Chapter XXXI

Second Cataclysm in the House; of the Dark Cloud obscuring
the New Day, and the Violets that had faded behind a Curtain,
etc.; but chiefly of a Little Talk with Mamma, which produced
Moral Results, after all.

The foolish nightmares receded; the sad faces of a dream dwindled again into air; and she waked suddenly in the sunshine to find herself quite well. This she knew with the first opening of her eyes. The familiar objects in the room, the face of the morning, wore the unmistakable _well_ look. Wellness there seemed within, too, refreshment in body, mind, and spirit. Life called to the young and the strong, and the sunlight, streaming royally through the shuttered windows, was the ringing reveille of a new day....

But Cally Heth, having waked to life, lay on in bed. She heard the summons, was strong to answer it; but was held back as by a high surrounding wall. She was like a tied bird, unfolding wings with the heart to soar, and continually brought down by the shortness of her tether.

She had waked to overspreading gloom in the House of Heth; but this she could have fronted cheerfully to-day, fortified to charm it away, for herself and others. If events of late had been sweeping her along too fast, one emotion crowded unsteadyingly upon another, nature, stepping in, had put the gentle punctuation where it was needed. Hers was the resilience of youth. And the second cataclysm in the House, even at its worst (which was what mamma had made it), was hardly comparable to the first. There was no spiritual abasement this time, no sense of calamity and worlds at end. Rather, indeed, the contrary: and it was here that was found the seriousness of it all, in that now the smash-up was her own deliberate doing. Cally had hardly needed her mother's savage outbreak to make her feel how definite a parting was here with the ideals and aspirations of a lifetime. She saw that one whole phase of her girlhood had passed away forever. Or, it might be, this that she had said good-bye to was the dim figure of her girlhood itself....

In these thoughts there was sadness, naturally. Hugo's going had been with the noises of breakage, the reverberations of the day of judgment. But Cally had had four days to put her house in order; and she felt that she would have waked almost happy to-day, but for this stranger cloud that still hung so dark upon the horizon....

It was such a day as October in this climate brings week on week, gloriously golden. Cally breakfasted in bed. Toward ten o'clock, as she was slowly dressing with the maid's assistance, word came that her mother desired her presence in the administrative bedroom below.

"Very well, Annie," said the girl, listlessly. "I'll be down in a few minutes."

The message came as something of a surprise, though a disciplinary intent was easily surmised behind it. In the interview the other night, mamma had formally washed her hands of Cally and all her flare-ups, more than intimating that henceforward they would live as comparative strangers. Since then there had come nothing from the staunch little general, who also had remained in her tent, not ill, but permanently aloof and unreconciled. Very different, as it chanced, was the note struck by papa, who had come twice a day, and sometimes thrice, to the sick-room, ostentatiously cheery in his manner, but obviously depressed underneath by the dreary atmosphere enveloping the house. Never, it seemed, had papa been tenderer or more affectionate than in these bedside visits: so that Cally, with her sense of a guilty secret, could hardly bear to look at his kind, worried face.

And she had opened her eyes on the day of wellness with the knowledge that she must put her hand to this cloud now, though she brought down the skies with it. Nothing, it was clear, could be worse than this. To-night, after dinner, she must follow her father into the study, say what she must say. Her mind had returned and clung to the solid arguments of Hen and others. She knew that the memory of the bunching-room had got upon her nerves; entwined and darkened itself with other painful things; assumed fantastic and horrid shapes. Perhaps the dreaded interview would not be so very bad, after all. Surely her father could not wear that kind look for nothing....

Dressed, Carlisle stood at her window a moment, greeting somewhat sadly the brilliant day. Her desire was to stop the footless workings of her mind; to go out and do something. But all that she could think of to do was to return to Baird & Himmel's emporium and complete that shopping for the Thompson kinsfolk which had been so suddenly interrupted last week. And, that occupation exhausted, she would go on to Mattie Allen's, and probably stay there for luncheon. Tame achievements, but better than staying longer in this room.

