In which Catty tells a Certain Person that she isn’t
Happy-very.

The question recurred next day. The strange ubiquity of the nephew persisted. When Carlisle called about noon to “inquire” after her respected neighbor, who had lain four weeks in mysterious coma, her ring was answered and the door opened by young Dr. Vivian. He had seen her coming, through the window.

“Oh!-good-morning, Miss Heth!” said he, in a manner indicating the experiment of pleased surprise, tempered with a certain embarrassment.... “What a glorious day outdoors, isn’t it?-almost spring.... Won’t you come in?”

Miss Heth replied, as she would have replied to the housemaid (who, indeed, could herself be spied just then, pausing, down the dimness of the hall):

“Good-morning. No, I stopped to ask how Mr. Beirne is to-day. We hope there is better news?”

The young man stepped at once out into the vestibule.

“Oh! That’s kind of you,” said he, his pleasure gaining strength. “I’m happy to say that there is,-the best news. He’s going to get well.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” replied Miss Heth....

If, in despite of herself, there was a trace of stiff self-consciousness in her voice and air, how was she to be blamed for that? There is a breaking-point for even the most “finished” manner, and the sight of this man to-day was like a rough hand on a new wound. A great wave of helplessness had broken over her, as the opening door revealed his face: how could you possibly avoid the unavoidable, how destroy the indestructible? And it seemed that, since yesterday, he had robbed her of her one reliable weapon....

The tall young man pushed back his light hair. He was smiling. The mild winter sun streamed down upon him, and his face looked worn, as if he wanted sleep.

“We had a consultation this morning-three doctors,” he went on, in the friendliest way. “They’re sure they’ve found out where the trouble is. A little operation, of no difficulty at all-I’ve done it myself, once in the hospital!-and he’ll be walking the street in a fortnight.”

“That is good news, indeed. We have been so-sorry about his illness.”

“Thank you-it’s a tremendous relief to me, of course. He seemed so very ill last night....”

Standing under his eye in the tiled vestibule, Carlisle produced, from her swinging gold case, not her card, but those of Mr. and Mrs. B. Thornton Heth, and extended them in a gloved hand.

“May I leave these?” she said, with the reemergence of “manner.” “My mother and father will be delighted to learn that Mr. Beirne is soon to be well again.”

“That’s very kind. I know my uncle would be-will be-much gratified by your interest and sympathy.”

Who shall know the heart of a woman? The thing was done, the inquiry over. The most punctilious inquirer could have bowed now, and walked away down the steps. Cally imperceptibly hesitated.

She had four times met this man, and he had three times (at the lowest computation) driven her from his presence. That thought, unsettling in its way, had leapt at her somewhere in the night: she had sought to drape it, but it had persisted somewhat stark. And now had not he himself taught her, by that hateful apology which seemed to have settled nothing, that there were subtler requitals than by buffets upon the front?...

The pause was psychological purely, well covered by the card-giving. Words rose to Cally’s tongue’s tip, gracious words which would show in the neatest way how unjust were this man’s opinions of her and her family. However, the adversary spoke first.

“I’m so glad to-to see you again, Miss Heth,” he began, with a loss of ease, twirling the B. Thornton Heth cards between long thin fingers-“to have the opportunity to say.... That is-perhaps you’ll let me say-you mustn’t think the Works are so-so disappointing as perhaps they may seem, just at first sight. You know-”

Her flushing cheeks stopped him abruptly; and she had not usually found him easy to stop.

“But I didn’t think they were disappointing at all! Not in the least!”

The young man’s eyes fell.

“Oh!” he said, with noticeable embarrassment. “I-only thought that possibly-as you-you had not happened to be in the factory district for-for some time,-that possibly you might be just a little surprised that things weren’t-well, prettier. You know, business-”

“But I wasn’t surprised at all, I’ve said! I knew exactly what it was like, of course. Just exactly. And I consider the Works-very pretty ... for a factory.”

She gazed up at him indignantly from beneath a little mushroom hat lined with pink, challenging him to contradict her by look or word. But he swallowed her dare without a quiver.... Good heavens, what girl worth her salt would endure apologies on behalf of her own father, from one so much, much worse than a stranger to her? It may be that V. Vivian liked the lovely Hun the better for that lie.

“Well,” he said, compounding the felony with a gallant gulp, “I-I’m glad you weren’t disappointed-”

She could certainly have retired upon that with all the honors, but the fact was that the thought of doing so did not at the moment cross her mind. She found the conversation interesting to a somewhat perilous degree.

“I suppose your idea is,” she said, and it showed her courage that she could say it, “that a factory ought to be a-a sort of marble palace!”

“No. Oh, no. No-”

“But it is your idea, is it not, that it’s my father’s duty to take his money and build a perfectly gorgeous new factory, full of all sorts of comforts and luxuries for his work-girls? That is your idea of his duty to the poor, is it not?...”

There it was, the true call: what ear could fail to catch it? Out they came running from the city again, the old scribes with new faces; pouring and tumbling into the wilderness to ask a lashing from the grim voice there.... Only, to-day, it must have been that he did not hear their clamors. Surely there was no abhorrence in these eager young eyes....

