Angela's Business Part 43

Tommy's valuable gift had stopped with a hard b.u.mp. Angela did not mind the inconvenience. Her eyes were rewarding her princ.i.p.al friend. Her heart seemed to turn a little within her. Into her cheeks flowed the sweet warm pink.

Together, the two normal young people laughed, suddenly, a little unsteadily. Then, with gayety and some suppressed excitement, they sat discussing an important point, viz.: what to do with their two hours'

holiday, before the later train?

It was quickly decided that they should go home. Angela's Home was the one intended; Donald it was who decided the point, as befitted the man.

He flung out a commanding hand to notify whom it might concern that he purposed to face about, yet again. And the faithful Fordette, which had set forth with so frail a hope, turned and snorted homeward with the great victory of its career.

Angela sat with s.h.i.+ning eyes. She would not have been a woman, she would not have been human but a plaster saint on a pedestal, if her natural happiness had not had the added poignancy of a triumph among her sisters. Just how far Mr. Manford considered himself interested in Miss Carson, she had never yet been able to determine exactly; but that beautiful damsel's position in the scheme of things she, of course, understood perfectly. If her own intuitions had lacked, there were the plain hints Cousin Mary had given her only the other day. Hence, since last week, it was impossible to view Miss Carson other than as a rival, an enemy almost, and one possessing all the odds. For Miss Carson was rich and prominent, with powerful family connections behind and around her, and every possible opportunity and advantage: while she, Angela,--as we know,--had practically not a single rich relation on earth, and not one soul to help her but herself. And still--here was Mr.

Manford at her side.

They stepped up on the verandah of the home; and the girl remembered the anxiety of the afternoon. But, listening as she opened the front-door, she heard from above the distinct murmur of her mother's voice, talking to her father, and knew again, with fresh relief, that all was well. Mr.

Manford having accepted an invitation to stay to supper, she disappeared briefly to confer with Luemma--bribing Luemma with the promise of her old black skirt, in short, to go out and purchase certain extras, in honor of the guest. Returning again, she found her guest standing in the dark hall exactly where she had left him, motionless, a strange absorbed look on his masculine face. And as he met her eyes, there in the dimness by the hatstand, some of the fine color seemed to ebb from his cheek.

They went into the parlor, and sat down on the dented sofa; and her conquest, still, was but part of a day that had belonged to another. But now it quickly became clear that matters had taken a headlong jump, beyond all calculation.

It was, indeed, as if the man himself was profoundly reacted upon by those proofs of his own interest which had so stirred the maiden.

Unknown to any one, he had missed his train and important engagements for nothing else than to be here with this girl: and it was as if the fact of itself thrust her far forward in his imagination, wrapped her about with a new startling significance. Men didn't do these things for any girl that came along. Or, possibly, the heady sensations were but the c.u.mulative results of a slower process, and the friendly vehicle now resting at the door had done its decisive work before to-day. At any rate, Angela soon observed that Mr. Manford's behavior was quite embarra.s.sed and peculiar; and of course, in the womanly way, his manifestations reacted instantly upon her. The more peculiarly interested Mr. Manford showed himself to be in her, the more peculiarly interesting she found him. Stranger still, the more she found him advancing, the more it was in her mind to retreat. Or, no--not in her mind; it was, of course, much deeper than that. This reluctance could be nothing else than the ancient virginal recoil, somehow remembered, strange latter-day reminiscence of old flights through the woods.

Instinctively, Angela talked commonplaces. The man's replies showed that he hardly listened to her. As she recounted how her father had missed a lecture for the first time to-day, he interrupted brusquely:--

"What's that ring you're wearing?"

Oh, that; oh, an old family ring, she explained, that her mother had given her on a birthday once. He must have seen it a dozen of times. Mr.

Manford said, on the contrary, that he had never seen it before in his life. So--was it the voluntary lingering, perhaps, a backward look through the leaves, as it were?--Angela lifted her hand for him to see.

The hand was tightly clasped at once. "Where's that other ring--the one you were going to wear till--you know?" Oh, that one? She had given that one back to the person it belonged to. When? Oh, last week. Why?

Because she knew then that she could never care for him. "Does that mean you know somebody you--you care for more?" She said that _that_ wouldn't mean anything so very much; and thereupon made an effort to withdraw her hand.

"There is a time for lighting a fire; there is a time for leaving it to burn of itself." Put otherwise, Angela saw that Mr. Manford wasn't even glancing at her ring. However, her proper gesture to recover it accomplished no more than her commonplaces. For the cells and tissues of the gentleman, too, harbored ancestral memories, masculine recollections of agreeable old captures. And the touch and cling of the warm soft _her_ had seemed to set them all to singing, drawing him, drawing him.

