Chapter VI

Of Carlisle's Bewilderment over all the Horrid Talk; of how
it wasn't her fault that Gossip was so Unreliable; of the
Greatest Game in the World; also, of Mr. Heth, who didn't
look like a Shameless Homicide.

The explosion that followed the boat occurrence at the Beach came as a complete surprise to the heroine of the small affair. When she had terminated the interview in the summer-house, she understood that she was giving the signal for talk to cease and all trouble to proceed to blow over. The want of cooöeration on the part of talk and trouble was gross, to say the least of it. The tide of excited questions and comment that poured in on and around Carlisle, upon her return to town on Monday, resembled the breaking of flood-gates. Her small and entirely private misadventure had become her world's sensation. And within a day there came a climax which secretly astonished and frightened her not a little. The primal blood-tie itself was severed for offended righteousness' sake. The proud old widower, Colonel Dalhousie, already sorely tried by his son's wildnesses, could not stomach his flagrant cowardice. It was shouted about the town that he had cut Jack off with a curse, and turned him finally out of his house.

Unplagued by the curses of imagination, Carlisle had, indeed, anticipated nothing in the least like this. She was dazed by the undreamed hubbub. For the first few days after her home-coming, she remained very closely in the house, to avoid all the worrying and horrid talk; and one day, the day Mattie Allen ran in with popping eyes to tell her about Jack Dalhousie, she pretended to be sick and stayed in bed, and really did feel extremely badly.

In these days of uneasiness, Carlisle wished far more than ever that the whole thing had been started differently; and she wondered often, and somewhat fearfully, if Dalhousie's friend, Mr. Vivian, would try to force himself on her again. That did not happen; nothing happened; and the more and more calmly she came to think about it all, the more clearly the girl saw that she personally was not to blame for the misunderstanding. It was plainly seen as one of those unfortunate occurrences which, while regretted by all, herself as much as anybody, you simply could not do a single thing about. And if it had seemed impossible to rake it all up again even that night, how much more unrakable was it now, when days had passed, and everybody had accepted everything, for better or worse, as it was? Fate and gossip had proved too strong. Deplorable, indeed; but it was to be, that was all.

It was very plain, of course, that all the initial excitement and pother could not possibly last. Withhold food from gossip, and it starves and dies. Carlisle simply stayed quiet and held her tongue; and as the days passed without more developments of any sort, she found her philosophical attitude thoroughly justified by events. Town-talk, that bugbear of the delicate-minded, shot off first to the Hoover divorce, and then to the somewhat public disagreement between the Governor of the State and Congressman Hardwicke, at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the visiting President; finally to a number of things. By the time six weeks had passed, the Beach had dropped completely from the minds of a fickle public. Dalhousie, it seemed, had considerately vanished. Talk ceased. The boat trouble blew over, much as the boat had done....

About this time, namely, about the middle of the seventh week, one of Willie Kerr's cryptic messages lay beside Mrs. Heth's breakfast plate on a morning. It ran:

I think he will come at 5.30 o'clock
Wednesday. Better arrive first?

W.K.

Willie's cipher (he liked to write as if he lived in Russia, with the postal spies after him like hawks) was no mystery to Mrs. Heth, she being, in a certain measure, its inventor. Having taken the telegraphic brevity upstairs to show to Carlisle, she disappeared into the telephone booth, to rearrange her afternoon. If all subscribers to the telephonic system were as tireless users as she, probably fewer people would have made large fortunes by the timely purchase of forty dollars worth of stock.

This was a Wednesday morning in mid-December. Carlisle, recuperating from a gay debutante rout on the evening preceding, remained in bed. By this time the "season" was well under way: all signs promised an exceptionally gay winter, and Carlisle was, as ever, in constant demand. She had meant to spend the morning in bed anyway, and then besides her mother had pointed out the necessity of being fresh for the afternoon....

From the moment of their abrupt parting at the Beach, Carlisle had not set eyes upon Mr. Canning, though he was known to have lingered as a house-guest all through the following week. The circumstance had surprised her considerably at the time, until she had thought out some satisfactory explanations for it. To-day her maidenly thoughts assumed a wholly prospective character, very agreeable and cheery. Mr. Canning, having arrived yesterday from some southerly resort of his choice, was again staying at the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road, his reported design being to ride a few times with the Cold Run hounds, otherwise barricading himself as unsocially as before. Still, he expected to remain for a week at least, which was very nice; and under these circumstances it was as natural as possible that his connoisseurship should be asked to pass judgment on the new little bachelor apartment in Bellingham Court, where his friend Kerr was just comfortably installed.... Where, also, no impossible stranger could intrude himself upon the company of his betters, with revivalist vocabulary and killjoy face.