“Well-personally, I don’t think of any of those things just as a-a duty to the poor-exactly.”

“Oh! You mean it’s his duty to himself, or something of that sort? That sounds like the catechism.... That is what you meant, is it not?”

“Well, I only meant that-I think we might all be happier-if ...”

An uproar punctuated the strange sentence. Mr. Beirne’s butler had chosen to-day to take in coal, it seemed; a great wagon discharged with violence at precisely this moment. Two shovelers fell to work, and an old negro who was washing the basement windows at the house next door, the Carmichaels’, desisted from his labors and strolled out to watch. It was the most interesting thing happening on the block at the moment, and of course he wanted to see it.

Carlisle stared at Mr. Beirne’s nephew, caught by his word.

“Oh!...” said she. “So you think my father would be much happier if he stripped himself and his family to provide Turkish baths and-and Turkish rooms for his work-girls? I must say I don’t understand that kind of happiness. But then I’m not a Socialist!”

She said Socialist as she might have said imp of darkness. However, the young man seemed unaware of her bitter taunt. He leaned the hand which did not hold the cards against a pilaster in the vestibule-side, and spoke with hurried eagerness:

“I don’t mean that exactly, and I-I really don’t mean to apply anything to your father, of course. I only mean-to-to speak quite impersonally-that it seems to me the reason we all follow money so hard, and hold to it so when we have it, is that we believe all along it’s going to bring us happiness, and that ... After all-isn’t it rather hard ever to get happiness that way? Perhaps we might find that the real way to be happy was just in the other direction. That was all I meant.... Don’t you think, really,” the queer man hurried on, as if fearing an interruption, “it stands to reason it’s not possible to be happy through money? It’s so segregating, it seems to me-it must be that way. And isn’t that really just what we all want it for?-to make a-a sort of little class to ourselves, to wall ourselves off from the rest-from what seems to be-life. It elevates in a sense, of course-but don’t you think it often elevates to a-a sort of rocky little island?”

They seemed to be personal words, in despite of his exordium, and V. Vivian boggled a little over the last of them, doubtless perceiving that he was yielding fast to his old enemy (as indicated to O’Neill) and once more being too severe with these people, who after all had never had a chance....

Cally looked briefly away, up the sunny street. She raised a white-gloved hand and touched her gay hair, which showed that, though she hesitated, she was perfectly at ease. She had just been struck with that look suggestive of something like sadness upon the man’s face, which she had noticed that night in the summer-house. She herself was inclined to connect this look with his religiosity, associating religion, as she did, exclusively with the sad things of life. Or did it come somehow from the contrast between his shabby exterior and that rather shining look of his, his hopefulness incurable?...

She replied, in her modulated and fashionable voice: “I don’t agree with you at all. I’m afraid your ideas are too extraordinary”-she pronounced it extrord’n’ry, after Mr. Canning-“for me to follow. But before I go-”

“They do seem extraordinary, I know,” broke from him, as if he could not bear to leave the subject-“but at least they’re not original, you know.... I think that must be just the meaning of the parable of the rich young man.-Don’t you, yourself?”

“The parable of the rich young man?”

She looked at him with dead blankness. Passers-by hopped over the coal-hole and glanced up at the pair standing engrossed upon the doorstep. Such as knew either of them concluded from their air that Mr. Beirne was worse again this morning.

V. Vivian’s gaze faltered and fell.

“Just a-a little sort of story,” he said, nervously-“you might call it a little sort of-allegory, illustrating-in a way-how money tends to-to cut a man off from his fellows.... This man, in the sort of-of story, was told to give away all he had, not so much to help the poor, so it seems to me, as to-”

“I see. And of course,” she said, vexed anew-how did she seem always to be put at a disadvantage by this man, she, who could put down a Canning, alas, only too easily and well?-“of course that’s just what you would do?”

“What I should do?”

“If you had a lot of money, of course you would give it all away at once, for fear you might be cut off-segregated-rocky island-and so forth?”

To her surprise, he laughed in quite a natural way. “Uncle Armistead, who’s usually right, says I’d hang on to every cent I could get, and turn away sorrowful.... Probably the only reason I talk this way is I haven’t got any.... That is-except just a-a little income I have, to live on....”

No doubt he said this hypocritically, self-righteous beneath his meekness, but Cally was prompt to pounce on it as a damning confession. She flashed a brilliant smile upon him, saying, “Ah, yes!-it’s so much easier to preach than to practice, isn’t it?”

And quite pleased with that, she proceeded to that despoiling of him she had had in mind from the beginning:

“Before I go, I started to tell you just now, when you interrupted me, that I was in rather a hurry yesterday, and didn’t have time to-to say to you what I meant to say, to answer your request-”

“Oh!” said he, rather long drawn-out; and she saw his smile fade. “Yes?”

“I meant to say to you,” she went on, with the same “great lady” graciousness, “that I shall of course speak to my father about the girl you say was unjustly dismissed. It’s a matter, naturally, with which you have nothing to do. But if an injustice has been done by one of his subordinates, my father would naturally wish to know of it, so that he may set it right.”