Here on the broad window ledge, behind the concealing curtain, there stood a bowl of flowers. They were violets, dry and discolored now. The girl's eyes, just as she was turning away toward her mother, fell upon them, and she stopped, overtaken by memory. These were Hugo's flowers, his last gift to her. She herself had placed them here, that eventful afternoon five days ago, and not thought of them again till this moment.... Was that, which seemed like an echo from some previous life, only five days ago?

She stood looking down at the mass of sere bloom, touched the withered tops lingeringly with her finger-tips. It was her tribute to the dead, no more. The departed knight had dropped backward out of her heart with a speed and smoothness which showed that he had, indeed, had small foothold there since May. Less and less had Cally felt any impulse to judge or blame Hugo, impute "badness" to him; it was she who had changed, and never he. But how, why?... 'Was it something done, something said?' Strange to remember now the hurried journey to the Beach last year, that afternoon in Willie Kerr's apartment....

"Throw out those flowers in the window, Flora.... They've been faded for days."

She went down the stairs in that inner state which her country had once found unendurable: she was half slave and half free. And on the stairs she forgot Hugo entirely. She was thinking, in her loneliness and depression, of Vivian, who had pledged his help to her; wondering if she could ask him to come and give her his help now,--at four o'clock this afternoon, perhaps, when the house would be quiet and her mother napping. Her wish was to talk with him, to show him all her difficulty, before she saw her father. She felt that she could tell anything to Mr. V.V. now....

Cally tapped respectfully upon a closed door, and said "Mamma?" Bidden to enter by the strong voice within, she braced herself a little, and opened the door....

Mrs. Heth sat toward the bay-window of a spacious bedroom, dignified by an alcove and bright but for the half-drawn shades. It was observed that she wore her second-best robe de chambre, and was otherwise not dressed for the inspection of the best people. So indifferently was her fine hair caught up atop her head that the round purplish spot on her temple was left plainly visible: always an ominous sign....

"Good morning, mamma. I hope you're feeling better to-day?"

"Physically, I am quite well," said her mother, only half turning her head.

"Oh, I'm glad.... It's such a beautiful day. I hoped you would feel like going out for a drive."

"I hardly feel like going out--as yet.... Sit down."

Cally sat in the chair prescribed by a gesture. The eyes of the two women met for the first time since they had parted in tears. And Cally, seeing her mother's bereaved face, had to crush down a sudden almost overpowering impulse toward explanation, reconciliation at any cost. However, she did crush it down. There was nothing to explain, as mamma had pointed out in the midnight.

Mrs. Heth cleared her throat, though her voice seemed sufficiently strong.

"I understood from Flora that you were getting up this morning," said she, "so this seemed the appropriate time for me to see you, and learn something about your plans, regarding your future."

"My plans?"

"As you have so completely overthrown your parents' plans for you, I can only assume that you have others of your own."

Cally sat with her hands folded in her lap. A look of curious wistfulness flitted across her face.

"No, I haven't any special plans."

"I'm surprised to hear you say so. You surely do not expect to go on this way the rest of your natural life, do you?"

"I don't understand, mamma. Go on in what way?"

"In this way. In occupying the central position in my home, in allowing your parents to sacrifice their lives to you, in receiving lavish evidences of regard and affection which you evidently have not the slightest wish to return."

There was a considerable silence.

"I have a sort of plan there," said the girl, slowly. "I don't want you--and papa--to go on--giving me everything. I want," she said, with a slight tremor, "to take--to be just as little expense as I can after this."

"Oh!... Then what you want to do is to withdraw altogether from society--and go to work to earn your own living?"

Carlisle raised her eyes. "Is that what you want me to do, mamma?"

"It is not a question of what _I_ want in this house any longer, it seems.... I am pointing out to you, Carlisle, that the independence of action you have lately taken upon yourself is a serious matter, to be looked at from more than one side. It is not becoming," said Mrs. Heth, watching her daughter's face closely, "to bite the hand that feeds you."

