Angela's Business

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

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 assumed 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. She omitted her inquiry about Charles's writing altogether (thus denying him his chance to mention the recent rather gratifying acceptance of Dionysius, no less), and the flattering things she kept saying of Angela had, to his ear, a faintly tentative ring, requiring his confirmation. But his first vague wonder, whether anything could have happened, was soon lost in other reactions. Thus, he had to wince a little in agreeing, once more, that Donald's future wife was a thoroughly "womanly girl." Few authorities enjoy denying the ripe sum of their own best thinking. But a later remark of Mrs. Wing's took a much deeper twist in his mind.

"Really," she said, slowly and dubiously, following a pause, "I have but one fault to find with Donald's choice, and that is—well, frankly, Angela seemed to care so little for Paulie and Neddy Warder.... And Donald was such a goose over them, dear boy."

As he did not see his way clear to replying to that, "I hope you're mistaken, ma'am," Charles merely smiled vaguely, and said nothing. But what he thought, on the delicate implication, was nothing about Angela at all—only that Donald had been rather less of a goose over Paulie and Neddy than Mary Wing had been....

Then the sitting-room clock ticked for a space, while Mrs. Wing communed with herself. And Charles, gazing out into the park, waiting for his friend, thought how it was that a young woman's work—even an extraordinary young woman like Mary—always subtly lacked just that ultimate touch of grim seriousness which justified the "fierce hackings away" of a man. For, as an abstract truth, there was positively no such thing as a Permanent Spinster: and women who were not spinsters, and normally desired Paulies and Neddies of their own, could not possibly fulfill their longings without serious complications to themselves, then and thenceforward. It was no human or escapable "tyranny" that had made Woman, to this degree, to her glory or her disaster, forever the victim of her sex: and, by the same token, fixed the final responsibility for the economic support of the family upon the shoulders of the predestined and uncompromised provider, Man....

Yes, then and thenceforward ... Could you, for example, imagine Mary Wing—who had had chances to marry before now, who might reasonably marry at any time—could you picture Mary packing off her three little darlings to a crèche every morning, that she might go and grow her soul at a desk somewhere? Maybe so; but he wondered....

He was thinking whether he could contrive to discuss the crèche and endowment arguments in his novel—for of course you could make a story carry just a certain amount of "solid stuff," and only dreary prigs of readers would lie still while you tried to feed them forcibly with a spoon—when all at once Mrs. Wing, near by, was heard to strike her hands together, with a little ejaculation.