Helen watched her come and go, hands crossed with her partner, watched the swing of her graceful body as it swayed so easily towards the man’s and was in perfect tune with it.
“That’s one way you get the alive and beautiful, is it?” thought Helen.
Then, after a little, by some signal, the rink was declared closed. The skaters, at the sides of the rink, sat on little benches and took off their skates. The young man knelt beside Freda and loosened the straps, a pretty bit of gallantry in the moonlight.
He had her arm. They were going home, walking a little more close to each other than was necessary, looking up, bending down. Helen could almost feel what they were feeling, excitement, vigor, intimacy. A little shiver went over her as she pulled down the shade at last and looked around at the walls with their brown scrolls and mottoed injunction to
“Sleep sweetly in this quiet room,Oh, thou, whoe’er thou art.”
“Sleep sweetly in this quiet room,Oh, thou, whoe’er thou art.”
“Sleep sweetly in this quiet room,Oh, thou, whoe’er thou art.”
THE dismay of the young Brownleys was as great as that of Freda. But their indomitable mothers won.
“But, mother,” cried Allison Brownley, “you don’t mean you’d ask that—that little Swede girl here to the house? For a month? Why, I should think you’d see how impossible that is. We can’t treat her as a servant, can we?”
“No,” said Mrs. Brownley, “you can’t—not at all. She’s a very clever girl—Normal School graduate.”
Allison sank on a divan, her short skirts shorter than ever in her abandonment, her face a picture of horrified dismay.
“Normal School—you know what they are! Pimples and plaid skirts two inches from the ground,—China silk white waists. Oh, mother dear, it’s very sweet of you to think of her, but it couldn’t be done. What would we do with her? Why, the days are just full! All kinds of things planned now that Easter’s over. We couldn’t take her about, and we couldn’t leave her at home. The Brownley girls and their little Swede friend! Mother, Idothink you ought to keep politics out of the home.”
Barbara joined in now. That was always her policy. To let Allie state the case and get excited over it and then to go after her mother reasonably if her mother didn’t give in. She was a more languorous type than Allie. “Bed-room eyes” one of the boys had said, at the height of his puppy wit.
“If you had to ask them, mother, Lent would have been the time. It just can’t be managed now. As a matter of fact I’ve practically asked Delia Underwood to spend three weeks here.” That was a lie and she knew her mother would know it, but it gave her mother a graceful way out of the difficulty.
But unfortunately Mrs. Brownley did not seem to be looking for loop-holes. She sat serenely at her desk, her eye-glasses poised upon the bills she was auditing.
“I think you will like Miss Thorstad,” she answered, ignoring all the protests. “You see it’s really quite important for me to have her here. The mother is a very clever little woman and with a possible political future. Miss Duffield thinks very highly of her. While we are doing this active campaign work she will be invaluable here in the city. She’s a good organizer—and she’s a plain woman. She can handle plain women, Miss Duffield insists, better than we can. I wish you girls would understand that there is a great deal involved in this campaign. If we stand well out here it will be important for the district—in Washington.”
“Yes, mother—but why the daughter?”
“For the simple reason that Mrs. Thorstad said she didn’t like to leave her at home alone. It put me in the position of having to ask her. She is, as I remember, a pretty well-appearing girl. Mrs. Flandon, whom you admire so much, Allie, was immensely taken with her. At any rate, they have been asked, they will accept and they arrive next week.”
Allie looked dark.
“Well, mother,” she said, with a fair imitation of her mother’s tone, “if you expect me to give up everythingfor the sake of this little Swede, you’re mistaken. The men will just howl when they see her.”
“Cheer up, Allie,” said Barbara, “they may fall in love with her. Brunhilde, you know—and all of that. I think it’s a shame, mother.”
The girls looked at each other. They weren’t ordinarily allies, but this mess was one they both would have to worry over. Their mother rose.
“Of course, girls,” she said, “it is an inconvenience. But it’s a good thing to do. It means more than you may guess. Be nice to Miss Thorstad and you’ll not be sorry. It might mean that platinum bracelet for you, Barbara, and for Allie—”
“Mother,” exclaimed Allie, “if I’m an angel to your little Swede would you let me have a new runabout—a Pierce, painted any color I like?”
Her mother merely smiled at her but Allie knew her claim was good. She turned to her sister as her mother left the room.
“She’s going to do it, Bobbie, and we might just as well get something out of it. I’ll tell the girls I’m getting my new car that way and they’ll all help. We’ll give little Miss Olson the time of her life.”
“You get more out of it than I do, I notice.” Barbara was inspecting herself in the mirror of her vanity case from which she allowed nothing except sleep to separate her.
“That’s all right, Bob. I’ll do most of the heavy work, I’ll bet.”
“I shan’t be able to do much, I’ll tell you that. Miss Burns wants me for fittings every day next week and I’ve a lot of dates, for evenings.”
“Ted’s giving you quite a rush, isn’t he darling? Do you think he’s landed this time or is it just that it’s your turn?”
Barbara did not blush. She looked straight at her sister, her slim face disgusted.
“Pretty raw, aren’t you? As a matter of fact I think he could be landed if I had the slightest desire to do it. I’m not at all sure that I want him.”
Allie grinned.
“That’s all right. That’s what they all say, all the ones he gives a rush and leaves lamenting. I am sort of surprised that you’d fall for him so hard. Even if he is the ideal lover, every one who isn’t cross-eyed knows how he does it. I’d like a little more originality, myself.”
“I tell you this, Allie. That man has been misunderstood. Because he’s so rich and good looking every one’s chased after him and then when he was decently civil they’ve taken advantage of him by spreading stories about his flirtations. He’s told me some things about girls—”
“Dirty cad,” said Allie, cheerfully.
“All right, if you want to be insulting, I won’t talk to you.”
“Well, tell me what he said. I won’t think about his being a dirty cad until afterwards.”
What humor there was was lost on Barbara.
“I don’t care to talk any more about him.”
Barbara looked at her watch to conclude matters.
“And by the way, Allie, mother said I could use the limousine. I’ve got a lot of things to do and I’ll need Chester all afternoon. Mrs. Watts is taking mother to the Morley reception and I’m calling for her. She said you could have the electric.”
