Carlisle loafed and invited her soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, charmingly framing her face....
While the Beach episode itself was now long since closed and done with, it was not unnatural that the memory of Dalhousie's friend, the Mr. Vivian, should have remained in Carlisle's mind, for Mr. Vivian had addressed such words to her as had never before sounded upon her ears. These words had clung by their sheer astounding novelty. To have God petitioned to pity you by a shabby nobody in a pictorial tie: here was an experience that invited some elucidation. For a time the girl's thoughts had attacked the nobody's sincerity: he was merely failure pretending to despise success. But, not ungifted at self-suasion though she was, she had not seemed to find solid footing here; and she had early been driven irresistibly to quite a different conclusion. Evidently this man Mr. Vivian was a queer kind of street-preacher type, victim of a pious mania which rendered him dangerously unsound in the head. This, obviously, was the truth of the matter. On no other theory could his pitying her be satisfactorily explained.
It was true that, with the dying down of her own sense of vague ambient perils, she herself had come once more to feel dreadfully sorry for Jack Dalhousie, and even to admit in her meditations that she could have afforded to be more magnanimous in defending him from gossip. But then that did not at all change the fact that Dalhousie deserved the severest punishment for all the trouble and worry he had brought her. It clearly was not right, was not moral, to make things too easy for wrongdoers. She had gradually come to see herself as a custodian of the moral law in this quarter, a tribunal of justice which, while upholding the salubriousness of punition, yet strives to keep as large and generous as it can.
Therefore it followed as the night the day that Mr. Vivian, who could work himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of sane, wholesome people.
Still, in lengthening retrospect, Carlisle had become quite dissatisfied with the manner in which she had permitted the summer-house interview to terminate. It was somewhat galling to recall the tameness with which she had allowed a Shouting Methodist such a last word as that, entirely unreproved. Because unreproved, the staggering word had stuck fast; in spite of all efforts, it remained as a considerable irritation in the background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the opinions of such as he. And then, at other times, she decided that it might be best simply to ignore the man altogether, turning her back with dignity, after perhaps one look such as would completely show him up. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say....
She rose, in excellent spirits, shortly after noon, and began an unhurried toilet. The toilet was so unhurried, indeed, that she had hardly finished and descended to the family sitting-room on the second floor when her father's latch-key was heard clicking in the front door. This sound was the unofficial luncheon-gong. The House of Heth proceeded to the dining-room, where Mr. Heth kissed his daughter's cheek in jocund greeting.
"Good-afternoon, Cally! And you just up--well, well! Times have changed--
"'Early to bed, early to rise--
That makes us all healthy,
Wise and wealthy--'
"That was my father's rule, and Lord, he kept us to it...."
Mrs. Heth, already seated, bit her lip slightly, which seemed to confer prominence upon her little mustache. Her consort's habit of quoting, and especially of misquoting, was trying to her, but she now knew it to be incurable, like her daughter's occasional mannerism. She sat as usual rather silent, plotting out the next few hours of her busy time, her remarks being chiefly of a superfluous managerial nature to that thoroughly competent African, Moses Bruce.