Chapter V

Dialogue between V. Vivian, of the Slums, and Mr. Heth's
Daughter (or his Niece); what the lovely Hun saw in the Mr.
Vivian's eyes, just before he asked God to pity her.

Dalhousie's tall friend advanced with a limp, in silence. He halted at a courteous distance; it was seen that one hand held a soft hat, crushed against his side. A faint wave of the ethereal light immersed the man now, and Carlisle dimly descried his face. She observed at once that it did not seem to be a menacing face at all; no, rather was it kindly disposed and even somewhat trustful in its look. It was the second thing that she noticed about him.

Perhaps no girl in the world was less like the popular portrait of a fat horse-leech's daughter than this girl, Carlisle Heth. Surely no advance ever less resembled the charge of a hating prophet upon a Hun than this man's advance. Carlisle, to be sure, was never one to think in historical or Biblical terminology. But she did note the man's manner of approach upon her, and his general appearance, with an instant lifting of the heart. The whole matter seemed desperately serious to her, full of alarming possibilities, a matter for a determined fight. And she felt more confidence at once, the moment she had seen how the emissary looked, how he looked at her.

Chiefly for strategic reasons, she had sat down on the bench again, well back in the shadows. She did not speak; had no intention of speaking till speech might gain something. And the stranger, silent also, wore an air of hesitancy or confusion which was puzzling to her and yet quite reassuring, too. If he had come to say that Dalhousie would talk unless she did, would he be this sort of looking person at all?...

The man began abruptly; clearly nothing plotted out in advance.

"He's quite crushed.... I--I've just come from him...."

And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced his steps for a better start.

"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a--a stranger, in this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It's all so curiously confused. But it doesn't seem that he can be quite so bad as they're saying here to-night...."

The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.

"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can't remember the boat's upsetting at all."

His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle's ear caught that note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie's shabby friend as a determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face, though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it, odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and surer, not dangerous at all.

Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there came a lovely voice from the shadows--lovely, but did it sound just a little hard?...

"Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, and tell me who you are, and what it is you want."

"Yes, yes! Quite so!" agreed the author of the Severe Arraignment, rather hastily....

A little easier said than done, no doubt. Yet it may be that one of the young man's inner selves still hovered over the belief that this girl must be Mr. Heth's (of the Works) niece, or haply a yet more distant relative....

"I mentioned that," said he, "because it was naturally uppermost in my mind. I--ah.... But to begin at the beginning, as you say.... I got a telegram in town, telling me that Jack Dalhousie was in serious trouble. It was from Hofheim, a fellow, a sort of druggist, who happened to know that I was one of his best friends. So I caught the six-ten train and Hofheim met me at the station. _My_ name's Vivian...."

He stopped short, with an odd air of not having intended to stop at this point at all. So bystanders have watched the learning bicycle rider, irresistibly drawn to his doom against the only fixed object in miles. However, no association of ideas woke in the mind of the silent girl upon the bench. Not easily at any time did brick-throwing Socialists gain foothold there; and this day had been a disruptive one for her, beyond any in her experience.

"The name," hastily continued the young man, with an intake of breath, "probably conveys nothing to you. I--I merely mention it.... Well, Hofheim, this sort of--fellow, wasn't in the hotel when the--the occurrence took place, but he told me what everybody was saying, as we came up in the 'bus together. I feel very sure you can have no idea.... Shall I repeat his story? I don't, of course, want to trouble you needlessly."

"Do."

So bidden, he swiftly epitomized the narrative told him by the fellow Hofheim, who had got it at fifth or sixth hand after Mrs. Heth's striking of the right note. The Hofheim rendering seemed to include such details as that Dalhousie (being an entire stranger to Miss Heth) had overthrown her boat with homicidal hands, and that, as he swam away, he had laughed repeatedly and maniacally over his shoulder at the girl's agonized screams.

"They don't say that he struck you--with an oar," the man concluded, sad and satirical. "I believe that's the only detail of the sort they omit.... As a matter of fact, Miss Heth, Dal says he never heard you scream at all."