To this the girl had no reply. Beneath her mother's somewhat vivid metaphor, she perceived a truth, and that truth the tragic weakness of her position. But she did not know now that large books had been written about this weakness, and many more would be....

Mrs. Heth having allowed the silence to continue a moment, educationally, drew a handkerchief across her upper lip, with its strange little downy mustache, and resumed:

"With no plans of your own, you have lately thrown away the best opportunity you will ever have in your life. Now there are only two theories on which I can explain this conduct--so totally unlike your usual good sense. One is that you have permitted yourself, without my knowledge, to become interested in somebody else.... Have you?"

"No--oh, no!... No, of course not."

"That I felt confident of," said mamma, though not without a certain note of relief. "Confident.... Yet--to touch the second point,--as you look toward the future, you do expect to marry some day, do you not?"

The daughter seemed restive under this cross-examination. She turned away from the maternal scrutiny, and, resting her arm upon her chair-back, looked toward the shaded window.

"Yes--I suppose so.... That seems to be all I'm fit for.... But--since you ask me, mamma--I _would_ like, in the meantime, not to be so ... so plainly labelled _waiting_.... I'd like," she said, hesitatingly, "to have _one_ man I meet--see me in some other light than as a candidate for matrimony."

"That," said Mrs. Heth, firmly, "will never be, so long as you retain your youth and beauty, and men retain their nature....

"And why should you wish it otherwise?" continued the dominant little lady. "Despite all the loose, unwomanly talk in the air, you do realize, I see, that marriage will always remain the noblest possible career for a woman."

Cally remembered a converse of this proposition she had heard one day at the Woman's Club. She answered with light bitterness:

"When I said just now that I was fit for marriage, I meant marriage, mamma--a wedding. Of course, I'm not fit to be anybody's wife...." She paused, and added in a voice from which the bitterness had all gone out: "I'm not fit to be anybody's mother."

"There, there!" riposted mamma, briskly. "I think that's enough of poor Henrietta Cooney, and her wild, unsuccessful notions."

There was another brief silence; the silence of the death of talk.

"You're in a dangerously unsettled state of mind, my daughter--dangerously. But you will find, as other women have found, that marriage will relieve all these discontents. I myself," said mamma, with a considerable stretching of the truth, "went through the same stages in my youth--though, of course, I was married much younger than you.... Now, Carlisle, I have refused to believe that your quarrel with Hugo is irreparable."

Carlisle started as if slapped. Had mamma jerked her by a string, she could not have turned more sharply. The little general, leaning forward, swept on with hurried firmness.

"I see, of course, that you have taken your quarrel very seriously, very hard. You feel that in your anger you both said terrible things which can't possibly be overlooked. But, my child, remember that the course of true love never did run smooth. There have been few engagements which weren't broken off at least once, few marriages when the wife didn't make up her mind--"

"Mamma!" said Cally, rousing herself as from a cataleptic sleep. "You can't have understood what I told you that night. This was not a quarrel at all, in any sense--"

"I know! I understand! I withdraw the word cheerfully," said mamma, in just that tone and manner which made the strange similarity between her and Hugo. "But what I want to say, Cally, is this. Hugo is still in Washington. Willie Kerr, to whom I talked by telephone last night, had a telegram from him yesterday. Now, my child, men do not take women's angry speeches quite as seriously as you think. Hugo is mad about you. All he wants is _you_--"

"Oh, please--_please_! Don't say any more. You don't--"

"No, hear me out! See for yourself if my plan is not diplomatic and feasible, and involves no surrender of pride. I shall send Willie Kerr on to Washington this afternoon. He will go ostensibly on private business with one of the Departments,--though I will, of course, pay all expenses,--and putting up at Hugo's hotel, will meet him as if by accident. In their talk Willie, who is tact and loyalty itself, will perhaps mention your sickness, though without comment. Gradually the impression will come to Hugo that if he returns, with, of course, suitable apologies--"

"Mamma," said Cally, starting up, very white, "if you do any such thing as that I'll go away somewhere. I _will_ go and earn my own living.... I'll go _and live with the Cooneys_!"

