Angela's Business

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

The young man hesitated, fractionally, struck with the rattletrap's supreme lack of dignity. Then, with decision, he plucked open the weather-beaten door.

"One seven East Center. And look sharp now!" he ordered, stepping in—"I'm in a hurry. Mind you don't stop for anything!"

"Yassuh! Sutney, suh!" said Walter Taylor, with great enthusiasm, and gave his old nag a prodigious wallop.

So it fell out that, for his first call at the Flowers' since the bridge-party—his party-call, his book-call, and his call about the Kiss—Charles Garrott fared forth in a closed livery hack.

Inside the hack, Charles laughed briefly; and then at once began to react. In the fine afternoon, numbers of people were abroad. Strangers seemed to look with surprise at the apparently able-bodied young man who liked thus to trot around in a hack; chance acquaintances were seen to smile in passing; more than one called out derisive remarks. Charles himself questioned whether his employment of the hack was quite reasonable.... Seemed inconsistent till you stopped to think. Inasmuch as he was going straight to see Angela, why, it might be asked, all this elaborate precaution in advance? Well—there was really no inconsistency there; no, none at all. He was not going to see Angela; he was only going to pay The Call, while she was out in her Fordette—a totally different matter. But this raised fresh questions of consistency: how was he going to hold his position that Angela was just the wife for Donald, if he himself would only go to see her in a hack?... Well, the answer to that was simple enough, too. Donald was a marrying man, while he, Charles (though probably still liked best) emphatically was not. Moreover, Donald was a primitive male, while he, Charles, was a modern.... Or, no, perhaps he wasn't a modern, exactly—but—yes, he was a modern, a true one, while others he could name were only self-centered extremists....

At Gresham Street, the hack turned south, at Center it turned back west. Walter Taylor, up aloft, began to look for his street-number. And then, while Charles still argued uneasily about the spiritual differences between Donald and himself, his eye all at once fell on Donald in the flesh, close by—striding up Center Street homeward on his way from the office he left so early now.

The sight of the youth at this moment was unwelcome to Charles. Instinctively, he sat far back in the hack. But Donald, unluckily turning at the sound of wheels, had caught sight of him; and he stopped stock-still on the sidewalk at once, staring with unaffected interest.

"Well, I'll be darned!" he said, as the carriage came up with him. "Whither away in the sea-going, old top?"

Unwillingly appearing at the window, Charles said: "Well, Donald.... Just driving around."

"Driving!—Thought you must be going to a funeral, at least," said Donald, stepping along to keep up. "Here! Stop the blamed thing! I want to look you over."