Then he clearly paused for a reply, perhaps a reassuring burst; but there was only silence. The harried girl on the bench was thinking, intently but with some bewilderment. Somewhat aghast as she was (truth to tell) at the way in which the minor variations had been maliciously distorted, her attention had been closely engaged by the curious way in which Mr. Dalhousie's friend was going at things. Why did he sound less like a challenge and a threat than like somebody whistling hopefully to keep up his courage?

The question irresistibly emerged. Carlisle's slim fingers furled and unfurled the end of her mermaiden's scarf, and she looked up at the tall stranger in the dusk and sweetly spoke for the third time.

"But I don't understand. If he has told you all about it, I--I don't see why you have come to me at all."

Then the man appeared to recollect that he had omitted the most important part of his narrative--of course she didn't understand, no wonder!--and spoke with some eagerness.

"I should have explained that in the beginning!--only of course I don't like to trespass too far on your time.... You see--unfortunately--Dal's hardly in position to speak about the matter at all. I--"

He paused, as if seeking how to put it, and then spoke these doubt-destroying words:

"It is very perplexing, but the truth is--he says so himself--he doesn't know at all what took place."

"Oh!... _He doesn't know_!"

"I don't wonder you're astonished at his saying so," said the young man, in quite a gentle way. "And yet I do believe him absolutely...."

He now explained, in well-selected phrases, that Jack Dalhousie had been very drunk when he boarded the boat, having taken a running start on the evening preceding. Though he might have seemed normal enough, through long experience in control, he was actually quite irresponsible; and drink had played strange tricks with his mind before now. The boy could remember getting into the boat, it seemed; remember that--ah--that she had objected (very properly) to his presence; remember standing up in the boat, very angry, and the wind blowing in his face. The next thing he remembered was being in the water, swimming away. And then, when he landed, a man standing there on shore cursed him and struck him in the face.... Then he had looked out over the water; he saw the upset sailboat and the boatman rowing out, and the people, and it rushed over him what he must have done. Till then, he said, he had never dreamed that anything had happened. He could hardly believe it, even with the evidence of his own eyes. Then later Hofheim, the sort of fellow, had gone up to see him, and told him what people were saying, which so much more than confirmed his worst suspicions. Hofheim was a stranger, but he meant well....

Dalhousie, in short, was in the singular position of having to implore others to assure him that he hadn't done all these terrible things. And it appeared that Miss Carlisle Heth was the one person in the world who could possibly give him that assurance.

So spoke the stranger. That he had scattered lifelines, that all his oratory had come agrapple with nature's first law, evidently did not cross his mind. He gazed down at the girl's dimly limned face, and his gaze seemed full of an unconquerable hopefulness.

"The boy's behavior has been inexcusable in any case," he said. "And be sure he's been punished, and will be punished severely. But ... it must be that either the--the trouble didn't happen at all as this story says it did, or if--at the worst--it did happen that way, Dalhousie was simply out of his mind, quite insane, and didn't know what he was doing. He isn't, of course, a ruffian or a coward. Won't you help to make them understand that?"

The girl raised her eyes, which in the twilight were darker than the 'depth of water stilled at even.'

"I don't see the necessity for that," she said, in a firm voice. "I--I'm afraid I can't consent to be involved in it any further."

Over the little summer-house hung the sweet beauties of the serene night. About it stretched the calm lawn in chequers of large faint brightness and gigantic shadows. Within it stood the tall stranger, rooted in his tracks. Then it seemed to occur to him that there was some misunderstanding; that at least, in his anxiety about his friend, he hadn't allowed sufficiently for the properly outraged feelings of the lady--this so unreasonable-looking daughter of Mr. Heth of the Works, or his niece....

"It's all tremendously trying for you, I know," he said, with the same sort of gentleness. "I assure you the situation has distressed me greatly--from every aspect. And I think it's most kind and--and generous of you to let me speak with you when you must feel that you've been so badly treated.... But you see--as it stands, you are involved in it, really, more than any one else. I'm sorry, but in fact the whole issue is in your hands."

"I can't see that. He has given you his--his version of what took place. No one will prevent him from saying the same thing to whomever he wishes."

"But who will believe him?"