The two women gazed at each other. Over the mother's face there spread a slow flush; the round, purple birthmark darkened. Cally spoke again, with deadly earnestness.

"I _did_ think you understood about this.... If you persuade Hugo to walk down from Washington on his knees.... I'll not see him."

Mrs. Heth, curiously, had been brought down in full flight: perhaps by the force of that wild upstarting, perhaps by the grisly threat about the Cooneys. Carlisle in a flare-up had always required a certain handling. The worst of the mad girl was that she was really capable of doing these unspeakable things she mentioned.

"So you refuse pointblank," said Mrs. Heth, in a muffled sort of voice, "to carry out your parents' wishes."

"About this--I _must_. I'll do anything else you want me to, anything.... And, mamma, this isn't papa's wish," said the girl, with some emotion. "He told me--the other night--that I mustn't think of marrying anybody I didn't care for. He said he had never thought the same of Hugo--"

Then mamma smote the flat arm of her morris-chair, and sprang up, exploding.

"_That's it_! Shove it off on your poor, generous father!... How characteristic of your whole behavior! Why, you ought to be _ashamed_ to mention your father's name!" cried mamma; and, indeed, Cally was, though for reasons not known to her mother....

Mrs. Heth walked the floor, in the grip of those agonies which the defeat of her will brought her in poignant measure. It may be that her faith in her diplomatic plan had never been triumphantly strong. Now, certainly, her purposes were punitive only, and her flowing sentences well turned to her desire....

"You suppose your father's overjoyed to have his delightfully _independent_ daughter thrown back on his hands--of course!" she was remarking. "True, you've heard him say a thousand times that he was going to sell his business as soon as you married and buy himself a place in the country and begin to have some pleasure of his own. But, of course, that was only his little joke! Yes, yes!" said mamma, brandishing her arms. "What he really wants is to go on slaving and toiling and worrying his heart out to keep you in pampered idleness and luxury, indulging your lightest whim without regard--"

"Mamma, mamma!--do, please!" the girl broke in. "If papa has been working so hard on my account--and I didn't know that--then I don't want him to do it any more. I wish he would sell--"

"Oh, I've no patience with your deathbed repentances! Don't you know your father's involved in serious worries at this moment, entirely on your account? Do you think a few dramatic speeches from you can undo--"

"Worries on my account? No, I didn't know of any.... What worries?"

Cally had stood listening with a kind of numbed listlessness, ready to go at the first opportunity, now that the real purpose of the interview was discharged. But suddenly she perceived a new pointedness in her mother's biting summaries; and she turned, with a slightly startled look in her eyes.

Her mother returned the gaze with savage sarcasm.

"Oh! You never heard of the Labor Commissioner and his hired character-assassin, I suppose! Never--"

"Yes, but I didn't know any of that was on my account."

"No, no, indeed! You thought it was just a little whim of your father's to keep his factory in a condition that's been a scandal in the community. Fighting off legislation--bribing inspectors--just his little bits of eccentric self-indulgence. You thought that ten thousand dollars I gave to the Settlement grew on a tree, I suppose. You--"

"Mamma," said Cally, in a strained voice, "what on earth are you talking about? I want to understand. What did that money you gave to the Settlement have to do--"

"Don't you _know_ he needed it for his business?" cried mamma, advancing menacingly. "I tell you he'd put it by to spend it on the Works this fall, and stop these attacks on him. And why did I have to take it from him, but on _your_ account, miss?--to try to clear the family name from the scandal you brought upon us--"

"_What_?"

"A scandal," continued mamma, in a crescendo sweep, "that all but undid my lifework for the family's position, and that may yet cost your father his presidency at the bank."