“My God!” said Allie. “Why doesn’t she offer me a hearse? Thanks, I’d sooner take old 1898 out again. And think about that Pierce I’m going to earn.”
She was out of the room in a minute, flying up the stairs, some grotesque words to a dance tune floating behind her. The Packard runabout, “old 1898,” washumming down the garage drive half an hour later. Stopping at two houses impressive as her own, she regaled the girls who were her friends with accounts of the “Swedish invasion.” It was a good story, especially with the promise of the reward tacked on the end.
But it was three days before Freda had capitulated. Her first reaction had been an angry shame at her mother’s inclusion of her in her own invitation. She had simply flatly refused to go. A little later it was possible to regard the business with some humor, and the shame had lost its sting. She had never known those people anyhow—never would know them—it didn’t matter what they thought. When she saw that the matter was not ended and sensed the depth of determination in her mother’s mind that her daughter should go with her to the Brownley’s she tried to be more definite even than before in her refusal. Her mother did not seem to hear her. She insisted on keeping the subject open, never admitting for a minute that it was or could be closed. She dwelt endlessly on the advantages of the visit—on the fact that the chance for Freda had come at last.
“Chance!” stormed Freda, “why it isn’t a chance to do anything except sponge on a few rich people whom I’ve never seen before in my life. You don’t really suppose, mother, that I’d go down there and let those Brownley girls make my life miserable. You don’t seem to realize, mother, that those two Brownleys are a very gay lot. They must be about my age—the older one anyway. Why, I wouldn’t think of it. What on earth would I do? What on earth would I wear? What would I say? What on earth would I be there anyhow? I’m no politician. I’m not helping Mrs. Brownley strengthenher fences or anything. If you ask me, mother, I wouldn’t think of going if I were you. Don’t you know she’s just making a play to the gallery by having you? Probably bragging about her great sense of democracy! Why, mother!”
“You don’t seem to realize,”—Mrs. Thorstad always began that way by assuming that you had missed her point, a point which was and always would be in accord with Right Living and Democracy and the Family and the Home, “that these social distinctions are of no value in my estimation. In this great country—”
Freda led her mother away from the brink of oratory.
“Look here,” she said, “if they aren’t a lot more important than we are—if you don’t think they are—what is this wonderful chance you are talking about?”
Just at what point Freda gave in, just at what point she felt that the possibilities of her trip outweighed its impossibilities she did not know. It was certain that the young Brownleys gave way to no noisier public mockery of the proposed visit than did Freda. She was even a little shrill. She told everybody how she “hated it,” how she was going along to the homes of the idle rich to chaperon her mother, that she was “breaking into high society,” that she was gathering material for a book on “how the other half lives,” that she would probably be mistaken for a housemaid and asked to dust the bed-rooms, that mother was trying to “marry her off,” that she “didn’t have an idea what to wear.” She talked to almost every one she met, somewhat unnecessarily, somewhat defiantly, as if determined to let any one know about her reasons for going, as if defending herself against any accusations concerning her motive in making such a visit, perhaps making sure that no later discomfiture on her own part could be made more severe by any suspicion of pleasurable anticipation.
She planned her clothes for St. Pierre with mocking but intense deliberation. A dark blue tricotine dress—she bought that at the ladies’ specialty shop and taking it home ripped off all the trimming substituting the flattest and darkest of braid. That was safe, she knew. She might not be startling but she would be inoffensive, she told her mother. There was a dress made by Miss Peterson, who sewed by the day, from a remnant of bronze georgette, and half shamefacedly Freda came home one night with a piece of flame colored satin and made it herself into a gown which hung from the shoulders very straightly and was caught at the waist with silver cord (from the drapery department). And there was an evening dress at which Freda scoffed but she and Miss Peterson spent some fascinated hours over it, making pale green taffetas and tulle fit her lovely shoulders.
“Though what I’m getting these clothes for is a mystery to me,” grumbled Freda. “They probably won’t even ask me to go out. Probably suggest that I eat with the servants.”
Yet she tried on the evening dress in the privacy of her room parading before her bureau mirror, which could not be induced to show both halves of her at once. And as she looked in the glass there came back the reflection of a girl a little flushed, excited, eager, as if in spite of all her mockery there was a dream that she would conquer unknown people and things—a hope that wonders were about to happen.
Never was there a trace of that before her mother. Having agreed to go, Freda was, on the whole, complaisant, but on principle unenthusiastic.
Her father gave her two hundred dollars the night before she went away. Mrs. Thorstad was at a neighbor’s house and the gift was made in her absence without comment on that fact. Freda, whose idea of a sizablecheck for her spending money was five dollars and of an exceptionally large one, ten, gasped.
“But what do I need this for?”
“You’ll find ways, my dear. It’s—for some of the little things which these other young ladies may have and you may lack. To put you at ease.”
“Yes, but it’s too much, father dear. For three or four weeks. You can’t possibly afford it.”
“Oh, yes, my dear. Only try to be happy, won’t you? Remember that it’s always worth while to learn and that there are very few people in the world who aren’t friendly by nature.”
That thought carried Freda through the next twenty-four hours, beginning with worry when she got on the train as to whether they were expecting her after all, through a flurry of excitement at the sense of “city” in St. Pierre, the luxury of the limousine which had been sent to meet them, through the embarrassment of hearing her mother begin to orate in a mild fashion on the beauty of Mrs. Brownley’s home and the “real home spirit” which she felt in it. Freda felt sure that such conversation was not only out of place but bad taste anyway. She was divided between a desire to carry the visit off properly, showing the Brownleys that she was not gauche and stupid, and an impulse to stalk through the days coldly, showing her disdain for mere material things and the impossibility of impressing her. Yet the deep softness of the hall rugs, the broad noiseless stair carpets, the glimpses through doorways into long quiet rooms seemingly full of softly upholstered furniture, lamps with wonderfully colored shades, pictures which had deep rich colors like the colors in the rugs, made her eyes shine, her color heighten.
Mrs. Brownley met them at the house and took them to their rooms herself. Mrs. Thorstad had a big pleasantroom in a wing of the house given up to guest chambers and Freda’s was a small one connected with it.
