V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

Her daughter's glance upon her was touched with a flash of admiration, the more striking in that she herself was quite unconscious of it.

Exact definition of desire and a simple strength of purpose from which all aims of others bound back stone-dead: what brilliance of genius or quintessence of mother-wit can hope to outdo this immortal combination?

Echo, solitary, answers ...

Mrs. Heth's return to the upper regions, an hour later, trumpeted complete victory. The right note was struck; all was settled. Carlisle, it appeared, had trusted insufficiently to the virtue of the Heth name. Of horrid gossip there had been, at the worst, no more than a bare hint or two, an attenuated suggestion. Malicious as the world was, few, indeed, had dreamed any justification of Dalhousie's blackguardism. Already, it appeared, the hotel rang with objurgations of it, and him. Still, Mrs. Heth had struck the note, and struck hard.

Carlisle was bidden to sleep, after her trying experiences, to regain her poise and color for the evening....

Alone again in the twilight bedroom, the girl snuggled beneath a pretty pale-blue quilt, and absently scrutinized her pink and very shiny little finger nails. After the excitement and strain of the last hour and a half, she felt that she was now at peace. Nothing at all was going to happen. Nobody could say anything the least bit horrid about her, the least bit injurious to her position. She stood exactly where she had stood when she went out for the sail. She was not even going to have chills ...

She decided to dismiss it all from her mind and go to sleep, but her mind for a time refused to come into this agreement. Though that was exactly what she had meant not to do, the girl presently found herself thinking back over the whole occurrence, from the moment when she first saw Dalhousie in the water. In time vague doubts gathered and clouded her perfect brow. She became a little oppressed by the recollection of certain variations between what she had said and really intended to say to her mother upstairs, and what her mother appeared to have said to Rumor downstairs. For instance, she had never said that Dalhousie literally upset her boat, or even that he was exactly in the boat when it upset; and never said that she had screamed again and again for his help when she found herself in the water. No, she had particularly avoided saying those things, for justly angry and excited though she was, she hadn't considered it right to say anything that wasn't strictly true. Mamma just jumped right on ahead, though, paying no attention to what you said.

The whole thing had happened very unfortunately, she saw that clearly now. Of course, she couldn't tell mamma that she and Jack Dalhousie had quarrelled terribly in the boat and he had looked as if he meant to strike her, for then mamma would have asked, How could you have had such a terrible quarrel with a man that somebody barely introduced to you once, a long time ago? And if she had said pointblank, No, I don't think I screamed, mamma would have asked, Why under heaven didn't you scream?--and all this would have meant stopping for a long explanation right there, just when there was so much else to think about, and mamma almost bursting a blood-vessel as it was.

Still, she wished now that it had all been started differently. In the excitement, of course, she had not had time to think out every single thing carefully and definitely. It occurred to her now, after some meditation, that she might simply have said to mamma: "He had frightened me so by getting into my boat, that when I upset and I knew I wasn't going to drown, I didn't want to call him back"....

Darkness crept into the white-and-cherry bedroom. Till now, what with nearly drowning and mamma and everything, she had really thought very little about it from Dalhousie's point of view. Now it came over her, rather dubiously, that what everybody seemed to be saying of him downstairs did put him in quite a disagreeable position. But then, of course, everybody was a little worked up and excited just now. In a day or two they would forget about it, and the whole thing would blow over. Besides, he deserved the severest punishment for the way he had treated her; and as for anything he might say now (though as a gentleman he would hardly say anything and try to blacken a lady's character), of course nobody would listen to him for a minute.