V. V.'s Eyes Part 88

But Cally merely wanted to propose a table of bridge in the library, he and she against a third and fourth. And papa's changed expression said at once that that was a horse of another color.

"Well, that'd suit me.... Suit me first-rate."

Their evening was so arranged. She warned him gaily to be on his mettle; she would pick up two of the keenest players to be found. Papa, with gathering zest, admitted that practice was what he needed, most particularly as to the bids. Had a rubber at the club Sat.u.r.day night, and Carmichael and those fellows took nine dollars from her old daddy....

"Let's make it a standing engagement, papa--one evening a week, the same table!... Oh, I'd love to!..."

This, too, seemed remarkably suited to her father's whim. A decidedly amiable-looking gentleman he was, with his fresh coloring, spotless waistcoat and fine blond mustaches; a home-loving man, not much used to having parties given for him.

And Cally regarded him with eyes which held new depths of affection. The last moment of the interview yesterday had brought an undreamed development, strangely endearing: her father, in the nicest way, had invited Dr. Vivian to call on him at the Works this afternoon and see the plant for himself. Part of this perfect consummation had been due, without doubt, to Vivian himself, a little, perhaps, to the direction she had artfully given the conversation; but she well knew that most of it had sprung spontaneously from the father-love which had never failed her yet....

"And, Cally, hunt up that book I saw kicking around here last year,"

said Mr. Heth, when he rose. "If we're going to do it at all, we might as well take the thing seriously, and get the bids straight."

"I'll find it, papa. We might read up a little before dinner. I'm awfully rusty."

And then her father stood by her chair, pinching her smooth cheek, looking down at her with an odd expression, half quizzical, half grave and speculative. So she had found him looking at her last night, as she sought to explain to him how different Dr. Vivian was from the articles he wrote, and hated....

"So I'm to be on my company manners with this young man, eh? Ask him won't he please be kind enough to teach an old man how to run his business, that it?"

"I didn't say that, papa dear.... I feel I haven't thanked you half enough for being so sweet to me ... about it all."

"Rather surprised at my sweetness myself.... Well," said Mr. Heth, musing down at the apple of his eye. "There must be something a good deal out of the common about a boy who could get you so worked up about a factory, I'll say that.... And he certainly looks a whole lot better'n he writes."

He quoted something about an old dog's new tricks, kissed her with tenderness, said, "Well, if we come to blows, I'll 'phone you for help,"

and went off humming an air.

For Cally was not to be of the Works party this afternoon. It had stood as an ideal opportunity for the two men's better acquaintance; her presence, she had thought, might only mar it. Now, gazing after her father's departing back, she rather wished she had decided otherwise....

She searched and found So-and-So's "Auction Bridge." A time pa.s.sed: and she was in the big bedroom, making her peace with mamma.

She had supposed the thing to do was simply to go on, as nearly as she could, as if nothing had happened. But when she saw her mother's face, marked as from an illness, she remembered nothing of any plan. She was on her knees by the morris-chair, her arms flung about the strong little figure whose dearest hopes she had spoiled: begging mamma to forgive her for being such a disappointment and failure as a daughter, for seeming so ungrateful and unreasonable, saying that she would do anything, anything to make up for all that had gone amiss.

And mamma, already somewhat propitiated, it had seemed, by the return of the money, said presently, with some emotion of her own, that she would try to regard it as a closed episode. She, with her tireless energies, was not one to cry forever over milk hopelessly spilt. But neither was she one to temper justice with too much mercy, and her final word on the matter was a final one, indeed: "But of course you can never make it up to me, Carlisle, never...." And Carlisle, rising, knew even better than mamma how sad and true this was. There was only one thing that her mother had wanted of her, and that thing she had not done. Life, even on this day of song and mist, was seen to be inexorable....

She was in her room for a little while, and it came to be eleven o'clock: five hours and a half.... While she unwisely lingered there, dreamily irresolute between a walk and a drive, she was summoned to the drawing-room by a call from Mattie Allen, not seen of her since the dinner at the New Arlington last week. Mattie stayed a long time; and before she went--of course--other callers had drifted in....

"Are you going to Sue Louise's bridge to-night?" demanded Mattie, continuing to inspect her with evident curiosity.

"Oh, Mats! I forgot all about it--horrors!... And I've made another engagement!"

"That means you don't want to go, Cally. You know it does...."

Cally confessed to a certain want of enthusiasm; asked her friend if she, too, didn't weary of their little merry-go-round at times. Nothing of the sort, however, would be admitted by Mats, who was now known to be having a really serious try for J. Forsythe Avery.

"Dear," she went on before long, "do you know you seem to be changing _entirely_ lately? And toward me specially.... I--I've wondered a _great_ deal if I've done something to offend you."