“My daughters are looking forward so much to meeting you,” Mrs. Brownley said easily to Freda. “They are out just now, but when you come down for dinner they will be home. We usually dine at seven, Mrs. Thorstad. It isn’t at all necessary to dress.”
“She is nice, isn’t she?” said Freda, as the door closed after their hostess, “maybe it won’t be so bad. Anyway, all experience is good. Glad I remember that much Nietzsche. It often helps.”
Mrs. Thorstad put her trim little hat on the closet shelf and began to unpack her suit-case. Freda explored the bath.
“It’s like a movie,” she came back to say, “I feel just like the second reel when the heroine is seduced by luxury into giving herself—”
“Freda!”
“Truly I do. She always takes a look into the closet at rows of clothes and closes the door virtuously, gazes rapturously at the chaise longue all lumpy with pillows and stiffens herself. But she never can resist the look into the bath room—monogramed towels, scented soap, bath salts. I know just exactly how the poor girls feel. Certain kinds of baths are for cleanliness—others make a lady out of a sow’s ear—you know.”
“Why are you wearing that dress?” asked her mother, rousing from her nap fifteen minutes later. “I was going down in my waist and skirt.”
“Mother—you can’t. That wasn’t what she meant by not dressing. She meant not evening dress. You’ll have to put on your blue silk.”
“I wanted to save that for afternoon affairs.”
“You won’t wear it out to-night. Come, mother, I’ll hook you up.”
They were down at five minutes before seven. Barbara was not visible but Allie and her mother and father waited for them in the drawing-room. Crossing the threshold of that room seemed to take all Freda’s courage. If her mother had not been so absorbed in thinking of the way she meant to interest Mr. Brownley in her career, she would have heard the quick little catch of breath in Freda’s throat as she came through the velvet curtains behind her. She did see the quickened interest on Allie’s face and Mrs. Brownley’s measured glance of approval at Freda. Freda had been right. The Brownleys were dressed for dinner, quite elaborately it seemed to her. She made no note of the discrimination in evening clothes, that Mrs. Brownley’s velvet dress was high at the neck and Mr. Brownley’s tie black instead of white. Allie came forward with her rough and tumble welcome, shaking hands casually with Mrs. Thorstad and frankly admiring Freda. Allie herself had dressed in a hurry and was noticeable chiefly for the high spots of rouge on each cheek.
“Sorry I wasn’t home when you came. I had to go to a luncheon and then to the theater. Couldn’t get out of it. It was a party for a friend of mine who is to be married and I’m in the bridal party, you see. She’s an awfully nice girl—marrying the most awful lemon you ever saw.”
Freda knew all about that marriage. It had been heralded even in Mohawk. Gratia Allen and Peter Ward. But she gave no sign of knowing about it.
“Isn’t it funny,” she answered, getting Allie’s note with amazing accuracy, “how often that happens? The nicest girls get the queerest men.”
“Not enough decent men to go around any more.”
So it was all right until Barbara came in. A little party gathered in the meantime—the Gage Flandons,and Margaret Duffield with Walter Carpenter. Margaret was beginning to be asked as a dinner companion for Walter fairly often now. And as a concession to the young people Mrs. Brownley had asked three young men, Ted Smillie and the Bates boys, who traveled in pairs, Allie always said. They were all there when Barbara came in. Obviously she had some one, either the unknown guest or her friend Ted, in mind when she dressed, for she was perfectly done. Smoothly marcelled hair, black lace dress carrying out the latest vagaries in fashion, black slippers with jeweled buckles. As she gave her hand to Freda with the smile which held a faint hint of condescension, Freda bent her knuckles to hide the nail she had torn yesterday closing the trunk. She felt over dressed, obvious, a splash of ugly color. Ted had been talking to her but by a simple assumption that Freda could have nothing of interest to say, Barbara took up the thread of talk with him, speaking of incidents, people that were unknown to Freda. The Bates boys were talking to Allie. Freda stood alone for a moment—an interminable awkward moment, in which no one seemed to notice her. Then Gage Flandon crossed to her side and she gave him a smile which made him her friend at once, a smile of utter gratitude without a trace of pose.
“How nice of you,” she said, simply, “to come to talk to me. I feel so strange.”
“My wife says you’ve never met any of us before. No wonder.”
“It isn’t just that. I’m a little afraid I’m here without much reason. Mother brought me but I’m not a political woman and I’m not”—with a rueful little glance at Barbara—“a society girl at all. I’m afraid I’ll be in everybody’s way.”
She said it without any coquetry and it came out clearly so—as the plain little worry it was. Gage, who hadfound himself a little touched by the obvious situation of the girl felt further attracted by her frankness. She seemed an unspoiled, handsome person. That was what Helen had told him, but he had grown so used to sophistication and measured innocence that he had not expected anything from the daughter of this little political speaker. He had come to size up Mrs. Thorstad, for her name had been presented as a possibility in a discussion with some of his own friends as they went over the matter of recognizing women in the political field. As Mrs. Thorstad gave her hand to him he had seen what he came to see. She had brains. She had the politician’s smile. She could be used—and doubtless managed as far as was necessary. But the daughter was different. He liked that dress she was wearing. It showed her slimness, suppleness, but it didn’t make her indecent like that lace thing on Bob Brownley.
“I often feel like that,” he answered her, “I’m not much of a society person either and I can’t keep up with these wonderful women we’re seeing everywhere. Women with a lot of brains frighten me.”
Idle talk, with his real, little prejudice back it, which Freda by accident uncovered immediately. She was talking against time so he would not leave her unguarded, and it was chance that she pleased him so much.
“Women have a lot of brains now,” she said, “in politics and—society too, I suppose. But I wonder if we weren’t more attractive when we weren’t quite so brilliant. I don’t mean when we had huge families and did the washing and made the butter. I mean when we were more romantic and not quite so—”
She stumbled a little. She was conscious of being historically at sea, vague in her definition of romance. But she had said that several times before and it cameeasily to her tongue. She stopped, feeling awkward and then amazed at Mr. Flandon’s enthusiasm.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, “that’s what I miss. Women have stopped being romantic. They’ve done worse. They’ve penetrated our souls and dug out the romance and analyzed it among themselves.”