The clock stood at eleven. The drawn shades imparted a restful dimness to the bedroom, but the reliable maid Flora had been in to shut the windows and start a merry fire in the grate. This room had been done over last year in gray and old rose, with the "suit" in Circassian walnut, and wainscoted walls which harmonized admirably. It was a charming cloister, all most captivating to the eye, with the possible exception of the dressing-table, which rather bristled with implements and looked just a thought too businesslike.

Carlisle loafed and invited her soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, charmingly framing her face....

While the Beach episode itself was now long since closed and done with, it was not unnatural that the memory of Dalhousie's friend, the Mr. Vivian, should have remained in Carlisle's mind, for Mr. Vivian had addressed such words to her as had never before sounded upon her ears. These words had clung by their sheer astounding novelty. To have God petitioned to pity you by a shabby nobody in a pictorial tie: here was an experience that invited some elucidation. For a time the girl's thoughts had attacked the nobody's sincerity: he was merely failure pretending to despise success. But, not ungifted at self-suasion though she was, she had not seemed to find solid footing here; and she had early been driven irresistibly to quite a different conclusion. Evidently this man Mr. Vivian was a queer kind of street-preacher type, victim of a pious mania which rendered him dangerously unsound in the head. This, obviously, was the truth of the matter. On no other theory could his pitying her be satisfactorily explained.

It was true that, with the dying down of her own sense of vague ambient perils, she herself had come once more to feel dreadfully sorry for Jack Dalhousie, and even to admit in her meditations that she could have afforded to be more magnanimous in defending him from gossip. But then that did not at all change the fact that Dalhousie deserved the severest punishment for all the trouble and worry he had brought her. It clearly was not right, was not moral, to make things too easy for wrongdoers. She had gradually come to see herself as a custodian of the moral law in this quarter, a tribunal of justice which, while upholding the salubriousness of punition, yet strives to keep as large and generous as it can.

Therefore it followed as the night the day that Mr. Vivian, who could work himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of sane, wholesome people.

Still, in lengthening retrospect, Carlisle had become quite dissatisfied with the manner in which she had permitted the summer-house interview to terminate. It was somewhat galling to recall the tameness with which she had allowed a Shouting Methodist such a last word as that, entirely unreproved. Because unreproved, the staggering word had stuck fast; in spite of all efforts, it remained as a considerable irritation in the background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the opinions of such as he. And then, at other times, she decided that it might be best simply to ignore the man altogether, turning her back with dignity, after perhaps one look such as would completely show him up. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say....

She rose, in excellent spirits, shortly after noon, and began an unhurried toilet. The toilet was so unhurried, indeed, that she had hardly finished and descended to the family sitting-room on the second floor when her father's latch-key was heard clicking in the front door. This sound was the unofficial luncheon-gong. The House of Heth proceeded to the dining-room, where Mr. Heth kissed his daughter's cheek in jocund greeting.

"Good-_afternoon_, Cally! And you just up--well, well! Times have changed--

"'Early to bed, early to rise--
That makes us all healthy,
Wise and wealthy--'

"That was my father's rule, and Lord, he kept us to it...."

Mrs. Heth, already seated, bit her lip slightly, which seemed to confer prominence upon her little mustache. Her consort's habit of quoting, and especially of misquoting, was trying to her, but she now knew it to be incurable, like her daughter's occasional mannerism. She sat as usual rather silent, plotting out the next few hours of her busy time, her remarks being chiefly of a superfluous managerial nature to that thoroughly competent African, Moses Bruce.

Carlisle, having so lately risen, ate but a _déjeuner_. Mr. Heth, on the contrary, attacked the viands with relish, restoring waste tissues from two directors' meetings, a meeting of the Convention Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, and an hour in his office at the bank. He was a full-bodied, good-looking, amiable-mannered man, of sound stock and excellent digestion, and wore white waistcoats the year round, and fine blond mustaches, also the year round. He certainly did not look to the casual eye like a shameless homicide, but rather like an English country gentleman given to dogs. He was fifty-four years old, a hard worker for all his indolent eye, and his favorite diversion was about twelve holes of golf on Sunday morning, and his next favorite one table of bridge by night in the library across the hall.

Greetings over, Mr. Heth said "Catch!" to his wife and daughter, referring to the ten-dollar goldpieces from the directors, and remarked that he hadn't been near the Works for two mornings, and that money made the mare go. A sober look touched his fresh-colored face as he voiced these observations, but then he was tired and hungry, and nobody noticed the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time régime, dispatched the exotic meal with the cheerfulness of Property.

"Effete, Cally,--that's what this age is," said Mr. Heth, pushing back his chair, and producing his gold toothpick. "Everybody looking for somebody else's neck to hang on to. And makin' a lot of grafters out of our poor class. Look at this Labor Commissioner and his new-fangled nonsense. Nagging me to spend Lord knows how many thousands, making the plant pretty and attractive for the hands. Voted for the fellow, too."