So far from recovering that hand of hers, in fine, the fleeing maiden abruptly lost possession of the other one.

Thus in the storied way, there approached the second Occurrence on a Sofa. It may have been only the last recoil; it may have been that that other occurrence, fruitless contact with the low ideals of man, had permanently injured the womanly trustfulness. There was, at least, a kind of terror among the mingled sensations, as Angela beheld the second event resistlessly approaching.

"Oh, please!... You mustn't ..."

And--so sardonically does life twine joy with sorrow in its willful tangle--it was as she spoke these words that Mrs. Flower, standing at the head of the dark stairs, first called Angela's name. However, that call died unheard. The mother's voice was low, the daughter, for her part, could be conscious of nothing but that this dear and imperious Mr.

Manford was a very difficult person to resist. Perhaps something in her had been against resistance from the first; but now, over his inconclusive endearments, the pardonable inquiry sighed from her:--

"Oh, why do you do this? Tell me."

Angela's mother stood two steps farther down: "_Angela!... Angela!_"

But Angela, deep in her great business in the world, once again failed to hear the alarmed low summons. Now sweet nearer speech filled her woman's ear. For Mr. Manford, it is welcome to record, did not run, as the cads run, from that artless challenge: he met it ready, like a soldier and a gentleman. That touch of lips softer than a flower had taught this young man, once and for all, what it was he wanted; huskily his voice came from a swelling chest. "I love you!" said Miss Carson's anointed, unmistakably. And then, indeed, the maiden, unaware of all else, let her conquered cheek rest upon her victor's breast: still and awed with the discovery that she loved, and in the same breath thrilled with the knowledge that she was a Successful Girl.

For our ruling pa.s.sions are strong in death: more particularly, of course, when the death in question is not our own....

Yet her moment of exquisite peace was brief enough, poor child. Scarcely had the dearest words been spoken, scarcely had she known her awe and her thrill, when all was s.n.a.t.c.hed from her. That other voice outside, more insistent, struck suddenly in to her unsteadied mind; too quickly, the surrendered cheek lifted. There was a swift upstarting, the abrupt parting of lovers: and after that fear descending, precipitate and dark as a cloud, over the new great joy.

The course of the succeeding hours was never clear in Angela's memory.

There was a rush of unfamiliar and frightening activity. Donald was gone at a run for Dr. Blakie. She herself fled for Mrs. Doremus, on whose judgment her mother much relied. Mysteriously, Mrs. Finchman and poor Jennie appeared, tipping up the steps. Then Mr. Garrott stood suddenly in the hall, with Cousin Mary and Mrs. Wing, all very grave and breathless, they had come so fast. Mr. Garrott must have left very soon; there was nothing for him to do; but Cousin Mary, who had once meant to be a doctor, took charge of everything from the start, and was very helpful. She slept that night in Wallie's room.

At ten o'clock, Donald left her to take Mrs. Wing home; but he, her new comforter, returned directly, in the sweetest way, to say good-night.

Earlier in the evening Donald had dispatched a telegram to Mrs. Kingsley at Hatton, in which he said: "Serious illness in my family prevents coming." The due excuse was strong enough, in all conscience. But the matter had gone beyond illness now.

Thus it was that the strange day, already memorable to Charles Garrott, memorable, too, to Mary Wing, turned past all counting into the unforgettable day of Angela's life. Thus, into the little house in Center Street, life and death came stepping side by side.

After this day, there came another, and another and another: and still it seemed that death overshadowed life, and joy was overwhelmed in grief. The shadow of this first final parting seemed to close down on the young girl's happiness like a cover, and for a s.p.a.ce her engagement was less real to her than the shut office downstairs, the empty seat at the table.

But youth, after all, is made for life, and thereby equipped with a merciful resilience. The pa.s.sage of time, mere use, worked wonders. And Angela's blessing it was, no doubt, that from the beginning she had others than herself to think about, and the need for much activity.

First and foremost, there was Donald, who was with her morning, noon, and night, whose first sight of her in a black dress had moved him almost to tears. It was not fair to the man who had won her that she should give way to a limitless melancholy. Beyond that, loomed the sudden colossal fact of the wedding, which would have to take place almost immediately; for her duty now was to her future husband, and the demands of his work must overcome her girlish shrinkings from such unwonted haste. And a wedding must mean clothes, at all times, and clothes, even at the plainest and simplest, must mean some thought and some diversion.

Insensibly, death turned back to life again. The great confused day of Angela's life was a week old; it was two weeks old; it was three. And winter now was fading from the softening air...