But she could not answer. Some one announced dinner and Freda moved with the rest to get her first enchanted sight of the Brownley dining table with its wedge wood vases full of roses and narcissus, its shining perfection of detail.
She was near her hostess’ end of the table, Mr. Flandon at her left and one of the Bates boys at her right. Mrs. Brownley had wanted to talk to Gage and had decided, as she placed the cards, that Freda would take as little of his attention as any one present. She started in after the consommé to find out what Gage thought about the Republican committee. It was most unsatisfactory for he seemed to be absorbed in telling something to Miss Thorstad and gave answers to his hostess as if his mind were on something else. As for Gage, he was talking more animatedly than he had talked to any woman in years, thought his wife, watching him.
“What heresy is my husband pouring into your ears, Miss Thorstad?” she asked, leaning forward.
Freda blushed a little as the attention turned to her.
“He is telling me the arguments I’ve been wanting to hear—against being a perfectly modern woman.”
“Proselytizing!” said Margaret. “Wait a bit, Miss Thorstad. Let me get the other ear after dinner.”
“Freda likes to tease,” explained her mother to their host.
Barbara looked a little disdainful, making some remarksotto voceto Ted. But he was not listening.Freda had, in the rise of her spirits, given him a smile across the table, the kind of come-there smile she gave David Grant of Mohawk when she wanted to skate with him or dance with him—a smile of perfectly frank allure. He returned it with interest.
Helen did not follow up her remark. It had been scattered in the comments. Gage caught her eye and she gave him a look which said, “I told you there was something in that girl.” Gage immediately wanted to leave the table and tell Helen all about it. But Mrs. Brownley wanted to know something again. He turned to her.
It was fairly easy for Freda after all, in spite of Barbara, whose measuring eyes made her nervous whenever they were turned on her. She had a difficult time concealing the broken finger-nail and she was not at all sure whether to lift the finger bowl off the fruit plate with the lace doily or to leave the doily. Otherwise there were no great difficulties. There was a bad moment after dinner when it became clear to her that there was some altercation among the young people which concerned her. She could not guess what it was, but she saw Allie and Barbara in heated conclave. Then, with a little toss of her head, Allie came to her.
“We thought that you and I and Fred and Tony would go down to the Majestic. We had six tickets but Bob seems to think she and Ted have another date.”
And then Ted ruined things. He turned from where he and Tony Bates were smoking by the mantelpiece and strolled over to Freda.
“We’re going to the Majestic—and I’m going to sit next to you,” he announced.
The Majestic was a vaudeville house, presenting its seven acts weekly for the delectation of its patrons, servant girls, business men, impecunious boys in the gallery, suburbanites, shop girls with their young men, traveling men, idle people, parties of young people like the Brownley girls, one of those heterogeneous crowds that a dollar and a half price for a best seat can bring in America. When the young Brownleys arrived, the acrobatic act which led the bill was over and the two poorest comedians, put on near the beginning of the bill before the audience grew too wearily critical, were doing a buck and wing dance to the accompaniment of some quite ununderstandable words.
With a great deal of noise and mysterious laughter the late arrivals became seated finally, taking their places with the lack of consideration for the people behind them which was characteristic of their arrogance, making audible and derogatory comments about the act on the stage and curiously enough not seeming to anger any one. The girls with their fur coats, hatless, well dressed hair, the sleek dinner coated young men interested the people around them far more than they bothered them by their noisiness.
They left during the last act and before the moving picture of “Current Events,” all six of them getting into the Bates’ sedan and speeding at forty miles an hour out to the Roadside Inn which was kept open only until midnight.
The Roadside Inn was a brown mockery of Elizabethan architecture, about thirty miles out of the city on a good road. The door opened invitingly on a long low room full of chintz-covered chairs and wicker tables and at this time of year there was always a good open fire towelcome any comers. Back of that a dining room and, parallel with the two, a long dance room, where three enforcedly gay negroes pounded out melodies in jungle time hour after hour every evening. Upstairs there were half a dozen small bed rooms for transient automobilists who wanted to stay in the country for some reason or other or whose cars had broken down.
The place was on the fence between decency and shadowy repute. It was frequented by people of all kinds, people who were respectable and people suspected of not being so. The landlady ignored any distinctions. She had made the place into a well-paying institution, had put its decoration into the hands of a good architect with whom she always quarreled about his charges and she asked no questions if her customers paid their bills. Probably she saw no difference between those of her guests who were of one kind and those of another. They all danced in much the same manner, were equally noisy, equally critical of the extremely good food and that was as far as her contact or comment went. If the food had not been so good, the place would have suffered in patronage, but that was unfailing. The cook was ready now at five minutes’ notice to concoct chicken a la king and make coffee for the Brownley party and as they came back from the dance room after having tried out the floor and the music, their supper was ready.
Freda had not acquitted herself badly there either. Without having all the tricks of the Brownleys, she had a grace and sense of rhythm which helped her to adapt herself. Besides she had the first dance with Ted. He held her close, hardly looking at her. That was his way in dancing.
“You must be very gay in Mohawk,” said Barbara when they were all at the table in the dining room again.
The edge of her malice was lost on Freda.
“No—not at all. Why?”
“You seem very experienced.”
A little glimmer of amusement came into Freda’s eyes.
“Well—not first hand experience. We read—we go to moving pictures.”
“I suppose lots of people are picking up ideas from the moving pictures,” Barbara commented carelessly.
One of the Bates boys was drawing something from his pocket. Barbara looked at it indifferently, Allie with a frown of annoyance.
“Didn’t I tell you, Tony, to cut that stuff out?”
“We’ll all be cutting it out soon enough,” said Tony. “Won’t be any. This is all right. Tapped father’s supply. A taste for every one and a swallow for me.”
He was a sallow thin young person whom the sight of his own flask seemed to have waked into sudden joviality.
“I don’t want any,” said Allie. “Don’t waste it.”
Then as Tony Bates ignored her protest, she drained her glass accustomedly.
Barbara took her highball without a change of expression or color. Freda tried to refuse but they laughed at her.
“Come. You came to the city to have a good time.”
She felt that she couldn’t refuse without seeming prudish. She has a fear of what the liquor might do to her, a desire to do what the rest did.