"I never heard of such a thing. What sort of things does he want you to do, papa?"

"Turkish baths and manicures and chicken sandwiches, I guess. I don't listen to his rot. Law's good enough for me. Point I make is that's the spirit of the poor nowadays. I pay 'em wages that would have been thought enormous a hundred years ago, but are they satisfied? Not on your life!..."

Winter sunshine, filtering in through cream-colored curtains, touched upon those refinements with which the prosperous civilize and decorate the brutal need: upon silver, growing flowers, glittering glass, agreeable open spaces, and fine old mahogany. It was an exceptionally pleasant room. The Heths might be "improbable people," as Mrs. Berkeley Page was known to have said on a certain occasion and gone unrebuked, but their material taste was clearly above reproach. And all this was to their credit, proving efficiency in the supreme art, that of living. For the Heths, of course, were not rich at all as the word means nowadays: they were far indeed from being the richest people in that town. Their merit it was that they spent all they had, and sometimes a little more; and few persons lived who could surpass Mrs. Heth in getting a dollar's worth of results for each dollar expended....

Carlisle and her father chatted pleasantly about the remarkable spirit of the poor, and the world's maudlin sentiment towards it and them. The lovely maid professed herself completely puzzled by these problems.

"We're always giving them money," she pointed out, spooning a light dessert in a tall glass, "or getting up bazaars for them, or sending them clothes that have lots more wear in them. And what do they do in return, besides grumble and riot and strike and always ask for more? And they stay poor just the same. What is going to happen, papa?"

Mr. Heth lit a cigar--not one of the famous Heth Plantation Cheroots. He requested Cally not to ask _him_.

"Never be satisfied," said he, "till they strip us of everything we've worked our lives away earning. They'll ride in our motor-cars and we'll sit in their workhouse. That'll be nice, won't it? How'll plain little girls like that, eh?"

She was the apple of papa's eye; and she rather enjoyed hearing him talk of his manifold business activities, which was a thing he was not too often encouraged to do. To-day the master of the Works was annoyed into speech by recent nagging: not merely from the Commissioner of Labor, but from the Building Inspector, who had informally stopped him on the street that morning....

"Don't you think, papa," Carlisle said sweetly, "that it will all end in something like the French Revolution?"

Mr. Heth thought it extremely likely.

"Well," said he, "I shan't be bothered by their college folderol. O'Neill's easy enough managed. All I need to do is invite him and Missus O. to dinner."

"Who's O'Neill?" demanded Mrs. Heth, gliding in.

For the second time during the meal, she had been absent from the table, on a telephone call. She always answered these summonses personally, regardless of when they came, appearing to fear that otherwise she might miss something.

"And who," she added, "is going to invite him to dinner?"

Mr. Heth explained, and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely. His wife was a climber--social bug, you know. "Pays to know your man, eh, Cally?..."

"I should say! And O'Neill's wife manages him?"

"Don't they always?" said he, pinching her little pink ear. And thereupon he bethought himself of a thoroughly characteristic quotation, which he rendered right jovially:

"'Pins and needles, pins and needles,
When a man marries, his trouble begins,'

"As the fellow says," concluded Mr. Heth; and so departed for The Fourth National Bank. Mrs. Heth, reminding her daughter about being fresh for the afternoon, glided to her writing-desk in the library. Carlisle confronted three hours of leisure before the prospective Great Remeeting. She went to the telephone, and called up her second-best girl-friend, Evelyn McVey. It developed that she had nothing special to say to Evey, or Evey to her. However, they talked vivaciously for twenty minutes, while operators reported both lines "busy" and distant people were annoyed and skeptical.

That done, Carlisle went to the upstairs sitting-room, and sat by the fire reading a Christmas magazine, which had come out on Guy Fawkes day, the 5th of November. Presently she slipped off her pumps the better to enjoy the heat: and assuredly there is nothing surprising in that. It is moral certainty that Queens and Empresses (if we knew all) dearly love to sit in their stocking-feet at times, and frequently do so when certain that the princesses-in-waiting and lady companions of the bath are not looking. The telephone interrupted Carlisle twice, but she toasted her arched and silken little insteps well, read three stories, and thought that one of them was quite sweet. Where she got her hands and feet she often wondered. They were so clearly neither Heth nor Thompson. By this time her unwearied mother had gone out to "get in" three or four calls; also an important Charities engagement at Mrs. Byrd's, where Carlisle was to call for her in the car at five o'clock _sharp_, for their visit to the Bellingham. Carlisle now became conscious of a void, and ate five chocolates from a large adjacent box of them, the gift of J. Forsythe Avery. Then she yawned delicately, and picked up "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (by Mrs. Browning); for she, it must be remembered, had a well-rounded ideal, and believed that it was your duty to cultivate your mind. Life isn't all parties and beaux, as she sometimes remarked to Mattie Allen....