The good lady easily saw that she had struck the right punitive note at last. Indeed, the question now, Cally's peculiarities being considered, was whether she had not struck it rather too hard. The girl's face had suddenly become the color of paper. The intense concentration of her gaze was painful in its way, slightly disconcerting to mamma.

"Do you mean," said Cally, in quite a shaky voice--"do you say that papa--meant to improve the Works _this fall_--and that you--that I--"

"I mean exactly what I say," said Mrs. Heth, resolutely. "And I say it's high time you were beginning to understand your position in this family, as a guide to your strange behavior. Do you suppose your father enjoys being under attack all the time? Haven't you heard him say a hundred times, that it was bad business to let things go at the Works? Where were you six years ago when he said we'd have to economize and put up a new building, and I prevented him for your sake, arguing that you were just coming out and were entitled to--"

"_Six years_!... Why ... why, then I'm responsible for it _all_!... Why--_I've been on his back all the time_!"

"I'm glad you realize it at last.... Oh, well!" said her mother, throwing out both hands and speaking with a kind of gruff tolerance,--"there's no use to _cry_ about it."

"I'm not crying," said Cally.

She was, indeed, not crying as her mother had usually seen her cry; not with storm and racking. Nevertheless, two indubitable drops suddenly glittered upon the gay lashes, and now fell silently as Cally spoke.

"But I could cry," said she, "I'm so happy ... I'm so glad, to know it's all been my fault.... You don't know ... I went to the Works the other day--"

"Oh, you did!" said her mother, bitterly, but enlightened a little. "And have been criticizing your father, I suppose, the father who has sacrificed--"

"He'll forgive me.... He _must_. I'll find a way."

Mrs. Heth, flinging herself down in her chair again, said in a voice full of sudden depression: "I should say you owed him apologies, for that among other things.... Well, I give you up."

Cally stood unmoving, slim hands locked behind her head, staring toward the window. Gone was the albatross from her young neck, melted the cloud from the azure round. Wisdom had come with such startling unexpectedness that she could not take in all that had happened to her just now. But all that mattered was as plain and bright as the sunshine waiting for her out there. She, and not papa whom she had so wronged in her thoughts, had made the bunching-room what it was; she, and nobody else, should make it better after this. And through the splendid confusion of sensations that, mounting within, seemed to float her away from this solid floor, she heard one clear voice sounding ever louder and louder. It was the voice of the prodigal, chastened and penitent: _"I will arise and go to my father."_

Cally turned toward the door.

Her mother, stirring from her heavy rebuking apathy, said: "Oh, there's no use bothering him now to say you're sorry. You've not thought of him all these years ..."

"That's why I can't wait--now," said Cally. "And besides, there's something else I want to speak to him about.... A--a business matter."

Mamma demanded an explanation. And Cally, pausing briefly at the door, turned upon that censorious gaze a face radiant as the morning.

"I'm going to give him my fifty thousand dollars to build a new Works with.... Won't you please help me make him take it?"

But what her mother may have replied to this request failed to overtake Cally, flying down the hall to the telephone....

* * * * *

The bedroom conference, it was seen, had not been wholly fruitless, after all. Mrs. Heth's last stand for Hugo--like Hugo's last afternoon--had taken a slant not anticipated by her, but at least wholesome and moral in its effects. Cally's dreaded accusing interview in the study gave place, beyond all imagining, to an unpremeditated outpouring by telephone, in which her chief fear was only of making a perfect little silly of herself. And lastly, Mr. Heth, called summarily from a directors' meeting at the Fourth National Bank, was overflowed with such a wave of feminine incoherence and emotionalism as he found great difficulty in associating with his usually self-contained little daughter....

