MONDAY was busy in Sable and Flandon’s office. Conferences, a dinning of telephones, a vast opening of mail. Every one was conscious of important work in transaction. The Laidlaw case was having its first hearing before the District Court and it was understood to be worrying, ticklish business. The Judge was irascible and his point of view of the case important from this first hearing. Both the partners were at the office by half past nine and left together, one of the younger lawyers accompanying them, much as young doctors are present at a skillful operation, to learn and observe.
Freda, watching and hearing much of the office talk, discreet as it was, wished she could have gone along too. She was feeling very fit, buoyed up by the first strength of separation when it is a delight to feel one’s capacity for cheerfulness and bravery in the midst of loneliness. She wanted to plunge very hard into work, to do something important, to get thoroughly absorbed in her work and not to dawdle into dreams. So she told herself strongly. At night, when she was alone, she would live with her memories and her dreams. It was youth’s swagger in the presence of emotion. She was busy until Flandon left the office, making memoranda of things to be done, getting papers for him, keeping him from telephone interruptions. But after ten o’clock the office settleddown and became quiet. The clerks were hammering away endlessly at their typewriters, the few clients who came in were quickly taken care of, and Freda found herself harder to control. She was looking up a list of references that Mr. Flandon wanted ready by noon and answering his telephone. It was not absorbing work. Try as she would, her mind slipped away from her and concentrated on amazing facts.
She was a married woman. A week ago she had been a girl visiting at the home of the Brownleys’. Rapid enough the events which had led to her working here—but this other secret whirlwind—how strange it all was. She wondered if lives were like that. Going along placidly enough until they struck the edge of the waterfall of circumstance and then—. All lives must have secret strange places. She had loved, in Mohawk, to reflect on those sometimes. Spoon River had never quite gone out of her mind. She had always, since she had read it, seen people as other than the reflection of their acts and seeming—speculating on the curious contradictions of appearances and motives. Here she sat, working, Gage Flandon’s clerk, Eric Thorstad’s daughter. And those two things mattered not at all—gave no key to her. It mattered only that she was the wife, the secret wife of a man whom she had known six days. Physically, chemically, actually she was altered. That was life. When you found it, you held it to you secretly. You never told. That was why you couldn’t tell about people. Life might be caressing them, making itself known to them, biting them. Over it all the vast illusion of action. It was illusion.
The morning drifted by. At a little after twelve Mr. Sable and Mr. Flandon came in together. It was easy to see that things had not gone well. They were self-contained, sober, but the lines of Gage’s face were uglyand those of his partner disapprovingly set. They went into Mr. Sable’s office and closed the door. Freda, getting on her hat and coat, heard the young lawyer who had accompanied them, speaking to a colleague.
“Didn’t go well. Flandon got Judge Pratt mad. Something got under Flandon’s skin and he didn’t play the old judge very well.”
That was all she heard.
At the moment Gage was hearing the same thing. Sable was walking about the office in some irritation explaining it.
Gage had continued to handle his work badly at the office. Like many a man with a hobby he took his hobby into business hours. But the concession which might be made to a man on account of golf, on account of curling, were not to be made for a man who had a boresome way of bringing in the eternal question of whether women were progressing or “actually retrogressing,” “whether all this woman movement weren’t a mistake,”—and so on. Needing support, comfort, consolation, encouragement and direction, Gage, as he felt about for them, only became somewhat absurd.
Men are not tolerant of those who bore them, except sometimes in the family, where such things are endured for practical reasons. They moved away from Gage, so to speak, while he talked on.
Sable noticed it. He had his own irritation, growing more focused each day. To begin with, they would lose the Laidlaw case and it was all, Sable thought, due to that false start which Gage had made. He had rather decisively taken the matter out of Gage’s hands towards the end but the thing had been lost already—or he preferred to think so. Sable could bear to lose cases but not a case which involved so much money. It frightened off the right sort of clients.