Her head felt a little light, but that was all, and that only for a moment. It wasn’t unpleasant.
They all finished the flask. They danced again, Freda with Tony Bates, Barbara with Ted. Then Ted sought Freda again. He danced as he had the first time but he held her even closer, more firmly, making his position into an embrace, and yet dancing perfectly. From overone of the young men’s shoulders, Barbara saw it. Her face did not show any feeling.
On the way home the embracing was a little promiscuous. Allie, dull from the liquor, lay sprawling against Tony’s rather indifferent shoulder. Bob let the other Bates boy paw her lazily and Freda found herself rather absorbed in keeping Ted from going to lengths which she felt were hardly justified even by three or four highballs.
It was when they were home again after the young men had left that Freda felt the dislike of the other girl. It was as if Barbara had been waiting for the young men to go to make Freda uncomfortable.
“I hope Ted didn’t embarrass you, Miss Thorstad?’
“Embarrass me?”
“Ted is such a scandalous flirt that he is apt, I think, to embarrass people who aren’t used to him. I always keep him at a distance because he talks about girls most awfully.”
“Oh, does he?”
“I’m glad he didn’t bother you. Don’t let him think you like him. He makes the most terrific game of people who let themselves in for it.”
“Lots of people do let themselves in for it too,” said Allie with meaning.
Barbara steered away from the dangers of that subject.
“I hope you’re going to enjoy yourself, Miss Thorstad. There are no end of things going on.”
“You mustn’t bother about me,” said Freda, “I’m afraid that I am going to be a burden.”
Barbara let a minute pass, a minute of insult.
“No—not at all.”
“Nonsense,” said Allie, “everybody’ll be crazy about you. You dance stunningly and the Bateses and Ted were nutty about you. You don’t have to worry.”
Freda said good night and left them. She went slowly up the staircase, thinking what fun it would be to climb that staircase every night, to go down it by natural right, to belong to it.
The sense of Barbara’s dislike pervaded everything else. She felt that she must have made a fool of herself with that young fellow. He must have thought her a dreadful idiot. Ah, well, the first evening was over and she’d had some experience. She had been at a dinner where there was an entrée, she had used a fish fork, she had danced at a roadhouse. She laughed at herself a little.
“I’ve been draining the fleshpots of Egypt,” she said, sitting on the bottom of her mother’s bed. Her mother’s prim little braids of hair against the pillow were silhouetted in the moonlight.
“You were very nice to-night,” said her mother practically. “Mrs. Flandon wants us both to go there for dinner Thursday night.”
“I like Mr. Flandon a lot.”
“Very little idealism,” commented Mrs. Thorstad, wisely.
YET something was hurting Gage Flandon. He had tried to decide that he was not getting enough exercise, that he was smoking too much, not sleeping enough. But petty reforms in those things did not help him. He felt surging through him, strange restlessness, curious probing dissatisfactions. He was angry at himself because he was in such a state; he was morbidly angry with his wife because she could not assuage what he was feeling nor share it with him.
Everywhere he was baffled by his passion for Helen. After six years of married life, after they had been through birth, parenthood together, surely this state was neurotic. Affection, yes, that was proper. But not this constant sense of her, this desire to absorb her, own her completely and segregate her completely. He knew the feeling had been growing on him lately since her friend had come to the city, but his resentment was not against Margaret. It was directed against his wife and that he could not reason this into justice gnawed at him.
He was spending a great deal of time thinking about what was wrong with women. He would hit upon a phrase, a clever sentence that solved everything. And then he was back where he had begun. He could resolve nothing in phrases. He and Helen would discuss feminism, masculinism, sex, endlessly, and always end as antagonists—or as lovers, hiding from their own antagonism. But they could not leave the subjects alone. They tossed them back and forth, wearily, impatiently.Always over the love for each other which they could not deny, hung this cloud of discussion, making every caress suspected of a motive, a “reaction.”
When Gage had been sent at twelve years of age to a boys’ military preparatory school, it had been definitely done to “harden him.” He was a dreamy little boy, not in the least delicate, but with a roving imagination, a tendency to say “queer things” which had not suited his healthy perfectly grown body, his father felt. Some one had suspected him of having hidden artistic abilities. His parents were intelligent people and they tried that out. He was given instructions in music on the piano and the violin. Nothing came of them but ridges on the piano where he had kicked it in his impatience at being able to draw no melodies from it. With infinite patience they tried to see if he had talent for drawing. He had none. So, having exhausted their researches for artistic talent, his parents decided that there was a flaw in his make-up which a few years contact with “more manly boys” might correct. They prided themselves on the result. He succumbed utterly to all the conventions of what makes a manly boy and came home true to form.
In college the quirk came out again once in a while. But Gage never became markedly queer. Impossible for an all-American half-back to do that. And he never mixed with the “queer ones.” What eccentricities he had, what flights of imagination he took were strictly on his own.
In due course he was admitted to the bar and on the heels of that came Helen. Those who saw him in his pursuit of Helen said that he seemed possessed. For once his imagination had found an outlet. For once all those desires which rose above his daily life and his usual companions had found a channel through which they could pour themselves. Eager for life as Helenwas, full of dreams, independences, fresh from her years at college, she could not help being swept under by the torrent of desire and worship that he became. They soared away together—they lost themselves in marriage, in the marvel of child creation.
The war came. Gage met it gravely, a little less spread-eagle than most of his friends. He had a year in France and came back with a fallen enthusiasm. He never talked about that. He had plunged into money making. The small fortune his father had given him on his marriage had been absorbed in starting a home and Helen had nothing of her own. They needed a great deal of money and Gage got it, trampling into politics, into business, practicing law well all the time. He was now thirty-eight and had accumulated a remarkable store of influence and power. Very close to the Congressman from his district, keen and far sighted, as honest in keeping promises as he was ruthless in dealing with political obstructionists, he was recognized as the key man to his very important district. He knew politics as he knew law but he built no ideals on it. It was perhaps his very thorough knowledge of the deviousness of its methods which made him reluctant to have Helen meddle with it. For although he had accepted the suffrage of women as a political phenomenon which had to be taken in hand and dealt with, he had no belief that the old game would change much.
