His face was the picture of deep contrition.

"I _am_ sorry," he said, as only an Englishman can say it, and it always sounds as if he were digging regret up out of his heart with a shovel, "but I have an important engagement that really can not wait--"

"And the General Seth O'Callen Chapter fairly holding its breath to meet you!" she wailed, the despair in her voice so genuine that it was impossible to keep back a smile. "That is our chapter composed entirely of _young_ women, you know, and I'd given their regent my word of honor that you'd be here to-day!"

"Which the Regent has entirely forgotten in the charm of that delightful lecture we've just heard, I'm sure," he answered, his tones regretfully mollifying. "If it were at all possible for me to get word to the man--the men--"

The rest of the fabrication was cut short and drowned out by the shriek of a trolley-car, grinding noisily round a curve of the track at that instant. It was the five-o'clock car, and I had grown to watch for its shriek as fearfully as ever Cinderella listened for the stroke of twelve from the castle clock. For me there was never a garden party without its trolley-car back to the city--its hateful, five-o'clock car--its hurried, businesslike, hungry summons--while ice in tea gla.s.ses tinkled to the echo.

From force of long habit now that grinding sound of the car-wheels acted upon my nervous system like a fire alarm upon an engine horse--and I started to run.

"Charming party--so sorry to have to rush off this way--hope next time I'll not be so busy--yes, I'll tell mother!"

I gathered the folds of copy paper close, having forgotten to thrust them away out of sight into my bag, and made a break for the front gate. Then, as I reached the line of waiting motor-cars, I remembered--and stopped still with a foolish little feeling.

Looking back I saw Mrs. Walker shaking hands in an injured fashion with her troublesome lion--who, after the manner of lions, proved that he could afford anxiety as well after being caught as before,--and turning her back resolutely upon his departing glory.--The whole of the General Seth O'Callen Chapter was before her, I knew she was thinking bitterly.

"Thank goodness she won't see this!" I volunteered to myself, as the tall gray figure came hastily down the line and caught up with me.

"She has troubles enough of her own, and--and she won't stop to wonder over whether I went back to the city by trolley, motor, or chariot of fire!"

CHAPTER VIII

LONGEST WAY HOME

"You hadn't forgotten?" he inquired, coming up behind me with an expression of uneasiness as I pa.s.sed the first two or three cars in the line.

"No--that is, I forgot for only a moment! I'm so used to going to town on this trolley-car."

"Then--ah, here we are--"

The limousine to which I was conducted was a gleaming dark-blue affair, with light tan upholstery, and the door-k.n.o.bs, clock-case and mouth-piece of the speaking-tube were of tortoise-sh.e.l.l.

The chauffeur touched something and the big creature began a softened, throbbing breathing. Isn't it strange how we can not help regarding automobiles as _creatures_? Sometimes we think of them as gliding swans--at other times as fiery-eyed dragons. It all depends upon whether _we're_ the duster, or the dustee.

I gained the idea as I stepped into this present one--which of course belonged to the gliding swan variety--that its master must be rather ridiculously well-to-do--for a cave-man. His initials were on the panels, and the man at the wheel said, "Mr. Tait, sir," after a fashion that no American-trained servant, white, black, or almond-eyed, ever said. Evidently the car had come down from Pittsburgh and the chauffeur had made a longer journey. Together, however, they spelled perfection--and luxury. Still, strange to say, the notion of this man's possible wealth did not get on my throat and suffocate me, as the notion of Guilford's did. I felt that the man himself really cared very little about it all. The idea of his being a man who could do hard tasks patiently did not fade in the glamour of this damask and tortoise-sh.e.l.l.

"Which is--the longest way to town?" he asked in a perfectly grave, matter-of-fact way as we started.

"Down this lane to the Franklin Pike, then out past Fort Christian to Belcourt Boulevard--and on to High Street," I replied in a perfectly grave, matter-of-fact way, as if he were a tubercular patient, bound to spend a certain number of hours in aimless driving every day.

"Thank you," he answered very seriously, then turned to the chauffeur.