Carlisle perceived a rhetorical question, though she didn't know it under that name; she made no reply. She would really have preferred no more questions of any sort--what was the use of them? In her, as in all the Maker's creatures, the instinct for self-preservation was planted to work resistlessly. Small wonder, indeed, if, in the unexpected discovery that dependence on Dalhousie's dubious gentlemanliness was unnecessary, the uprush of relief should have swept away all lesser considerations, flooded down all doubts. All was settled again in a trice, as by a miracle: the miraculous agent here being, not the Deity (as she vaguely suspected), but only the Demon Rum, he who had taught the frail lad Dalhousie to be so mistrustful of himself ...

She had had a harassing day, including three momentous _tête-à-têtes_ with three different and widely variegated men, mostly comparative strangers: Jack Dalhousie, Mr. Canning, and now this Mr. Vivian. She was very tired of being dogged and nagged at and interfered with, and she wanted very much to terminate this interview, which she saw now had been extorted from her by a pretty sharp piece of deception. And through her mind there skipped a beckoning thought of Mr. Canning, conceived as feverishly pacing the piazza ...

"You see, his defence," Mr. Vivian was saying, with some signs of nervousness, "is merely his own word that he had no idea you were upset. I believe him absolutely, because I know he wouldn't lie, and he admits, to his own disadvantage, that his memory isn't at all clear. But--it's all so muddled and confused somehow--I'm afraid everybody else will think that a rather silly fabrication, invented by a desperate man to put himself in the best light possible. That is--unless his word is corroborated."

His inflection invited remarks, nay, urged them, but there was only silence.

And then within V. Vivian, M.D., there woke a cold doubt, and gnawed him.

"Miss Heth--I must ask--for the whole moral question hangs on this ... _Did he know that you were upset_?"

Miss Heth cleared her throat, preparatory to rising. She saw now that she ought never to have consented to talk with this strange man at all. Mamma would have known that in advance.

"It is--rather absurd--for me to be asked to decide what _he_ knew. He has assured you that--"

"But--I don't make myself clear, I see--the fact is that yours is the only assurance that will carry the smallest weight on that point.... He wasn't--may I ask?--actually _in_ the boat when it went over, was he?"

"N-no. As to that--I believe he had just got out, but--"

"Did you think at the time that he knew you were upset?"

"Unfortunately, I am not a mind reader," she began with dignity, objecting seriously to these obstacles in the way of ending the interview. "Thrown without warning into the water, I could not look into his thoughts and see--"

"Quite so. But did he show in any way that he knew you were upset?"

A kind of chill had crept into the stranger's voice. The two young people gazed at each other. The man had strange eyes (they were the third thing she had noticed about him), gray, she thought, and gifted with an odd sort of translucence, singular and speaking.

"Let me see. No, he did not. That is what I said at the time--that he didn't take the slightest notice of me--"

"He swears he never dreamed anything was wrong till he landed. Don't you feel that that's quite possible, at least? Or.... did you scream out for his help, so loudly that he _must_ have heard you, if he'd been himself?"

"The--the first few minutes in the water were very confusing. I can't pretend to say exactly what I did or didn't do. I had to think about saving my life--"

"Of course. But if you'd screamed a number of times in saving your life, you would be likely to remember it, wouldn't you?"

"Really I can't acknowledge your right to--"

"Miss Heth--_why didn't you scream_?"

His swift cross-examination touched the quick of her spirit; and she came to her feet, trembling a little, and feeling rather white.

"I will not allow you to catechise me in this way. I will not...."

Dr. Vivian, from the Dabney House, over the Gulf, stood still, quite silenced....

The thought had struck V. Vivian, and shot him down, that this girl was lying, deliberately suppressing the truth that meant more than life to Dal. She hadn't screamed. Dal hadn't known she was upset.... Yet was it thinkable? In the fiercest denouncing of the yellowest Huns, who had ever dreamed anything so base of them as this? _Lying?_ With that face like all the angels, that voice like a heavenly choir?...