When Gage was a cub lawyer, arguing cases with flaring energy in the local courts, Sable had picked him out as a bright young man. He had kept his eye on him and his progress, with sheer admiration for the practical genius with which he picked up important clients and gained and held their confidence. He edged in on politics after a little—and in Mr. Sable’s own party. Then King and Sable had made a proposition to young Flandon—that he join them, bringing his clients, of course, and coming in, not as an ordinary apprentice lawyer but as the colleague of Mr. Sable. It was an amazing offer to be made to so young a man. Gage accepted it. Two years later King, rather elderly now and ready to retire, went to Congress and the firm name changed from King and Sable to Sable and Flandon. Flandon made good. He made important alliances for Mr. Sable, he played the political end for Mr. King, he made money for himself.
These things were not to be passed lightly over and Mr. Sable had them all docketed somewhere in his mind. He was fond of Gage too, in his own restrained way. But Sable was fifty-eight. He had seen many a brilliant start end in disaster, many a man with ability fail. He knew most of the signs of failure in men. He knew further exactly what steps Gage should take to achieve eminence. They were broad and fair before him. Instead it was increasingly clear that Gage was not keeping his mind on his work—that he was letting his nerves get the better of his judgment. For some reason or other he was making a fool of himself. When a man made a fool of himself, there were, in Sable’s experience, one of three things back of it—a woman, liquor or speculation. He was watching Gage to see which of these things it might be in his case.
All this talk which Flandon was always getting off about women now—thought the senior partner—that wascamouflage. He felt fairly convinced that Gage must be playing the fool with some woman. Irregular and disappointing, with a lovely, fine looking, distinguished wife like Mrs. Flandon. Rotten streak in Flandon probably. Sable chose the woman solution rather definitely. Gage drank when he could get it of course. And he nearly always had a supply on hand. But he used his head about it pretty well. It didn’t seem like liquor trouble. As for speculation—surely he wouldn’t play the fool there. There was plenty of money coming to Gage, and he always could get more.
It must be a woman. Probably Flandon was trying to keep it from his wife and that was what was on his nerves. Some little—Sable characterized Gage’s visionary lady impolitely. He thought on, his mind lighting, for no apparent reason, on Freda. And there it stopped. Queer, Flandon’s bringing that girl into the office. Bright enough but no experience. Unlike him too, considering his usual impatience with inexpert assistance. He wondered—
So while the Brownley girls gossiped in ugly, furtive, rather lustful conversations and Ted Smillie told his little discovery on occasion as being an instance of what those “smooth touch-me-not girls were usually up to”—while Mr. Sable, his mouth tight in repression and his eyes keen, watched and noted Freda. Freda went on her serene way. She was serene and she was happy. At times her happiness seemed to shut her completely off from every one—even in her thoughts from her father. She never tired of exploring her memory for the sound of Gregory’s voice, the touch of his hands, the mystery of love. More and more as the days went by she hugged her secret to herself. She could not have shared a vestige of it. Its exquisite privacy was part of its quality. She had the vaguest notions of what might be waiting her as Gregory’s wife. Certainly she might have a baby—normally that probably would happen to her in the next nine months. Gregory was poor. They’d have to work. And there might be hard things. She thought once or twice that it might be an ugly sort of proposition if she did not have the particular feeling she did for Gregory. But there it was. It wasn’t a matter of the mind—nor of physiology either. She didn’t believe it was physiology which made her deliciously faint and weak as she read Gregory’s strange letters—letters so frequent, so irregular, so curiously timed and written—on the back of a menu, on a scrap of envelope, on a dozen sheets of hotel paper. Each message, beating, alive, forcing its entrance. This was the love that according to Margaret was the undoing of her sex. She knew she would go anywhere Gregory wanted her to go, to be with him. That she knew her life with him would have its independence completely in so far as her own love allowed it, did not make it less clear to her that even if the independence had been less, if she had found him a man of convention she would none the less—but would she?
She was immensely interested in possibly having a baby, and anxious to know about it. She wanted to tell Gregory. She wrote him letters in which she spent the deepest of her thought. She said things in her letters which would have astounded her if she had read them over. But she never did read them after she had written them. It would have seemed almost like cheating to read them as if for criticism.
