Read Ebook: Angela's Business by Harrison Henry Sydnor Gruger Frederic Rodrigo Illustrator

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Ebook has 1516 lines and 80907 words, and 31 pages

ng to his domicile.

The old gasbag broke off to say, "How-do, Ed," to a passer in the filtering snow, knocked the ashes from his cigar with the large hand that was not clutching Charles, and resumed.

Now it was that Charles Garrott's bored eye upon Uncle Oliver suddenly became fixed.

"Taking sides with her?" he said, speaking for almost the first time in the walk. "What do you mean?"

"Well, that's just what I did, the effect was," said Mr. Wing, his own eye wandering, "and against my conscience, too. Why, Charlie, if I wasn't an early retirer by habit, and this snow comin' on, too, I could show you quick enough where all this Single Standard was damfoolishness--unless, of course, you mean Perfect Purity, like I preach myself. And when a woman jumps up and hits a crack at marriage, that the rest of us are sacrificin' ourselves to build up for the good of Society, why, she's a bad woman, you can talk till you're black in the face, that had ought to be punished. Yes, and those that help her, they're lending encouragement to the enemies of the Republic, seems like, and they'd ought to be punished, too. But, shucks," said Mr. Wing, crushing the fire from the cigar against the iron railing, and putting the stump carefully in his pocket, "blood's thicker'n water, like they say. And I don't regret voting the way I did, though the majority was against me from the start."

The two men stood fronting each other in the silent street, and the young man's face had become rigid. And he was now perfectly aware of the faint gleam in the old man's eye, a gleam of distinctly malicious enjoyment.

"Mr. Wing, what are you talking about?"

"Why, I thought you must have heard, Charlie, you seemed so kind of glum. Why, I thought you must be on your way from Mary's now."

He glanced again at his door, as if to say that he really must not be expected to stop for further conversation at this late hour. And then he said what exploded Miss Angela Flower off the horizon.

"Why, Charlie, you see the School Board fired Mary this afternoon. On account of this little friend of hers, Trevenna, that she--"

"WHAT?"

"Well, transferred's really the word, Charlie," said Uncle Oliver, edging up a step or two. "She's sent over as a teacher to Lee Grammar School, reporting Monday. Johnson Geddie's the new assistant principal at the High School, commencing Monday, too. Well, Charlie, good--"

Wrenching away his arm, Mr. Wing rolled rapidly up the steps and vanished into the dark cave of his hall. But Charles stood still as a snow-man on the sidewalk, feeling as if the skies had fallen.

So Mary Wing's name flared in newspaper headlines once again.

In matters of school politics, the editorial writers of the city were habitually gun-shy, but it was noted next morning that the reporters had treated Mary with marked consideration. "Of all the changes and new appointments ordered by the Board in its three-hour session," wrote the kindly youth on the "Post," "none created such amazement as the demotion of Miss Wing, she having for long been conceded to be possibly the most valued teacher in the city school system. Members of the Board, however, refused to explain their totally unlooked-for action, Chairman Garcin merely claiming that 'All changes were for the good of the schools.' Charges of politics were freely heard in the lobby, and one well-known citizen, who prefers not to be quoted at just this juncture, said," etc.

Reporters, as everybody knows, must severely repress their personal opinions and stick like mucilage to the bare facts. But which facts are the bare ones? Judicious selection is a wonderful thing.

Thus Charles communed with himself, crisply teaching the Elements, French and Sociology. And he snapped his watch at Miss Grace Chorister five minutes ahead of time and, writing forgotten, went rushing to the support of his "demoted" friend.

But he did not rush by way of the frequented promenade. As he had gone to lunch by street-car to-day, so his journey to the High School was conducted in the same discreet manner. Through all this unimagined disturbance about Mary, the young man had not lost sight of his last night's resolve, formed in the Green Park, as to Mary's so different cousin. Cad he might be; understand it she might not ; but Charles was clear that it was for the best that he and Miss Angela should meet upon Washington Street no more.

The "Post's" story had made one thing certain at least: Mary did not mean to tear up her teacher's certificate and pitch it, with her resignation, in the faces of the School Board. In the still watches, Charles had thought she might be capable of just such reckless repartee; now he divined that she was reserving her resignation, to discharge it, like a bomb, upon her expected election as Secretary of the Education Reform League. That prospect in the Career blurred the situation considerably, without doubt. Still, the secretaryship was three months away, at the worst. And meanwhile the immediate problem thundered for attention, namely, how to get Mary back into the High School at the earliest possible moment? Charles, who as a man considered this problem his own no less than Mary's, arrived at the School with three promising plans in his head.

It was Friday, commonly a late day for Mary, but you could count on nothing on such a day as this. However, when he had dashed into the great building and up the two tall stairways, there sat the late assistant principal in her little office, hard at work before a regular man's desk. She was discovered deep in the sorting of papers, and swung around at his step with a start and a smile.

