it. You must keep sure of that," said Vivian, in his natural voice. "I knew Dal very well indeed, you know; and I felt certain that he was--safe from this. You--you mustn't think of it as something that could have been foreseen...."

He was looking down at her lowered face closely as he spoke; and went on without pause:

"You see--what upset him so was beyond your control or mine. I've heard nothing since the telegram last night. But--you may remember that he spoke of a girl in his letter, whose opinion he seemed to value. It must be that when he saw her again, she was very hard on him--so hard that he lost his grip for a moment. I can't account for it in any other way. There is another thing, too.... Do you think it's a little close in here, perhaps? May I open a window?"

She assented without speech, and he walked away with the step of his disability to the long windows. Into the dim great room stole the breath of the May morning, sweet with the fragrance of the balcony flowers.

The tall young man came walking back.

"There was one thing I wanted particularly to tell you. I sent Dal a message--a telegram--on Monday night...."

Startled, Carlisle looked up.

"On--_Monday_?... Why--I--"

"Not breaking your confidence, of course--just telling him, in a general way, to keep his courage up, that I--I thought good news was on the way.... It was without authority. I realized that. And yet I felt so sure that--when you had had a little time to think--that would be what you would wish. In fact, of course I knew it...."

Their eyes met, almost for the first time, and a sudden constraint fell upon the girl.

"But I don't see," she said, with some difficulty--"if you telegraphed him that--on Monday--I don't understand--"

"The telegram went astray. I went to the office here last night and had them find out. It should have reached Weymouth the first thing yesterday morning. It didn't arrive till about three in the afternoon. But even then.... You see, he could hardly have expected a reply to his letter till Wednesday. That's to-day--"

These two sat looking at each other: and Cally's tongue was no longer free as a hurt child's. She seemed not to find it possible to speak at all now. The young man from the other world was going on, with his strange composure.

"So you see how much was pure blind chance, that couldn't be guarded against. If he had only waited.... If he had only trusted you--two hours longer...."

Surely he had more to say, much more; yet he ended abruptly, speech being evidently not desired of him. The girl had suddenly dropped her face into her hands.

Cally did not want to look at this man any more; could not bear it indeed. His eyes, which had always seemed gifted to convey hidden meanings, had well outstripped the words of his mouth, triumphing strangely over all that he knew about her. Quite clearly they had said to her just then: "_I_ would have trusted you, you know...." And somehow that seemed sad to her, she did not know why. Why, indeed, should Jack Dalhousie have trusted her?...

Something moved in Cally in this moment which might have been the still small voice, and her weakness grew apace. She turned precipitately, put an arm on the back of the gold divan where she sat, and buried her face in it. Her struggle now was against tears; and it was to be a losing struggle. She did not cry easily. It always seemed rather like tearing loose something within her, something important that was meant to stay where it had been fixed. There was pain with these tears....

The man from the Dabney House said nothing. His was a more than woman's intuition. There was a long silence in the drawing-room....

But after a time, when there were signs that the tension was relaxing and the sudden storm passing, he spoke in his simple voice:

"You see your message would have been all that you meant, but for the terrible coincidence. You mustn't take it--so much upon yourself. That wouldn't be right. Think of that poor girl out there, who is reproaching herself so to-day. And then, besides, you must know I realize that I should have seen you last week.... You had every right to expect that, as I was--in a measure--Dal's representative...."

Cally hardly heard him.

Her back toward him, she had produced from some recess a small handkerchief, and was silently removing the traces of her tears. She had dimly supposed that there would be a long discussion; all at once it was clear that there was nothing to discuss. And she thought of Hugo, and a little of her mother, waiting upstairs....

"It was too much for one person to carry alone," continued the alien voice, sounding rather hard-pressed now. "I happened to be the one person in position to help, and I failed you.... I'd like you to know...."

But the girl had risen, ending his speech, her need to talk with him past. Her self-absorption was without pretence. Wan and white and with a redness about her misty dark eyes, she stood facing the old enemy, and spoke in a worn little voice:

"You said you'd see his father for me, didn't you?"

The man, having risen with her, looked hurriedly away.

"Yes--of course. I'll go. At once."

And then, as if pledged to speak, though well he knew that she had no thought for him, he added abruptly: "But you mustn't think of yourself as being alone with this. I promise you I'll keep the knowledge, to punish me, that if--if I'd been the sort of man you needed, you'd have settled it all long ago...."

"That's absurd...." said Cally, somehow touched, but with no conception of the depths from which he spoke.... "I never meant to tell at all if it hadn't been for you."

She added, seeing him turn away, looking around the long room: "I think you must have left it in the hall."

And then, winking a little, she began to blow her nose, and moved away toward the door.

She encountered the butler, old Moses, entering from the hall. There was a yellow envelope upon his tray, though she had heard no ring at the bell.

"Excuse me, ma'am. This message just kem for you, an' I signed for it at the do'."

Carlisle thought instantly, Hugo!... And when, having quite forgotten the man standing silent behind her, she broke open the envelope with nervous fingers, the hope of her heart was at once confirmed:

Am coming to you. Arrive four-ten this afternoon. Wait for
me. H.C.H.C.

Did a tiny corner of her tightly closed mind open a little as she read? _Wait for me...._

She turned back to Jack Dalhousie's representative with something like eagerness, to find his eyes fixed upon her.

"Oh!--would it do any harm to wait a little while, do you think?--just till this afternoon?"

"No, no," he said, in rather an odd voice, "it will do no harm now."

"Then I'll send word to you this afternoon--at five or six o'clock," said Cally, with vague flutterings of relief, of hope, perhaps. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, she added: "I will tell you why I want to wait. I am engaged to be married. I think I should tell my fiancé, before anything is done...."

To this V. Vivian made no reply. He was advancing to the door. And then as he paused before the stricken Hun, and saw the glitter of a tear on the piquant gold-and-black lashes, the young man's twisting heart seemed suddenly to loosen, and he said quite simply:

"Won't you let me say how fine and brave a thing you're doing, how splendid a--"

"Don't!" said Cally, recoiling instantly from she knew not what. "_Don't!_... I'm not brave--_at all!_ Oh, no--that's just it...."

And then, looking down, she added somewhat pitifully: "But I really didn't mean to do anything so bad...."

The alien turned hurriedly away. He went without another word.

The front door shut upon him. And Cally gave a little jump, hearing above her the imperious tread of her mother.