The tall doctor saw that his suspicion was unworthy and absurd. His was no simple choice between his friend's shameful cowardice, and this girl's criminal falsehood. No, Dal was crazy-drunk at the time, and himself cried out in his misery that the worst that they said of him was probably true. And even supposing that this girl was no more than a fiend in seraphic shape, what conceivable reason could she have for such infamous suppression? Motive was unimaginable.... No, the fault must be his own. He had pressed too hard, pried too tactlessly and inquisitively, not made her understand sufficiently the dire swiftness of the poor boy's need....

These two stood face to face. Carlisle saw that Jack Dalhousie's friend was becoming excited; but then, so was she. The man spoke first, in a low, hurried voice:

"I don't mean to catechise--indeed, I don't. You must try to forgive me for the liberties I seem to be taking.... The thing's so serious, so pitiful. This story already flying around back in town--making him a base coward--he'll never live it down. And it's to-night or never, a--a misstatement travels so fast and far, and has so long a life--"

"You should have reminded him of all this," said Carlisle, her rounded breast rising and falling, "before he got into my boat."

"Oh, you have a right to say that! He's been wrong, insanely wrong! But does he deserve disgrace--ostracism--ruin? You alone stand between him and--"

"I don't feel that it--it's right for me to be brought into it further. I've explained that. And I must ask--"

"But you _are_ in it already, you see. Whatever anybody does or leaves undone, now and for the future--_you are in it_...."

The enemy paused, gazing at her; and then suddenly, before she could make just the right opening to go past him, he abandoned restraint, and flung himself upon entreaties.

"Couldn't you make a statement--just a little statement--saying that you feel certain he didn't know the boat was upset? that perhaps in the excitement you forgot to scream?--that you know he wouldn't have left you if he'd understood you were in trouble? Couldn't you at least give him the benefit of the doubt?--say or do something to show you've no bitter feeling toward him?--"

"Did he show any regard for my feelings? I must ins--"

"All the finer is your opportunity--_don't you see_?... Even strain the truth a little for him, if that's necessary. God," said the shabby young man, quite passionately, "would count it a virtue, I know, for it's now or never to save a man.... Couldn't you do that? I promise you you won't be bothered any more about it. I know how awfully hard it's all been for you. Couldn't you say _something_ to help him a little?"

Miss Heth, facing him, imperceptibly hesitated.

For a second, offended though she was by his religious reference (she never heard the name of God mentioned in polite society), this quaint begging Mr. Vivian had her upon the balance. Her flying thoughts swept down the parting of the ways. But they flew swiftly back, stabbing all hesitancies....

She wished as much as any one that it had all been started differently, as it might have been had she been perfectly certain in advance that no one would dare say anything the least bit horrid about her. It was not her fault that gossip was so notoriously unreliable. And now it was simply impossible to rake up the whole subject again, just when it was all settled, and go through another long explanation with mamma. Of course she didn't believe all this about Dalhousie's being ruined and disgraced forever: that was just the man's way of working on her feelings and trying to frighten her. She knew very well that the whole thing would blow over in a few days, if just quietly left to itself.

And what use, whispered the returning thoughts, would the unknown make of the "little statement" he begged so for? What would mamma say, for instance, to a black-typed piece-in-the-paper in the "Post" to-morrow? And what of Mr. Canning--nudged the wise thoughts--the happiness symbol on the piazza, whose princely feet were so plainly twitching to thunder behind?...

No; clearly the only sensible thing to do was to end all the talk and quibbling at once, definitely. Carlisle took a step forward over the dim chequered floor, resolute as her mother.

"I can't add anything to what I've already said. I cannot let you detain me any longer."

Her advance had brought her fully into what light there was, falling mistily through lattice and door. And at the look in her eyes, young Dr. Vivian's hands fell dead without a struggle at his sides. His tall figure seemed mysteriously to shrink and collapse inside his clothes. He said, oddly, nothing whatever. Yet an hour's oration could not have conveyed more convincingly his sense of irreparable disaster.

The instantaneous cessation of his verbal flow curiously piqued the girl's attention. Face to face as they stood, she was struck quite sharply with an elusive something that seemed to cling to this man's look, a subtle enveloping wistfulness which she had vaguely noticed about him before, which somehow seemed, indeed, only the sum of all that she had noticed about him before. It may have been this look that briefly checked her withdrawal. An odd desire to justify herself somewhat more clearly fluttered and stirred within her. Or--who can say?--perhaps this was no more than the beautiful woman's undying desire to appear at advantage before every man, however far beneath her.