Cally embraced her; spoke with rea.s.suring tenderness. And there was compunction in these endearments. She and Mattie had been intimate friends as long as she could remember; and now it had come over her suddenly that it would nevermore be with them quite as it had been before. Must life be this way, that greetings over there would always mean farewells here?...

And then Mats, quite mollified, was speaking in her artless way of Hugo Canning, who had so obviously been on her mind all along.

"People keep asking me," she said, still just a little plaintive, "and I have to say I don't know _one thing_. It makes me so ashamed. They think I'm not your best friend any more."

Cally observed that all that was too absurd. For the rest, she seemed somewhat evasive.

"I feel, dearie," said Mats, "that I _ought_ to know what concerns your life's happiness. You don't know how anxious I've been about you while you were sick...." If there seemed a tiny scratch in that, the next remark was more like a purr: "People say that he did something perfectly terrible, and you threw him over."

"Well, Mats, you know people always get things exactly wrong."

"Then you didn't?" demanded her best friend, with a purely feminine gleam.

And Cally, ardently wis.h.i.+ng to be free of this subject, said gaily that Mr. Canning had thrown _her_ over--the second time, too! So she had told him that she had _some_ spirit, that some day he would do that once too often....

"Oh, you're joking," said Mats, quite pettishly. "Dear, I _don't_ care for jokes."

And then, as she gazed, not without envy, at her friend's profile, so strangely sweet and gay, she exclaimed suddenly in a shocked tone: "I believe you really did do it!"

"Whisper it not in Gath," said Cally, with s.h.i.+ning calm....

It was a belief, so mamma had cried in the midnight, which n.o.body outside of inst.i.tutions for the feeble-minded would ever hold. But Cally was struck only with Mattie's enormous seriousness. Self-reproach filled her for the interval that seemed to lie between them....

"Mats, you know I've never kept secrets from you. I'll tell you everything you want to hear about it, from beginning to end.

Only--not to-day."

The kaleidoscope s.h.i.+fted: Mattie faded out of the purview, and in her stead sat the Misses Winton, who had helped to pa.s.s the time in Europe last year, but whose presence had a contrary effect to-day. And she wondered how they could not see for themselves what a sh.e.l.l of a hostess they were talking at. All her being was so far away from company: one half of her continually flowing back over the months; the rest always going forward to the afternoon, and beyond; nothing at all left here....

Certainly she would tease him a little about the neat way he and papa had dropped her out of the Works. "_And I thought I was the one who was doing it, too_!..."

Callers gone; and then mamma, in the vein of dignity, was inviting her opinion about the color scheme of her luncheon-table. And with what an uprush of affection she responded, what eagerness to help, to be friends again!... And then it was time for her to make ready for luncheon herself. One-thirty o'clock; a long day....

In the May-time, once, Hugo had asked her to name a day, and she had named the seventeenth of October. And now the seventeenth was here, to-day. Her wedding-day it might have been, but for this or that: and behold, her high banquet was laid at the board of the c.o.o.neys, cold corned beef and baked potatoes, with sliced peaches such as turn nicely from the can for an unexpected guest.

Cally was glad to be with her cousins to-day. The simple and friendly atmosphere here was mightily comfortable. Never had they seemed so poor to her, never so fine and merry in their poverty. Her heart went out to them.

They were all well now, the c.o.o.neys, and the table was their clearing-house. There was much talk, of the new Works and other matters; great argument. Two faces were missing: Tee Wee, who pursued his studies at the University, and Chas, who was lunching from a box at his desk, snowed under with work acc.u.mulated during his sickness. In their places, however, sat Cousin Martha Heth, who was described as "very miserable"

with her various ailments, but whose strength at conversation, regarding symptoms, seemed as the strength of ten.

Round Cally the c.o.o.ney talk rattled on; family jokes kept flickering up; strange catchwords evoked unexpected laughter. The woman of all work waited spasmodically upon the table; she proved to be Lugene, none other than the girl Hen and Cally had found on Dunbar Street, that day long ago.... Old times; so, too, when the Major told with accustomed verve how papa, a little shaver then, had brought the note from Aunt Molly down to camp, fifty years ago....

Across the table sat Looloo, the best-looking of all the good-looking c.o.o.neys. She had lucid gray eyes, with the prettiest black lashes; and Cally found herself continually looking at them.... Strange how expressive eyes could be, how revealing, looking things unspoken that influenced one's whole life. Imagine somebody with eyes something like Looloo's, say, to have had totally different ones; small, gla.s.sy black eyes like shoe-b.u.t.tons, for instance, or to have worn thick blue-tinged gla.s.ses, like Evey's grandmother....

A hand waved before her own eyes; a voice of raillery said: "Come back!"

"I'm right here.... What did you say?"

"You were picking flowers ten thousand miles away. 'Cause why? 'Not any, thank you,' isn't the right reply to 'Please give me the salt.'"

"She's in love," said the Major, a gallant in his day.