V. V.'s Eyes Part 39

"Stock!" answered papa, with a chuckle. "Mostly Fourth National. There's a little more than fifty thousand dollars there in your hand, Cally."

"But--why, papa!... You don't mean it for _me!_"

"A little weddin' present from your old father. I meant to give it to you next fall, and then I thought, why wait? Had it all put in your name to-day."

"Oh--_papa!_..."

She threw her arms around his neck, suddenly and oddly touched; not so much by the gift, for she would have plenty of money soon, as by this evidence of her father's affectionate thought.

"Your daughter's your daughter till she becomes a wife...." remarked Mr.

Heth. "It won't be that way, will it, Cally, eh?"

"Never in the world.... Oh, papa, how sweet--how _good_--you are to me!..."

"You've got a fine man," said papa, presently, patting her cheek. "But my judgment is it's always just as well for a girl to have a little money of her own. Feels independent. You'll have more when I'm gone, of course. That'll give you a little better'n three thousand a year.

Non-taxable, too."

She reported her new wealth to Hugo, quite proudly, within two hours.

For he had proved willing this evening to purloin night hours from his grave duties as attorney-at-law, and by telephone had easily cajoled Carlisle into breaking an engagement she had made for other society. In the nicest sort of way, Canning agreed that her father had made her a handsome dowry. He added, holding her hand tight, that she was to let him do something for her, too, on their wedding day. Of course she must have her own money; all she could spend.

"I can spend lots, my dear. You'll find me a frightfully expensive young person.... There are cigarettes in the drawer, Hugo. I bought the kind you like, this time...."

She got one for him, struck the match herself. He watched her, loafing lordly; very handsome and dear he looked in his beautiful evening clothes.

And thence, in the lamplit privacy of the little study,--Mr. Heth having fared forth to a Convention "banquet,"--the talk ranged wide. Late in the evening, it returned again to Carlisle, as the possessor of large independent funds, a topic of pleasurable possibilities from her standpoint.

She said idly: "Do you believe it makes you happy to give away money, Hugo? That's a rule I heard somewhere."

"Unquestionably one of the most refined ways known of tickling one's little vanity.... How full of good deeds you are these days. You're thinking of the poor again, I'm right?"

"I must have been. There's n.o.body else who'd take money from you, is there?"

"Oh, isn't there? I must introduce you to high finance some day."

"Well," said Carlisle, "I meant just to give it away--to anybody--just to show how free and superior you are, or something.... Silly, isn't it?

What's your happiness rule, Hugo?"

He replied with the readiness of a man who has been over this path long ago:

"To have the capacity to want things very much, and the ability to get them."

And he squeezed the little hand he held, as if to say that he had both wanted much and gotten much.

Carlisle was much struck with this rule, which she now saw to have been her own and mamma's all their lives long. After duly complimenting Hugo upon it, she said:

"Here's another one, a man told me once: 'Cultivate your sympathies all the time, and do something useful.'"

"That's orthodox! It was a young curate with a lisp who told you, I'll wager."

"Very warm!" she laughed, struck again by his astuteness. "It was your hoodoo--Dr. Vivian! And, oh, now that I think of it, he gave me that other pointer, too,--about giving away money."

Hugo replied: "The man seems to be dripping with wise old saws, in a thoroughly inexpensive sort of way.... Well, we'll show him something about giving away money some day."

He was silent a moment, and Carlisle then remembered her thought of another large subscription to the Settlement, which she, for her part, could easily make now with fifty thousand dollars all her own. But Canning obliterated all such reflections by turning and taking her abruptly in his arms.

"_This_ is what I want to make me happy. Darling--darling!..."

They sat on the shabby old leather lounge which papa had held fast to, by winter and by summer, for thirty years. Here they had sat down soon after eight o'clock, and now the soft-toned chimes in the hall had just sounded eleven-thirty. In the first days of their engagement, Carlisle had observed that Hugo was "very demonstrative." And now, at the end of their loverly evening together, he became suddenly and strangely moved, professing, in a voice unlike his own, his inability to live longer without her. Then, ignoring all their elaborate plannings, he abruptly begged her to marry him in June, as he had first asked her....

"Why, Hugo!" she said, surprised and a little uncomfortable. "That's so much dear foolishness--and not a st.i.tch of clothes made yet! October's just around the corner.... Do sit up, Hugo dear. There's papa, I think."

Hugo sat up. Reason rea.s.serted its sway. But later, Carlisle remembered this moment with a dim sense of trouble, not entirely new.... She wondered with a certain disquiet whether all this was some everlasting difference between men and women, or whether she, Carlisle, was by nature a cold and undemonstrative sort of person? Indeed, there did seem to be a falling short in her somehow; for if not with herself and the expressions of her love, with what was she to return Hugo's royal gifts?...

There were three more days; and then young lovers must say farewell. In little more than a week they would meet again in New York; but still this seemed a real parting to both. It was the 13th of May, the day which marked the end of three weeks of cloudless skies. The rain long predicted by the weather sharps had come in the night, and the dreary downpour continued throughout the day. Each of the young pair seemed somehow conscious that the first chapter in their joint story had reached an end. Better days they might certainly have, but never again days just like these....

"Keep well, dear heart," begged Canning at the last, "and take care of all your loveliness for my sake."

Proud of her beauty he ever was, and especially now when she was so soon to meet his mother in New York. And at the final parting, he said, visibly moved:

"Understand me, Carlisle, you are mine through all eternity. Whatever happens to you or me, this is a love that shall not die."

Saying which, having now lingered to the last possible moment, he dashed from her to his waiting taxicab--his own car having already gone by express--with just five minutes to catch his train.

From the drawing-room window, Carlisle waved her hand to him; kissed it, too, since n.o.body was looking. And then the car leapt forward and shot away out of sight down the glistening street. Hugo was gone, and Carlisle was alone.

She stood at the window, looking out blankly into the leaden wetness. It was just after five, and the rain poured. A curious depression settled quickly upon her, which was hardly fully accounted for as "missing Hugo already."... Why? Who upon earth had less cause for depression than she?

No girl lived with more all-embracing reasons for being superlatively happy. What, then, was the lack in her?--or was this some lack in the terms of life itself? Was it the mysterious law of the world that n.o.body, no matter what she had or did, should ever long keep the jewel happiness unspotted by a doubt?

XVII

Cally crosses the Great Gulf; and it isn't quite Clear how she will ever cross back again.

Baffling questions these, even to young philosophers. Dismissing them as foolish, Cally Heth turned from the rain-swept window, designing to rest awhile in her own room, before dressing for a little dinner at Evey McVey's. Forsaken as she felt, she was yet not unconscious of a certain remote desirability in being alone; that is, in having a little time to herself now. It occurred to her that perhaps she and Hugo had been together rather too constantly in these weeks, going forward just a little too fast....

In the hall she encountered her mother, descending the stairs in mackintosh, hat, and veil. Carlisle looked surprised, but mamma's look under the veil was roguishly dolorous, in reference to the recent farewell.

"Why, mamma, where are you going in all the rain?"

Mrs. Heth replied: "What, no tears!... I'm off to the old Dabney House, my dear--the first time in twenty years--"

"Oh!... The Settlement!"

"I promised Mr. Dayne I would go," said the capable little lady, eyeing her daughter expectantly--"it's the organization meeting and election of officers. The man has got together some excellent people for his committee. And, by the way, Cally--"