"You--you must not think me unfeeling," she said in a sweet hurried voice. "I want to be as considerate as possible. I am terribly sorry for him--terribly--and you must tell him so, from me. But I--I am in a peculiar position. I am not free to--"

"I see. I understand now."

His strange tone fell upon her ears as a challenge, quiet though it was; and it was a challenge which Carlisle, though instantly regretting her generosity (when she might just have walked away), saw no entirely dignified way of avoiding.

"You see what?" she said, faltering a little. "I don't know what you mean."

The man replied slowly, almost as if he were thinking of something else, and the thought rather hurt him:

"I see your only thought is to gain some point for yourself--you alone know what--no matter what pain your silence may give to others.... Ah, that's sad...."

Angry and a little frightened, too, Carlisle Heth drew her gossamer shawl more closely about her shoulders, with a movement that also wore the air of plucking together her somewhat wavering hauteur.

"You are at liberty to think and say what you please," she said, distantly, and with a slight inclination of her head started past him.

But he did not seem to hear the dismissal order; stood unmoving, blocking her progress; and looking up with now tremulous indignation, Carlisle ran once more full on the battery of his speaking eyes....

Perhaps it was not difficult to guess what John the Baptist would have said, in such a case as this: but then the young man V.V. was not thinking of John the Baptist now. He was not feeling grim at all at this moment; not fierce at all. So in his look there was to be seen nothing of the whiplash, not one thing reminiscent of the abhorring fanatic on the outskirts of the city. His eyes were filled, indeed, with a sudden compassion; a compassion overflowing, unmistakable, and poignant. And from that look the richly dressed girl with the seraph's face instantly averted her gaze.

She heard a voice: the lame stranger speaking as if to himself.

"All that beauty without, and nothing at all within.... So lovely to the eye, and empty where the heart should be.... God pity you, poor little thing...."

And then Carlisle passed him quickly and went out of the summer-house upon the lawn. The escape, this time, presented no difficulties. For the last syllable had hardly died on the young man's lip before self-consciousness appeared to return upon him, staggering him, it may be, at the words of his mouth. He turned, abruptly, and fled in the other direction.

So the audience in the moonlit summer-house concluded precipitately, with the simultaneous departure of both parties from opposite exits. Carlisle Heth went hurrying across the lawn. Within her, there was a tumult; but her will was not feeble, and her sense of decorum and the eternally fitting hardly less tenacious. Strongly she ruled her spirit for the revivifying remeeting that awaited her just ahead....

But it was not Mr. Canning's voice which greeted her as she stepped up on the hotel piazza. It was the low, angry challenge of her soldier-mother, nipped in the act of charging upon the summer-house.

"_Carlisle_!... In heaven's name, what have you been doing?"

Facing mamma on the deserted piazza-end, Carlisle explained in a hurried sentence that Mr. Dalhousie had sent a pleading friend to her, whom she had felt obliged to see....

"Are you _mad_ to say such a thing? Was it for wild antics of this sort that I threw everything to the winds to bring you down here?"

"Oh, mamma--please!" said Carlisle, her breath coming fast. "I've had about enough.... I--I couldn't run the risk of his starting heaven knows what scandalous story. Where is Mr. Canning?"

Mamma looked as if she wanted to shake her.

"You may well ask," she said, savagely, and turned away.

"I do ask," said Carlisle, with returning spirit. "Where is he?"

Mrs. Heth wheeled on her.

"Did you suppose he would hang about kicking his heels for hours while you hobnobbed with low men in dark summer-houses? He just excused himself on the ground of a cold caught on the piazza, and has retired for the night. You shall do the same. Come with me."

Carlisle went with her.

* * * * *

And next morning, Sunday, the very first news that greeted the two ladies, upon their appearance for a late breakfast, was that Mr. Canning and Mr. Kerr had left the Beach for town by the nine-twenty-two train.