He nearly always looked his full age. His face was one of those into which deep lines come early, well modeled, but with no fineness of detail. And his large built body, always carelessly dressed, was the same. Yet there were times, Helen knew, when his eyes became plaintive and wondering and he looked as the little boy who was sent away to be “hardened” must have looked. Only he was learning to cover those times with a scowl.
He was finding that he could not quiet all the mental nightmares he had with his love for Helen. Because that love itself was infested by this strange new “woman problem.” What securities of opinion had been swept away by study, by war, what questions in him were left unsatisfied—those things were hidden in him. He had clung to love and faith in marriage. And now that stronghold was being attacked. He was hearing people who called it all fake, all false psychology. And he did not know how much Helen believed these people. He felt her restlessness in horror. He saw no direction in which she might go away from him where she would not meet destruction, where false, incomplete ideas would not ruin her. It was making him a reactionary.
For, because he had no solution himself, he was forced to fall back on negations. He denied everything, sank back into an idealism of the past.
“I liked that girl,” he said to his wife about Freda, “no fake.”
“None,” answered Helen. “I hoped you’d like her, Gage.”
“She says that the trouble with women is that they’ve lost the spirit of romance and that they’ve dug the romance out of men’s souls too.”
It was what he himself had said but it was easier to put to Helen in that way.
“Young thing—full of phrases.” His wife laughed lightly.
It was the night on which Freda and her mother were to dine with them. Gage, dressed before his wife, had dropped in to watch her. He loved to see her do her hair. She seemed exquisitely beautiful to him when she deftly parted and coiled the loose masses of it—more than beautiful—exquisitely woman. He loved to see the woman quality in her, not to awaken passion or desirebut for the sense of wonder it gave him. He loved to cherish her.
“We’re all full of phrases,” he said, a little hurt already. “But she has something behind her phrases. She’s unspoiled yet by ideas.”
“She’s full of ideas. You should see the things that young modern reads. She’s without experience—without dogmas yet. But she’ll acquire those. At present she’s looking for beauty. You might show it to her, she may find it in Margaret; perhaps she’ll find it in her canting little mother.”
“She would find it in you if you’d let her see you.”
“Do you think I’m anything to copy? You seem dissatisfied so often, Gage.”
“Don’t, Helen.” He came over to where she sat and bent to lay his cheek against her hair. Her hand caressed his cheek and his eyes closed.
She wanted to ask him what would happen to them if they could not bury argument in a caress but she knew the torch that would be to his anger. He felt her lack of response.
“I’m not dissatisfied with you. I’m dissatisfied because I can’t have you completely to myself. I’m dissatisfied because you can’t sit beside me, above and indifferent to a host of silly men and women parading false ideas.”
“I’m not so sure they are false. I can’t get your conviction about everything modern. I want to try things out.”
“But, Helen, it’s not your game. Look—since Margaret came you’ve been dabbling in this—that—politics, clubs, what not. You are bored with me.”
“Impossible, darling. But you really mustn’t expect the good, old-fashioned, clinging vine stuff from me. I’m not any good at it. Now please hurry down, dear, andsee if there are cigars and cigarettes, will you? And you’ll have to have your cocktail alone because if I had one before Mrs. Thorstad she’d think I was a Scarlet Woman.”
There was nothing for Gage to do but go with that familiar sense of failure.
After he had gone, Helen’s face lost some of its lightness and she sat looking at herself in the glass. Without admiration—without calculation. She was wondering how much of love was sex—wondering how she could fortify herself against the passing of the charms of sex—wondering why Gage had such a frantic dislike of women like Margaret who hadn’t succumbed to sex—wondering if that was the reason. She thought of the pretty Thorstad child. Gage liked her. That too might be a manifestation of vague unadmitted desire. She shivered a little. Such thoughts made her very cold. Then with a conscience smitten glance at her little porcelain clock she slipped into her dress and rang for the maid to hook it.
The nurse maid came and entertained Helen, as she helped her, with an account of the afternoon she had spent with Bennett and Peggy. Peggy had learned to count up to ten and Bennett was trying to imitate her. Helen wished she had heard them. She hated to miss any bit of the development of her fascinating children. It was a feeling that Margaret had told her she had better steel herself against.
It was a wonderful evening for Freda. In the thoroughly friendly atmosphere she expanded. She made it wonderful for Gage too. He had the sense of an atmosphere freed from all censoriousness of analysis.Freda was drinking in impressions, finding her way by feeling alone. He basked in the warm worshipful admiration she gave his wife.
They left early and Gage drove them home, leaving Freda at her hostess’ door with a promise to give her a real drive some day and an admonition not to fall in love with any young wastrel. Part of their bantering conversation had been about Freda’s falling in love and how completely she was to do it.
“I’ll let you look him over if you will, Mr. Flandon.”
“Fine,” he said, “I’ll see if he’s the right sort.”
He had told Helen he was going to drop in at the club for a few minutes and see if he could find a man he wanted to see. But the object of his search was not to be seen and Gage was about to leave the lounge when Walter Carpenter called him. Carpenter lived at the club. He was stretched in one of the long soft chairs before the fire, his back to the rest of the room. Gage stopped beside him.
“How’s everything?”
“So-so.”
Walter offered a cigar, and indicated a chair.
“No—I think I’ll go on home,” said Gage, taking the cigar.
“Better smoke it here.”
For all his casualness it was clear that Walter wanted company. Gage dropped into the nearby chair and they talked for a few minutes, without focusing on anything. Then Walter began.
“Wonderful girl, that Vassar friend of Helen’s.”
“Margaret Duffield? Think so?”
“I’ve never seen a girl I liked as much,” said Walter.
He said it in the cool, dispassionate way that he said most things, without any embarrassment. Embarrassments of all sorts had been sloughed off during the fifteenyears of Walter’s business and social achievements. Gage looked at him frowningly.
“You don’t mean you’re serious—you?”
“Why not—I?” repeated Carpenter, grinning imperturably.
He didn’t look serious or at least impassioned, Gage might have said. His long figure was stretched out comfortably. It was slightly thickened about the waist, and his sleek hair was thinning as his waist was thickening. His calm, well-shaven face was as good looking as that of a well-kept, well-fed man of thirty-seven is apt to be. It was losing the sharpness and the vitality of youth but it did not yet have the permanent contours of its middle age. And it bore all the signs of healthy living and living that was not only for the sake of satisfying his appetites.