Papa indeed, knowing nothing of any conference or of any dark cloud either, was treated to the astonishment of his life. When he finally understood that the house was not in flames, or his wife stricken with a deadly malady, when he began to get some notion of what all the strange pother was about, his replies, for the most part, took the following general directions: (1) that little Callipers was out of her mind with her sickness, didn't know what she was talking about, crazy, and the greatest little goose that ever was; (2) that she had no business ever going to the Works, but that was all right now, and he didn't want to hear another word about it; (3) that he couldn't stop to talk such foolishness in business hours, and she'd better go and lie down and rest and get her senses back; (4) that he gave her that money for herself, and when he got dependent on his little daughter, he'd let her know; (5) and that there, there, not to bother him now, we'd see, after lunch....

Sufficiently vague replies these; yet they seemed to leave the daughter in no doubt whatever that the matter which had all in a moment become dear to her heart was as good as settled. For when papa terminated the conversation by smartly ringing off, she immediately called another number: Jefferson 4127, this one was, which, as the book shows (only she did not look at the book) is the number assigned to Meeghan's Grocery, down by the old Dabney House....

However the untutored voice at Meeghan's reported that Doctor was out on his rounds and not to be reached before one o'clock. So Cally had to defer for a little while the happiness she would have in telling the lame wanderer across her path that, after all, his eyes had not put their trust in her in vain.

Later she sat again on a revolving seat at Gentlemen's Furnishings, eagerly purchasing shirts, cost not exceeding one dollar each, for James Thompson, aged thirteen, of up-country. It happened to be her work to do in the world, and she was doing it.

She was waited upon at the popular counter by Miss Whirtle herself, whom Cally remembered by figure if not by name; and she was so extremely agreeable and mollifying in her manner that the Saleslady's arrogance thawed away, and they were soon discussing questions of neck-sizes and sleeve-lengths in the friendliest intimacy. There were collars and neckties purchased, too,--these items Cally added on her own account, being in the vein of making presents to people to-day,--and here Miss Whirtle's taste was invaluable in assisting one to decide which were the nobby shapes and swell patterns and which the contrary. The robust one patted her transformation many times at Miss Heth, invited her at parting to call again; and later on--that night, it was--reported the whole conversation in detail in the Garland dining-room, imparting, we need not doubt, her own witty flavor to it all.

In Baird & Himmel's Cally met several other acquaintances, and finally Evey McVey, who was delighted to see her out again, but seemed to be examining her rather curiously, doubtless with reference to Hugo and what had happened in that quarter. Evey herself complained of being tired; so Cally drove her second-best friend to the McVey residence in the car, but pleaded duties at home against getting out for a little visit.

And then, bowling homeward in the brisk airs, she could return to her own thoughts again, which, as by the rubbing of an Aladdin's lamp, had suddenly become so happy and so absorbing. Later, she must think about mamma, and with what time and solaces she could close that breach. But in these hours her thought was all for her father, whom she seemed just to be beginning to understand for the first time in her life....

Now all the imaginative dreads and nightmare terrors were faded away, and she felt beneath her feet the solid sanity of Hugo's self. She had seen the Works on an exceptionally bad day; she had gone there, overdrawn and ignorant, looking for horrors; what she had actually seen and felt had been mysteriously intensified a hundredfold by her violent encounter with Colonel Dalhousie. For all that she knew, to this very moment, the Works might be, indeed (as the beautifully tactful girl Corinne had said), the best place to work in town.

But what Cally was thinking now was that, in sitting in judgment on her father, she had blindly judged him as if he were a free man--she, of all people, who had felt so poignantly the imprisoning powers of a groove. Now it appeared, as by a sudden light upon him, that papa had always been clamped fast in a groove of his own, exactly as she had been; a groove fixed for him by his place in society, by the way other men ran their cheroot factories,--for, of course, papa must do as his competitors did, or be crowded out, and the hardest-driving, meanest man set the pace for the kind ones, like papa,--and last and chiefly by the extravagances of a wife and daughter who always cried "give, give," and didn't care at all where the gifts came from. How could papa possibly be free with two costly women on his back all the time?... Strange that she hadn't grasped all this clearly, the minute she had recognized herself as a horse-leech's daughter....