"Good-afternoon!--and excuse the mess, please! The notice to move caught me a little unawares, you see.--Don't look so solemn, please!"

Whatever emotions she might have wrestled with last night, when her light shone so bright over the park, it was clear that Mary Wing had put them all down to front the world to-day. Neither did she seem embarrassed by any memories of recent conversations on these topics, of hints dropped and too firmly repulsed. Her manner, her sensitive fine face, were as composed as ever.

It may be that this, at the outset, was slightly upsetting to Charles, who was himself not composed at all.

He scooped a pile of "The New School" from a chair and sat with an elbow upon the writing-leaf of her masculine desk. Dumping papers from pigeon-holes, Mary calmly explained how complete was her overthrow. Senff, who was known as Mysinger's "personal representative" on the Board, had preferred the charges, she said, recommending her outright dismissal from the schools. The train had been carefully laid; it appeared that Mary had received an official warning from the Superintendent--an obliging man, elderly and weak, whom Mysinger meant to succeed before long--all of two weeks ago. Beyond influence and politication, much weight was attached to the simple fact that Mysinger, as Mary's immediate associate and superior, felt this persistent antipathy toward her. All the same, the Board had debated the case a full hour.

"Dangerous ideas," she summarized. "I'm not a suitable person to have authority over the education of--young women and men."

"What they said about Socrates, too--"

"Yes, but I don't want a monument after I'm dead!"

She laughed, without self-consciousness, and said: "Oh, if I'd tried, of course, I couldn't have put a better club into Mr. Mysinger's hands. Ideas!--I'm really amazed I wasn't electrocuted on the spot. Of course it isn't as if I were a man, you see, with a right to have ideas. That's my real fault, from the beginning--at least with Mysinger. I'm a woman, and so should never have been suffered 'to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.' Dear St. Paul!"

It was rare to find bitterness in Mary. Charles asked hastily if there had been much talk about the building to-day. She said that the School had been buzzing with it.

"It's almost been worth having it happen, to see how many friends I've got. And the children are the best, of course. All afternoon my boys and girls have been streaming in here, in threes and fours--just to say they're sorry I'm going...."

A shadow fell on her oddly fragile-looking face, and the author struck the writing-leaf with a large fist.

"Well, by George, you'll come right back. Listen to me."

But at the first mention of the State Board, Mary had begun to shake her head, and before Charles had got his plan fairly set out she interrupted him, rather as an older brother interrupts.

"No, I've thought that over very carefully. Mysinger's pull has me beaten there before I begin. I'd only be playing into his hand, don't you see--giving the State Board a public opportunity to indorse and approve my punishment."

"But, great heavens! Mysinger's not the whole show here. You overrate--"

"He is, and he isn't. Some good men, like Creamer, are against me now, it's true. And yet, if Mysinger let either Board know that he wanted me back here, I'd come back to-morrow. He's that much of the show, Mr. Garrott."

The plan seemed to the young man so feeble and remote, so uncharacteristic and tame, as to indicate a certain indifference in her. He sat eyeing her a moment with intent speculation, and then said deliberately:--

"That's good enough for publication purposes, I suppose. But--you're thinking of something very different, aren't you?"

"Am I?--what do you suspect?" said Mary, continuing her labors of paper-sorting.

"It's occurred to me that you have rather a brilliant revenge up your sleeve all the time. What'll you care for little pigs like Mysinger, when you go off as General Secretary of the League?"

The self-contained young woman surprised him by throwing both arms above her head and saying, passionately. "If I only could! Oh, oh! If I only could!"

Charles's gaze became fixed. "But you're going to, aren't you?"

Her arms fell and she said, in another voice: "No, I don't think I'm going to land it, you see!"

"Not going to--! Why, I thought you were practically sure!"

"Why!--but what's happened?"

"Oh," said she, light and calm again, "merely reading between the lines of Dr. Ames's letters. I hear from him all the time about the State work--once a week, at least. But he's never referred at all to the talk we had--about my being Secretary--from the first. Of course, I've wondered. And then yesterday--no, day before--I had a letter asking if I expected to be in New York any time before fall. He said he'd like to talk with me about my work here."

The straightforward sentences carried a painful conviction. Charles's eyes fell from his friend's face. For this crowning disappointment of hers he was distressed enough, indeed; and yet he was perfectly conscious that there was a side of him which could not lament at all. Publicly speaking, he had not honestly viewed the secretaryship as a "revenge"; since to get Mary out of the schools, by hook or crook, was the exact object in life of her adversary, Mysinger, who so earnestly held that woman's place was the Home. And then, there were those more personal and secret reactions in him, which had somehow recoiled from this development of the Career from the start.

"How long have you felt this way--that you weren't going to get it?"

"Oh--for two months now, at least."

"Two months! Why, you've never said anything about it to me!"

"Well, I don't remember your asking anything about it."

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