V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

A peal of triumph from the rear room indicated that Major Cooney had reached the king-row in the teeth of bitter opposition. The peal came from Looloo, who should have been reading "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" with a big dictionary instead of hanging over her father's shoulder. Footsteps above suggested that Chas and Aunt Molly were making a careful toilet indeed for his call upon the obscure inamorata.

In the Cooney parlor, the two girls looked at each other. Carlisle tried hard to stare Hen down, and failed. In this moment she felt that she positively disliked her commonly negligible cousin. She had proved and re-proved to her own almost complete satisfaction that the man who had spoken the affronting words to her in the summer-house was a virulent religious fanatic, or (since she had read the piece) a crazy Socialist, like the man who had thrown the brick at papa, or both; almost certainly both. She was, it might be said, deeply and irrevocably committed to these beliefs: they settled and explained everything, and no more need to think or worry. It was simply not to be endured that Henrietta Cooney should cheekily sit there and try to unsettle everything, pretending....

"But understand me, Cally," Henrietta was saying, with provoking calm. "Of course I didn't like that letter a bit. You see--Heth wasn't any more than a name to V.V., a sort of symbol, when he wrote it. But I think it was a mistake all through, and I scolded him well at the time--"

"Oh, did you?" said Cally, her cheeks very pink. "I imagined you thought it perfectly precious of him to call papa a shameless homicide."

"Why, you know I never thought anything of the sort, Cally dear," answered Hen....

She seemed surprised by the signs of her cousin's displeasure (which really did seem excessive for a business controversy nearly two months old) and went on in what was evidently intended to be quite a soothing manner:

"You know, men are always hammering each other over things like this--it's really not nearly so awful as it sounds!... And honestly, Cally, that letter wasn't at all representative of V.V.--even though he probably thought it was! I mean ... he may talk in that fierce way about whole classes, but when it comes down to people--individuals--he's about the kindest person. What he really thinks is--well, that everybody's good.... Here's what I mean, Cally," said Hen, laughing a little, but with a certain eagerness too, as if it were of some importance for Cally to see what she meant.... "You know him, you say--slightly, of course. Well, instead of writing any more letters about the Works, do you know what it would be exactly like him to do now?"

"Throw a bomb in at papa's office-window?"

"No, speak to you about it!" laughed Henrietta, unabashed--"some time when he sees you at Mr. Beirne's or somewhere--ask you in the nicest, most natural way to ask Uncle Thornton if he won't build a new Works! And you'd see from the way he looked at you that he was perfectly sure you were going to do it, too!"

Cally gazed at Hen silently for at least ten seconds.