The little speech came off smoothly enough, having been prepared (on the chance) last night. For the moment its effect seemed most gratifying. The young man turned away from her, plainly discomfited. There was a small callosity on the pilaster adjacent to his hand, and he scratched at it intently with a long forefinger. Standing so, he murmured, in the way he had of seeming to be talking to himself:

“I knew you would ... I knew!”

She disliked the reply, which seemed cowardly somehow, and said with dignity: “It’s purely a business matter, and of course I make no promises about it at all. If there has been any injustice, it was of course done without my father’s knowledge. I have no idea what he will do about it, but whatever he decides will of course be right.”

The man turned back to her, hardly as if he had heard.

“The trouble is,” he said, in an odd voice, harder than she had supposed him to possess, “I didn’t trust you. I-”

“Really that’s of no consequence. I’m not concerned in it at-”

“I was sure all the time you would-be willing to do it,” he went on, in the same troubled way. “I was sure. And yet last night I went off and spoke to somebody else about it-a man who has influence with MacQueen-John Farley-a-a sort of saloonkeeper. Corinne is back at work this morning.”

The girl struggled against an absurd sense of defeat. She wished now-oh, how she wished!-that she had gone away immediately after giving him mamma’s and papa’s cards....

“Oh!” she said, quite flatly.... “Well-in that case-there is no more to be said.”

But there he seemed to differ with her. “I’d give a good deal,” he said slowly, “if I’d only waited.... Could you let me say how sorry I am-”

“Please don’t apologize to me! I’ve told you before that I-I detest apologies....”

“I was not apologizing to you exactly,” said V. Vivian, with a kind of little falter.

“I-haven’t anything to do with it, I’ve said! It’s all purely a business matter-purely!” And because, being a woman, she had been interested in the personal side of all this from the beginning, she could not forbear adding, with indignation: “I can’t imagine why you ever thought of coming to me, in the first place.”

“Why I ever thought of it?” he repeated, looking down at her as much as to ask whom on earth should he come to then.

“If you had a complaint to make, why didn’t you go direct to my father?”

“Ah, but I don’t know your father, you see.”

“Oh!... And you consider that you do know me?”

The man’s right hand, which rested upon the pilaster, seemed to shake a little.

“Well,” he said, hesitatingly, “we’ve been through some trouble together....”

Then was heard the loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did not. Cally Heth’s white glove rested on Mr. Beirne’s polished balustrade, and her piquant lashes fell.

She desired to go away now, but she could not go, on any such remark as that. Staying, she desired to contradict what the alien had said, but she could not do that either. The complete truth of his remark had come upon her, indeed, with a sudden shock. This man did know her. They had been through trouble together. Only, it seemed, you never really got through trouble in this world: it always bobbed up again, waiting for you, whichever way you turned....

And what did this lame stranger have to do with her, that, of all people on earth, his eyes alone had twice seen into her heart?...

She looked suddenly up at him from under the engaging little hat, and said with a smile that was meant to be quite easy and derisive, but hardly managed to be that:

“Supposing that you do know me, as you say, and that I came to you to prescribe for me-as a sort of happiness doctor.... Would you say that to give away everything I had-or papa had-would be the one way for me to be-happy?”

“Happy?...”

He curled and recurled the corners of the Heth cards, which did not improve their appearance. He gazed down at the work of his hands, and there seemed to be no color in his face.

“To be happy.... Oh, no, I shouldn’t think that you-that any one-could be happy just through an act, like that.”

“I could hardly give away more than everything all of us had, could I?”

“Well, but don’t you think of happiness as a frame of mind, a-a sort of habit of the spirit? Don’t you think it comes usually as a-a by-product of other things?”

“Oh, but I’m asking you, you see.... What sort of things do you mean?”

He hesitated perceptibly, seeming to take her light derisive remarks with a strange seriousness.

“Well, I think a-a good rule is to ... to cultivate the sympathies all the time, and keep doing something useful.”

Carlisle continued to look at his downcast face, with the translucent eyes, and as she looked, the strangest thought shimmered through her, with a turning of the heart new in her experience. She thought: “This man is a good friend....”

And then she said aloud, suddenly: “I am not happy-very.”

She could not well have regarded that as a Parthian shot, a demolishing rebuke. Nevertheless, she turned upon it, precipitately, and went away down the steps.

These events took place, in the course of ten minutes upon a doorstep, on the 31st of January. On the 27th of February, Carlisle departed, from the face of her mother’s displeasure and all the horridness of home, for her Lenten visit to the Willings. Through the interval the dreariness of life continued; Canning was reported in Cuba; she had abandoned all thought of a little note. The nephew she saw no more; but it chanced that she came to hear his name on many lips. For on the cold morning of the birthday of the Father of his Country, old Armistead Beirne, whom three doctors had pronounced all but a well man, was found dead in his bed: and a few days later, by the probation of his will, it became known that of his fortune of some two hundred thousand dollars, he had left one-fifth to his eccentric nephew in the Dabney House.