Angela's Business Part 7

"You don't know how nice it is," she laughed, a tinge of color in her smooth cheeks, "to see a familiar face, after blocks and blocks of strangers. And you're almost the only person I know, too!"

Suiting his long stride to hers, he a.s.sured her that this state of affairs would pa.s.s quickly.

"I got only a glimpse of you yesterday," he pursued. "Do you take your const.i.tutionals at this time, too?"

But she said, elusively, that she took them at all sorts of times.

"It's my chief form of recreation at present, you see! But--I thought I might meet father up here--it's his time for coming home to lunch from the college. Only I seem just to miss him every day."

He and the Womanly Woman walked a good half-mile together that day, and the authority enjoyed himself thoroughly. It was in the course of this walk that he evolved another phrase of scientific justification, viz.: "The Business of Supplying Beauty and Supplying Charm."

The talk turned naturally upon the girl herself. Having failed to get any biography from the embattled Miss Wing, Charles proceeded to the source. Under his agreeable, yet artful promptings, Miss Angela sketched with a charming simplicity the story of a commonplace family life: how she and her brothers had grown up at Hunter's Run, a crossroads post-office four miles from Mitch.e.l.lton; how they had moved into Mitch.e.l.lton, which had seemed like heaven at first, but had palled after seven years; how all the boys of Mitch.e.l.lton grew up and went away, one by one, to make their marks in the world (though there was one exception, it seemed, a Mr. Dan Jenney, who was still in Mitch.e.l.lton--Aha! thought Charles); how lonely she was after Tommy, her older brother, had thus gone away; how her father had had quite a large practice in Mitch.e.l.lton, but didn't seem much interested in getting patients here; and so on. Tommy, it was learned, had married money in Pittsburg, but appeared to be happy all the same. As for the younger brother, Wallie, his ambition was to go to college and be an electro-chemist, and he was now at work downtown, gathering funds for that purpose. Mary Wing had got him a position, it seemed.

Miss Angela's conversation, as has been noted, was not remarkable as conversation. But what mattered that? Into an atmosphere too heated by the Trevennas of this Unrestful world, her girlish unsophistications blew like a primrose zephyr. Moreover, she had her moments, you may be sure; her vivacities as honest as wit. She said that Mitch.e.l.lton was like a town in war-time.

"That's the way a man described it to me once, a surveyor from the North, when he'd only been there three hours! He declared he hadn't seen a male between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five. They'd all gone off, you see--"

"And then the surveyor went off, too?"

"He did!--exactly! Hopped on a funny little calico pony he had, the minute he said that, and trotted off down Main Street. We never saw him again."

Charles, laughing, looked down at her. She wore a plain blue suit and a simple hat with a yellow quill, obviously inexpensive both, and not new.

She was characterized, sartorially, only by that un.o.btrusive yet exquisite neatness whose practice some women bring to a fine art. Pretty and sweet she looked, none the less; feminine, too, without a doubt.

And, quite unconsciously, she was giving by piecemeal an answer to that fundamental question of her Modern critics, How do you spend your time?

A considerable part of Miss Angela's time went, it seemed, to the actual care of the house. With her leisure she really had little to do as yet, because of her lack of acquaintance. Even the table of bridge with Cousin Mary had not developed so far. She walked a great deal, usually alone, but mentioned having met Mr. Manford the other day; the impression was left that she and Donald hadn't specially taken to each other. She kept her mother company; she often went into the shops, "just looking"; once or twice she and Wallie had been to the moving-picture shows. She read also, it seemed, for she had just finished "Marna"--a gift to her, this was--a certain late New Woman novel which Charles himself meant to give an hour to some day. Her account of her domestic business the old-fas.h.i.+oned girl concluded thus:--

"I don't know very much about housekeeping yet, but I do the best I can.

I think mother enjoys the rest."

And whatever criticism narrow utilitarians might have brought against her management of her fifteen hours a day seemed to be morally destroyed by that unconscious stroke. _Mother enjoys the rest._ Imagine Miss Hodger, for instance,--to come no nearer home,--casually mentioning: "I don't want to do this, but I will. I want to go there, but I won't."

"Why, Miss Hodger?" you would ask her. "Why must you mutilate your Ego thus?" "Well,"--you are to fancy Miss Hodger saying,--"you see, I think mother'd enjoy the rest!"

But the girl herself remained delightfully unconscious of the reactions she set in motion.

"Mr. Garrott," she said suddenly,--"I hope you don't mind my asking, but--when are you going to have some stories coming out? I'm crazy to read one of them!"

"Oh!" laughed Mr. Garrott. "Well!--I can't say definitely, at the moment. I'm trying," he said, modestly, "to write books, you know, and it's a slow business, with the little free time I have. My first one, that I've just finished, took me four years."