“Why—it never occurred to me,” said Gage, puffing a little harder at his cigar.
“That I might get married?”
“I don’t know. I rather thought that if you married you’d pick a different sort of a girl.”
“I might have done that a long time ago. I’ve seen enough sorts. No—I never have seen one before who really—”
He paused reflectively, unaccustomed in the language of emotion.
“She’s a fine looking girl.” Gage felt he must pay some tribute.
“She is fine looking. She has a face that you can’t forget—not for a minute.”
“But,” said Gage, “you must know that she’s the rankest kind of a woman’s righter—a feminist.”
“What’s a feminist?” asked Walter calmly.
“Damned if I know. It means anything any woman wants it to mean. It’s driven everybody to incoherence.But what I mean is that that kind of woman doesn’t make any concessions to—sex.”
They lifted the conversation away from Margaret into a generalization. Both of them wanted to talk about her but it couldn’t be done with her as an openly acknowledged example.
“Well,” answered Carpenter, “perhaps that was coming to us. Perhaps we were expecting women to make too many concessions to sex. There are a lot of uncultivated qualities in women you know. They can’t devote all their time to our meals and our children.”
“I don’t object to their devoting their time to anything they like. I do object to their scattering themselves, wearing themselves out on a lot of damned nonsense. Let them vote. Granted we’ve got to have a few female political hacks like this Thorstad woman. It won’t hurt her any. It’s all right for Mrs. Brownley—and that type of wise old girl—to play at politics. But for a woman—a young woman who ought to be finding out all the things in life that belong to her, who ought to be—letting herself go naturally—being a woman—for her to go in for a spellbinder’s career is depressing and worse.”
Walter smiled quizzically.
“Haven’t women always been just that, spellbinders? Isn’t that the job we gave them long ago? Haven’t women been spellbinders for thousands of years?”
“God knows they have,” said Gage.
He was silent for a moment, recollecting his argument, then plunged on.
“It was all right when it was instinctive and natural but now it’s so damned self-conscious. They’re picking all their instincts to pieces, reading Freud on sex, analyzing every honest caress, worrying about being submerged in homes and husbands. It’s wrecking, I tell you, Walter.It’s spoiling their grain. And I’ll tell you another thing. It’s the women’s colleges that start it all. If I had my way I’d burn the things to the ground. They start all the trouble.”
Walter broke the silence again.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you was because some of the difficulties you suggest were simmering in my own mind. And it always seemed to me that you and Helen got away with the whole business so well. You’ve had children—you’ve managed to keep everything—haven’t you worked it out for yourself anyway?”
“You can’t work it out,” said Gage, impatiently, “by just having children. It doesn’t end the chapter.”
“It’s a difficult time.”
“It’s a rotten time. You know I can’t help feeling, Walter, that the women of this generation are potentially all that they claim to be actually. It isn’t that I’d deny them any chance. But to let them be guided by fakirs or by their own inexperience will land them in a worse mess than ever. Look at some of them who have achieved prominence-pictures in the New York Times anyway. Their very pictures show they are neurasthenic. Look at the books written about them that they feed on. Books which won’t allow a single natural normal impulse or fact of sex to go unanalyzed. Books which question every duty. Books which are merely tracts in favor of barrenness. Books written almost always by people who live abnormally. After a diet of that, can any woman live with a man wholesomely—can she keep her mind clear and fine?”
Walter shook his head—then laughed.
“Well—what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not going to do a damned thing but growl about it, I suppose. As a matter of fact I don’t care what most women do. But when I see the fakirs lay theirhands on Helen—Helen, who is about as perfect a woman—” he stopped abruptly, and then went on. “I’m not a very good person to talk to on this woman question. I’m balled up, you see. I only know that the trend is dangerous. They got their inch of political equality. Now they want an ell. They don’t want to be women any longer.”
“It’s all interesting,” answered Walter. “Of course, it’s difficult not to think in terms of one’s own experiences. Now I never have seen a woman like Miss Duffield. Of course I haven’t an idea that she’ll have me. But personally I’d be quite willing to trust to her terms if she did. I’ve never seen a woman of more essential honesty.”
They were disinclined to talk further. Gage, after a few trivialities, left Walter to his dream, conscious that what he had said had produced no disturbance or real question in the other’s mind. It was easy for one to transcend generalities with the wonderful possibilities of any particular case, Gage knew. He’d done it himself.
Unconsciously as he went toward his home, he was doing it again. He had never lost the magic of going home to his wife. Entering the still hall, where the single lamp cast tiny pools of light through the crystal chandelier, he was pervaded by her presence. Somewhere, awake or asleep, above that stairway, was Helen. The gentle fact of it put him at peace.
Her door was closed and he went softly past it to his own room. Then, in a dressing gown, he settled himself in an easy chair by a reading lamp, no book before him, cherishing that mental quiet which surrounded him.
Down the hall he heard her door open quietly and her footfall on the soft rug. She had heard him come inand was come to say good night. With a quick motion he turned out the light beside him and waited.
“Asleep, Gage?” She spoke softly, not to awaken him, if he were asleep.
“No—resting—here by the window.”
She found her way to him and he gathered her up in his arms.
“You wonderful bundle of relaxation! Have you any idea how I love you like this?”
“Do you know, Gage, I think that for all our bad moments that we are really happier than most people?”
“There’s no one in the world, dear, as happy as I am at this moment.”
“And it isn’t just because I’m—”
He bent his head to her, stifling her sentence.
“You mustn’t talk—don’t say it. It isn’t because of anything. It just is.”
“I know. And when it is—it swallows up the times when it isn’t.”
“Hush, sweetheart. Let’s not—talk. Let’s just rest.”
He felt her grow even easier in his arms. All the instinct for poetry in him, starved, without vehicle, sought to dominate the relentlessness of her mind, working, working in its tangles of thought. The meaning of his inexpressible love for her must come through his arms, must be compelling, tender. They sat together in the big chair enfolded in peace. And the same little secret thought ran from one to the other, comforting them. This is the best.