"Collins, can you follow this line? I think we drove out this way the day the car came?"

"Oh, yes, sir--thank you," the man declared, slipping his way in and out among the throngs of other vehicles.

Then as we whirled away down the pike I kept thinking of this man--this young Englishman, who had come to America and elevated himself into the position of vice-president and general-manager of the Consolidated Traction Company, but, absurdly enough, no thought of the limousine nor the traction company came into my musings. I thought of him as a spirit--a spirit-man, who had lived in the woods. He had dwelt in a hut--or a cave--and toiled with his hands, hewing down trees, burning charcoal, eating brown bread at noon. Then, at dusk, he laid aside his tools, rumbling homeward in a great two-wheeled cart, whistling as he went, but softly--because he was deep in thought.

The seven _ages_ of man are really nothing to be compared in point of interest with the different conditions of mind which women demand of them.

Very young girls seek about--often in vain--for a man who can compel; then later, they demand one who can feel; afterward their own expansion clamors for one who can understand--but the final stage of all is reached when the feminine craving can not be satisfied save by the man who can _achieve_.

This, of course, indicates that the woman herself is experienced--sometimes even to the point of being a widow--but it is decidedly a satisfying state of mind when it is once reached, because it is permanent.

And your man of achievement is pretty apt to be an uncomplicated human. His deepest "problem" is how to make the voices of the nightingale and alarm clock harmonize. For he is a lover between suns--and a _laborer_ during them.

At Solinski's j.a.panese tea-room in Union Street, the limousine slowed up. The band was playing _The Rosary_ as we went in, for it was the hour of the afternoon for the professional seers and seen of Oldburgh's medium world to drop in off the sidewalks for half an hour and dawdle over a tutti-frutti. The ultra-sentimental music always gets such people as these--and the high excruciating notes of this love-wail were ringing out with an intense poignancy.

"Each hour a pearl--each pearl a prayer--"

"Which table do you prefer?" my companion asked me, but for a moment I failed to answer. I was looking up at the clock, and I saw that the hands were pointing to six. I had met Maitland Tait at four!--Thus I had two pearls already on my string, I reckoned.

"Oh, which table--well, farther back, perhaps!"

I came down to earth after that, for getting acquainted with the caprices of a man's appet.i.te is distinctly an earthly joy. Yet it certainly comes well within the joy cla.s.s, for nothing else gives you the comfortable sense of possession that an intimate knowledge of his likes and dislikes bestows.

Just after the "each-hour-a-pearl" stage you begin to feel that you have a _right_ to know whether he takes one lump or two! And the homely, every-day joys are decidedly the best. You don't tremble at the sounds of a man's rubber heels at the door, perhaps, after you're so well acquainted with him that you've set him a hasty supper on the kitchen table, or your fingers have toyed with his over the dear task of baiting a mouse-trap together--but he gets a dearness in this phase which a pedestal high as Eiffel Tower couldn't afford.--It is this dearness which makes you endure to see Prince Charming's coronet melted down into ducats to buy certified milk!

"And what are--those?" Maitland Tait asked, after the tea-service was before us, and I had poured his cup. He was looking about the place with a frank interest, and his gaze had lighted upon a group of marcelled, manicured manikins at a near-by table. They were chattering and laughing in an idly nervous fashion.

I dropped in two lumps of sugar and pa.s.sed him his cup.

"They are wives," I answered.

"What?"

"Just wives."

Being English, it took him half a second to smile--but when he did I forgave him the delay.

"_Just_ wives? Then that means not mothers, nor helpmeets, nor--"

"Nor housekeepers, nor suffragettes, nor saints, nor sinners, nor anything else that the Lord intended, nor apprehended," I finished up with a fierce suddenness, for that was what Guilford wanted me to be.

"They're _just_ wives."

He stirred his tea thoughtfully.

"That's what I find all over America," he said, but not with the air of making a discovery. "Men must work, and women must _eat_."

"And the sooner it's over the sooner to--the opera," I said.

He looked at me in surprise.

"Then you recognize it?" he asked.