"Four years! How wonderful! But isn't it going to come out soon?"

"I'm--ah--negotiating with a publisher now."

"It must be fascinating! I--I never knew an author before."

He warmed, expanding.

At the parting of their ways, these two paused, talking like old friends; and no parting took place here, after all. Angela said, with a charming hesitancy: "Mr. Garrott, if you really want to read that book,--'Marna', I mean,--I wish you'd let me lend it to you. We've finished with it--for good!--and if you have time to stop a minute--"

And he, who never called, who had a special rule against borrowing things from ladies, restored his hat to his head at once, accepting with pleasure.

So they turned out of Was.h.i.+ngton Street toward Center, and she continued, with a laughing, sidelong glance:--

"Do you know who _Marna_ reminded me of? Quite a friend of yours!--somebody you admire a great deal!"

Knowing the nature of the book well from the reviews he was incessantly reading, the young man smiled: "I wonder if you can possibly be alluding to one of your most distinguished cousins."

"It did, just a little! At first, I mean--where Marna goes away to lead her own life, and everything.... Mr. Garrott, do you think she's really going to take the position in New York, Cousin Mary, I mean?"

"Take it! Why, of course she will, provided she can get it! It would be a remarkable thing for such a young woman, and a great opportunity besides."

This the girl seemed to understand. She remarked, however, that Cousin Mary and Mrs. Wing seemed so wrapped up in each other. Her extreme domesticity was peculiarly refres.h.i.+ng to Charles just now; nevertheless, he now took up the cudgels for Modernity, though in the gentlest way: Why should not daughters have the same right to leave home for work that the sons of Mitch.e.l.lton had, for example? Daughters had always left homes for another reason. Suppose _Marna_ had married the first whippersnapper that came along, and he had carried her off to Australia, etc.

But Miss Angela seemed to feel that, for her part, she would look long at any lover who wished to separate her from her mother.

Center Street, at this point, was a place of car-tracks, cobblestones, and threatening small establishments of those personal sorts which are always first to appear in a waning "residence district." At the corner stood a Human Hair Goods Works. The Flower house was not intrinsically pretty. It was one of a block of six, all just alike and evidently built some time ago; rather dingy little brick houses, with weather-beaten small verandahs set only a step or two above the sidewalk, and scantily separated from it by gra.s.sless "lawns." However, Charles was not repelled by poverty, to which he had been well used.

Within, he had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angela's father, who was encountered in the hall, in the act of removing his overcoat. Angela left the two men together, while she tripped upstairs to get "Marna."

Charles found the medical father a decidedly queer individual. A very tall, thin, seedy man he was, with a neglected sandy mustache, and a long neck punctuated with a very large Adam's apple, which he jerked with a sort of nervous twitch as he talked. With his l.u.s.terless eye and spare, remote manner, he looked like a man who had let himself dry up from within. Yet, if Charles remembered aright, the Medical School had counted this gentleman a distinct acquisition.

He a.s.sured Dr. Flower that he had long desired this pleasure, and explained:--

"Your cousin, Miss Wing, is an old friend of mine."

"My wife's cousin," said the Doctor, seeming to make a distinction.

"Quite so! Certainly!"

"I believe it was she who first brought the Medical School to your attention?"

"Ah, yes! I fancy it was. Quite so. Have a cigar, will you? However,"

continued the father, jerking his long neck, "you don't offer that as something to be urged against her, I a.s.sume?"

The young man, though surprised, smiled politely.

"Possibly you're no more enthusiastic about teaching than I am, say?"

"Ah, well!... It wants excitement, you maintain?--lacks the spice of brilliant variety? You find no romance in it, you suggest? Well--"

Dr. Flower fell silent, brus.h.i.+ng his hat with the sleeve of his worn coat, while he stared cheerlessly at nothing. Charles wondered at him, with a certain sense of mild mystery. If he felt that way about teaching, why had he thrown over his practice and left Mitch.e.l.lton?

"I believe," said he, with discretion, "your--that is, Mrs. Flower's cousin, Mary Wing, is the only teacher I ever knew who could really be called a 'fan.'"

"Quite so. You won't have a cigar, you said? But even in that case, it doesn't amount to a complete exhaustion of the energies, you would feel?

You'd contend there's an unused store for other enterprises, even there?"

"Quite so," said Charles, considerably puzzled.

But then Miss Angela came skipping and smiling down the narrow stairs, book in hand, and slipped her arm through her father's. She said that Mr. Garrott could keep "Marna" as long as he liked, but that she would be _so_ interested to hear what he thought of it. The trio stood chatting a moment together.