MARGARET made the faintest little grimace of dismay at the long florist’s box for which she had just signed the receipt presented by the messenger. It wasn’t a grimace of displeasure but a puzzled look as if the particular calculation involved was an unresolved doubt. Then she cut the pale green string and lifted the flowers out.
There were flowers for every corner, fresia, daffodils, narcissus—everything that the florist’s windows were blooming with during this second week of May. She touched them with delight, sorted them, placed them in every bit of crockery she could find. But Mrs. Thorstad sat in a chair drawn up before the mission oak table in Margaret’s little rented apartment and waited. She was impatient that the flowers should have come at a moment when their discussion hinged on a crisis. And as if her respect for Margaret had fallen a little, she eyed the display without appreciation. Margaret talked, as she placed the flowers, however, as if she could separate her mental reactions from her esthetic.
“Well,” she said, “you saw the way the thing went. It was absolutely cut and dried. I knew there was no chance of getting a woman elected as one of the regular delegates to the National Convention. Pratt and Abbott were the slate from the beginning. Every one knew Gage Flandon wanted them and every one knew that meant they were Joyce’s choice if Flandon wanted them.I had talked to Mr. Flandon about it but he wouldn’t tell me anything really revealing. Except that the slate was made up and while they were very glad to have the women as voters that it might be better to wait another four years before they gave them a chance to sit in at a National Convention. He didn’t intend to have a woman and especially he didn’t intend to have one because he knew there was some agitation to send his own wife.”
“That was what the mistake was, I think, Miss Duffield. I think another candidate might have done better.”
“But they never even mentioned any woman,” exclaimed Margaret. Then as if she got the other woman’s meaning, she gave her a searching look.
Mrs. Thorstad talked blandly on. Margaret finished her work of beauty and came back to the table, tapping the surface of it with her regained pencil.
“What we must propose is a woman with a national ideal, a woman thoroughly interested in the district, conversant with its needs and with a democratic personality.”
Thus definitely did Mrs. Thorstad outline what she believed to be her virtues, but Margaret did not seem to understand them as solely hers.
“Helen Flandon combines all those things.”
“Personally,” broke in the other woman, “I have always admired Mrs. Flandon immensely. But I have always felt that her interest in all these matters was perhaps a little transitory. That is no reflection on her, of course” (Margaret nodded acquiescence) “but a woman with so many domestic duties and with so much society life must necessarily not be able to give her whole mind to the work.”
“She’d give her whole mind if she got interested enough and I think she is nearly interested enough now. Helen Flandon is big material, Mrs. Thorstad. She hasthe genius of leadership. It’s a bit banked with ashes just now but it could be fanned into flame.”
“Won’t the fact that she is Gage Flandon’s wife work against her?”
“Not materially, I think. Of course that’s one thing that bothers Gage. He thinks he’ll be accused of using influence to get his wife in. Told me the thing was impossible on that account. Let him be accused of it. It doesn’t matter. Her name will please the men. They’ll think they’re pleasing Flandon by letting her in and that’s of course a thing he can’t deny.”
Mrs. Thorstad apparently did not get all the subtleties of those statements. A settled darkness had come over her face—a kind of clouded vision.
Margaret went blithely on.
She talked easily, wisely, giving the wounded hopes of Mrs. Thorstad a chance to get over their first bleeding, giving her a chance to get her hopes fixed a little on that political future which, although she was apparently not to be made delegate at large, still loomed ahead. She suggested that Mrs. Thorstad should surely be at the Convention in some capacity. And she went on, telling of the Washington leaders, the section leaders, of the general plans for work and education in politics among women. Then she spoke of Freda.
“Is she going to stay here after all? I do hope so.”
“Well, I go home to-morrow. Mrs. Flandon has been interested in Freda’s staying. She thought there must be things Freda could do here and Freda wants to stay. Freda doesn’t typewrite but at the Republican headquarters there may be a place for her. Mr. Flandon has promised to speak to the chairman about taking Freda on as secretary. At first there’d be only a certain small amount of correspondence but later they say they couldput her in the campaign headquarters. I must go back to Mohawk. Freda stays for a day or so at Mrs. Brownley’s—then if she takes this position, Mrs. Flandon will help her find a place to live. It’s extremely kind of all of you to be so interested in Freda.”
“She’s a very wonderful young person. I only hope she gets more interested in us.”
“She has all the irresponsibility of youth,” said her mother, sententiously.
“Oh, by the way,” said Margaret, “I promised to lend your Freda a book. Here it is.” She took a book from the table and gave it to Mrs. Thorstad who eyed it a little questioningly.
“It’s very stimulating if not altogether sound,” said Margaret.
“So much of our literature is that.” The older woman compressed her lips a little. “Not that I am not a Modern. But we are a little inclined to lose sight of the fact that our fathers and mothers—”
This time her little platform manner was interrupted by the ringing of the house phone. Margaret spoke into it, briefly.
“Why, yes, I’m nearly ready. I didn’t realize it was so late. No, indeed not. Come in and wait for me.”
“Don’t hurry, Mrs. Thorstad,” she added, hanging up the receiver. “Mr. Carpenter can wait.”
But Mrs. Thorstad did hurry. And as she went out she met Walter Carpenter going in. She gave him her reserved little bow.
The two Thorstads were still at the Brownley house. The visit had turned out so much better than Freda had feared that two weeks had slipped away quickly for her while her mother was working and planning and making speeches to small clubs and circles along the lines herhostess desired. Freda was out with Allison Brownley on this particular afternoon and the two guest rooms were empty as Mrs. Thorstad entered them.
She sat down in a straight chair (the habit of relaxing had long since failed her) and fell into thought, idly turning the pages of the book she had borrowed from Miss Duffield. A letter slipped out and fell to the floor. It had no envelope and as Mrs. Thorstad picked it up she read clearly the scrawl of writing in black, heavy masculine characters across the back of the page. It was a love letter to Margaret signed with a black sprawling male signature, “Gregory.” So Mrs. Thorstad would phrase it with a little repression of her lips. There were words of passion—there was a flavor of intimacy—
She read no more than that back page. Then, holding the letter as if it offended her, she placed it in one of Mrs. Brownley’s envelopes and addressed it to Margaret.