There came a knock upon the door, breaking the thread of culture. The seneschal Moses entered, announcing callers, ladies, in the drawing-room. Carlisle sighed; recalled herself to actuality. After glancing at the cards, she conceded the injudiciousness of saying that she was out, and told Moses to announce that she would be down in a moment. She kept the callers waiting twenty moments, however, while, in her own room, she made ready for the street. She was donning a hat which in shape and size was not unlike a man's derby; it was of black velvet, lined under the brim with old-blue, and edged with a piping of dark-brown fur. At a certain point in or on it, there stuck up two stiff straight blue plumes. The hat was simply absurd, wildly laughable and ridiculous, up to the moment when she got it on; then it was seen that it had a certain merit after all. It was a calling-costume (as one believes) that Carlisle assumed for the Bellingham; a blue costume, of a soft material which had been invented only about a month before, and which was silk or satin, according as you looked at it, but certainly did not shine much. The coat, or jacket or wrap, which completed the suit was arresting in design, to say no more of it. Less original were the muff and stole of darkest sable; but they were beautiful.

Carlisle, it need hardly be said, went downstairs in her hat. "Oh," the visiting ladies would say, "but you are going out." "Oh, not for half an hour yet," she would protest. "I'm _so_ glad you came."

About 4.30, J. Forsythe Avery, who had no office hours, was ushered into the stately Heth drawing-room. The lady callers withdrew promptly, but not so promptly as to make it too pointed. It was generally believed at this time that Miss Heth "had an understanding" with Mr. Avery, though it was quite well known that she, personally, much preferred young Robert Tellford. The figure, however, at which a famous life insurance company commanded Robert's undivided services made him a purely academic interest. With J. Forsythe the case was totally different: from the environs of his native Mauch Chunk the Avery forbears had dug principal and interest in enormous quantities.

J. Forsythe remained for twenty minutes, the period named when he had telephoned. Having failed to secure any extension of time, he went away, and Carlisle skipped upstairs to look in the mirror, and put on the concluding touches indicated above. Descending and emerging into the winter sunset, she sent the waiting car on ahead to the Byrds', and set out to do the five blocks afoot. Exercise makes pink cheeks.

It was a splendid afternoon, sharp and clear as a silver bell. Carlisle walked well, especially when one considers the sort of shoes she wore: she had the good free stride of one who walks for the joy of it and not because that is the only conceivable way to get somewhere. Nevertheless, just as she reached the Byrd doorstep, she was overhauled by the Cooneys, her poor but long-stepping relatives. There were only two of them this time, Henrietta and Charles, better known, from one end of the town to the other, as Hen and Chas.

The Cooneys, who were young people of about her own age, greeted Carlisle with their customary simple gaiety. Both exclaimed over her striking attire, Charles adding to his sister:

"Let Uncle Dudley stand next to Cally there, Hen--I'm better-looking than you, anyway."

"I'd like to see a vote on that first. Recognize _mine_, Cally?" cried Hen--"the brown you gave me last fall? First appearance since I steamed and turned it. It'll stand a dye next year, too. But we haven't seen you for a long time, my dear. Did you know Aunt Rose Hopwood's staying with us now?"

"Oh, is she? I hadn't heard, Hen. How is she?"

"She's bad off," said Chas, cheerfully. "Deaf, lame, and cruel poverty's hit her right at her old home address. I guess she'll come live with us later on. Come walk out to King's Bridge for an appetite."

Carlisle, with an impatient foot on the Byrds' bottom step, glanced from Chas to Hen, smiling a little. Her cousins were well-meaning young people, and she liked them in a way, but she often found their breezy assurance somewhat amusing.

"Thank you, Chas," said she, "but I've an engagement with mamma. I'm to pick her up here now. I hope Aunt Molly's well?"

"Fine," said Hen. "Come and see us, Cally. Why don't you come to supper to-morrow night?"

The lovely cousin obviously hesitated.

"Aw, Cally doesn't want to come yell in Aunt Rose Hopwood's trumpet, Hen--"

"Aunt Rose Hopwood's going home to-morrow."

"First I've heard of it. Frankly I doubt your word."

For that Hen idly smote Chas's shins with her silver-handled umbrella (Carlisle's gift three Christmases before), at which Chas cried _ouch_ in such a manner as to attract the attention of bystanders. Henrietta liked this umbrella very much and commonly carried it, like a cane, through all droughts.

"But," said she, reconsidering, "I think Hortense'll be off to-morrow, that's so. Well, come the first soon night you feel like it--"

Carlisle had been doing some considering also, her conscience pricking her on account of the cousinly duty, long overdue.

"I've an engagement to-morrow--so sorry," she said, rather hastily. "But how about one night early next week, say--Thursday, if that would suit--?"

Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And so forth....

Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds' vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys' lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's _tête-à-tête_ with Hugo Canning!