They were the quietest weeks imaginable. Except her mother and her _fiance_, Angela saw no one for days together, not even Mary Wing. For Mary, as it happened, was sick at this time--her first illness in five years, so Mrs. Wing said. She had caught cold, it seemed, in the wet at the funeral, and the cold had developed into quite a serious attack of bronchitis, which kept her in bed two weeks or more. Thus the young couple, in their mourning, were left completely to themselves. In their isolation, in the still little parlor, they were planning at great length about their future, going over and over their new common problems from every possible angle. And the more Angela's fatherlessness was accepted as a permanent fact in the order of the future, the clearer it became that this fact must color and affect everything else.

In chief, this question of the girl's came more and more to the front of the loverly discussions: How could she go off to wild remote Wyoming, now that her mother was a widow?

XXII

It was March now, the mild March of an early spring. There came new days, zephyrous and sweet. All the world seemed to love a lover. But other matters were afoot in the world, too, necessarily: afoot even in the old coterie itself.

Charles Garrott, descending Miss Grace's steps on an afternoon that looked like April and felt like May, thought not of young Romance. What with the groom's absorption, and Mary Wing's unprecedented illness, the old princ.i.p.al friend had, indeed, heard little or nothing of the happy pair through these days. He had accepted the event, long since, once and for all, with fatalistic philosophy; and though the nuptials were now but six days distant, they were far from his mind in this moment, as, his hated tutor's stint done, he turned his long stride hurriedly toward Olive Street.

Charles, as we know, was not a caller. It was true that he had hardly seen Mary Wing since the day when she, the heroine of his write-ups, had so suddenly indicated herself as his larger heroine as well; true also that, in the engrossed and very fruitful solitude of the Studio succeeding, he had thought of her much, bookishly and otherwise. But these facts had not changed the essential nature of Charles. Still he was not a caller; still when he rang people's door-bells, it was morally certain that he had definite matters to urge upon their notice.

And so it was to-day. Charles, in a word, had conceived a new plan for helping Mary.

That she, the admirable, by way of reward for her smas.h.i.+ng denial of the Ego, should find herself fixed for life as a grammar-school teacher, "demoted" and disgraced: this state of things had naturally seemed unendurable to Mary's good friend. That Mary did not need his help, that he recognized her now as competent, in the finest sense, to manage her own affairs henceforward, seemed to have little or nothing to do with the case. Hence, while she lay withdrawn from the battle of life with bronchitis, the helper had been elaborately at work on new lines: stalking School Board members for Mary, in fine, with great cunning. But this plan, unluckily, his fourth and most troublesome, had lately collapsed about his ears. It had cost the young man much valued time, and not a little money for lunches; and the net practical result of it had been to leave him angrily conscious of "influence," mysteriously pervasive, and by no means possessed by him. A friendly disposition toward Mary, personally, seemed to be everywhere joined to an unshakable conviction that she could not hope to get back to the High School before the fall, if then. Such was the fruit of five diplomatic conferences: the sixth had stopped Charles short. Young Dr. Hazen, who was almost as much Mary's representative on the School Board as Senff was Mysinger's, informed him that Mary herself had already canva.s.sed over the Board with him, Hazen, and abandoned all hope in that quarter.

What, indeed, could he do for Mary Wing that she could not do better for herself?

The fifth plan concerned Public Opinion again, and a new use of the gift he had. It inspired less confidence in its author than any that had preceded it. And it was to submit it, in advance, for Mary's discussion and approval, that Charles now presented himself at the Wings' front door.

However, he met with a disappointment. Mary was out. She had gone to the Flowers' soon after luncheon--unexpectedly, it appeared--and, at half-past four, was not yet back. That seemed more or less surprising.

Mrs. Wing, who had answered his ring, looked somewhat concerned, he thought. However, as it was agreed that Mary could not remain with Angela indefinitely, the caller decided, after brief hesitation,--for the Studio allured in these days as never before,--to wait for her.

So he came again into the sitting-room, and Mrs. Wing sat to keep him company. Naturally, there was but one subject for their conversation.

Charles liked Mrs. Wing. She always began every conversation with him by asking: "And how did you find your dear mother on your last visit?"

Mary's mother had never seen his mother, and possibly never would, but (being a frightful sentimentalist) she a.s.sumed that all mothers are dear. It was next her habit to inquire whether Charles had written any stories lately, and why they never saw anything of his in the magazines.

Such things tended to create a bond. And recently the tie had been strengthened by an unusually intimate talk on the subject of Mary, whose surrender of her great prize had, indeed, upset and distressed her mother even more than Charles had predicted.

To-day, again, Mrs. Wing appeared somewhat unlike her usual calm self.