Now the first thing to do, obviously, was to get off papa's back at once. Her fifty thousand dollars would be a sound starter there; of course papa would take it, since she wanted him to so much. And her mind, as she drove, kept recurring to this symbol, kept bringing up pictures of the new Works that would be, built perfect with her money. She saw it considerably like the beautiful marble palace of her childhood's thought, the pride of Canal Street without, and within wonderfully clean, spacious and airy, and most marvellously fragrant. In this new palace of labor, faints and swoons were things undreamed of. Trim, smiling, pretty girls, all looking rather like French maids in a play, happily plied their light agreeable tasks; and, in especial, the cheeks of poor Miller (who had stoutened gratifyingly) were observed to blossom like the rose.

Yet the creator of all these wonders was well aware that she was not giving her dowry to Miller, exactly....

Descending from the car at her own door, Cally encountered Mr. Pond, of the Settlement. The dark-faced Director was loafing, oddly enough, on Mrs. Mason's steps, which had once been Mr. Beirne's, four doors from home. He raised his hat about two inches at the sight of her, returned his watch and some typewritten papers to his pocket, and came forward.

"Don't run," said he, unsmiling. "I want to know plainly whether or not you are coming to my meeting to-morrow. Yes or no."

Cally laughed gaily. There was a radiance within her, and she liked this man increasingly. Several times they had met, since their antagonistic talk at the Settlement; and in the blunt Director's manner she had lately observed that creeping change which she had witnessed in men as stalwart, before now....

"Don't look so fierce," said she, "for I'll not be bullied. Or at least not till you explain why you're hanging around in front of the neighbors' at twelve o'clock in the morning--you who always pretend to be so frightfully busy."

"Waiting for Vivian. And I am busy, confound him.... Not too busy, as you see, to take a kind interest in your welfare--"

"Oh!... Is Dr. Vivian _there_--at the Masons'? Why, what are _you_ waiting for him for?"

"Seems to me you ask a good many questions for an idler."

He stood on the sidewalk, looking up at her with his hawk-eyes, a man yet in the early thirties, but of obvious power.

"We're going to buy second-hand benches, if you must know," continued he. "He says he can show me where to get 'em cheap. Anything else?"

"No-o--except ... How much will the benches cost? Perhaps I--might be able to contribute something--"

"I don't want your old money," said Pond. "When are you going to be serious about serious things?"

"I think now," said Cally ... "Only, you see, I don't know anything at all."

"I'll teach you," said the Director.

Cally, standing on the broad white slab before her own door, did not answer. Her glance had turned down the street: and at this moment there emerged from the Masons' door the tall figure of V. Vivian, the article-writer, who would never have to put anything in the papers about papa now. He saw her instantly, and over his somehow strange and old-fashioned face there broke a beautiful smile. He lifted his hat high, and, so holding it at height, posed as if for a picture, gave it something like a wave, as in double measure of greeting and good-will. A proper salutation from friend to friend; and the sunlight gleamed on his crisp fair hair....

Cally's return greeting was somewhat less finished. She gave the lame doctor one look of brilliant sweetness; and then she said to him, "Oh, how do you do?"--in a voice that he could not possibly have heard. Next she said, "Yes, I'll be at the meeting to-morrow," with her back turned squarely toward Mr. Pond. And then she opened her door and went in quite quickly, leaving the Director staring intently at a crack in the sidewalk....

Within, Cally perceived that she had acted rather unreasonably, missing the opportunity to tell Mr. V.V. that she desired to speak with him: but that, of course, was only because she had not wanted to interrupt and detain two busy men at their labors. The oversight, besides, was easily to be remedied; though she did not again send the clear call for Meeghan's. She decided to write a brief note instead, and did, asking her friend if he could come and give her his help about a matter--say at four o'clock that afternoon. The note was dispatched, not by old Moses this time, but by the hand of an urchin in a blue uniform, who was deep in "Lady Helen, the Fair Ghoul," as he bicycled, but apparently reached his destination in due course.

And V. Vivian, once again, was not disobedient to the heavenly summons.