But to-day she had not had a letter from Gregory and several unpleasant things broke in upon her absorbed happiness. She missed his letter which she usually went home at noon to get. In the afternoon as she sat at her desk working and trying to feel that she could fill up the time until she went home that night to see if there was aletter, Bob and Allison Brownley came in with another young girl. They were as resplendent as usual and Freda judged that they were collecting for some fashionable charity, from their intrusion with pencils and notebooks. She had seen women invade these offices almost every day for some such reason but it was her first encounter with Bob since that night on which she had left her house. To her horror she found herself flushing, and hoping that Barbara would not notice her and that thought enraged her so that she raised her head and looked full at the girls coming towards Mr. Flandon’s office, evidently referred to her.
She expected some embarrassment in Barbara and instead met a glance of insolence and surprise. She looked at Allie but Allie looked away and left it to Barbara.
“Can I take your message?” asked Freda with a little hauteur.
“We prefer to see Mr. Flandon personally,” said Barbara, and went by. It was in Freda’s mind to stop them but Barbara was swift. Freda could hear Mr. Flandon’s voice greeting her and judged it was too late to do anything. She sat down at her desk frowningly and was further surprised when the door opened very shortly and the girls went out. They, especially Barbara, had heads unpleasantly held, angrily tilted. The buzzer sounded for Freda.
She found her employer sitting at his desk looking as angry as his departing guests.
“Sit down a moment, Miss Thorstad, will you?”
She did as he told her. It was evident that he had something important and difficult to say. She watched him. He looked nervous, tired too, she thought.
“That young lady made some unpleasant remarks about you and I asked her to leave the office,” he said.
“Oh—I’m sorry,” answered Freda. “She’s been abominable, Mr. Flandon. But it’s too bad you should have been involved.”
“Don’t let that bother you,” said Gage grimly; “it’s of no consequence. But I wonder if you ought to let her be quite so broadcast in her remarks. It could be stopped.”
“It doesn’t matter—truly it doesn’t. Let her say what she pleases. If any one wants to know the truth of the matter I always can tell it, you see.”
“Would you think it infernal impudence if I asked you what the truth was?”
She hesitated and then laughed a little.
“You know the funny thing is that I had almost completely forgotten the whole business. It seemed important at the time but it was really trivial. Except for the fact that it opened up other things to me. Of course I’ll tell you, if you want to know.”
She did tell him in outline, stressing the fact of the misunderstanding all around, on the whole, dealing rather gently with Barbara, now that anger had gone out of her.
“I had made rather a fool of myself you see,” she finished.
He looked at her as if waiting for her to go on.
“That’s all.”
“I see. She—well—.” He let that pass. “Now ordinarily it is easy to say that gossip and slander don’t make any difference to a high minded person. I think you are high minded. I do feel however that she has made this incident a basis for a kind of slander that is dangerous. Her accusations against you are, from what I hear, absolutely libelous. It wouldn’t take ten minutes to shut her mouth if I could talk to her. But I want you to fully refute her specific attacks.”
“I know. I imagine she might say almost anything.”
“Well, then, you have never stayed at the Roadside Inn, have you?”
To his amazement the face of the girl in front of him changed. She had been calm and half smiling. Now astonishment, consciousness, and something like panic showed in her eyes, her suddenly taut body.
“Does she say that? How did she know?” There was a little moan of dismay in Freda’s answer.
Gage’s face grew stern. He sat looking at the girl across from him, whose eyes were closed as if in pain.
“To lay her hands on that,” said Freda, under her breath.
“I don’t understand you,” said Gage rather curtly.
She lifted her face.
“It hurts to have any one know that—but for her to know it most of all.”
“Such things are usually public knowledge sooner or later, my dear young lady. Clandestine—”
“Don’t say that,” cried Freda, her voice rising, “don’t use that word.”
And then as if some gate had been opened her words poured out. “Can’t you understand something being too beautiful to be anything except secret? It was something I couldn’t have let even those who love me know about. And to have her ugly devastating hands on it! It soils it. I feel her finger marks all over me. It was mine and she’s stolen it.”
Her head went down on her arms on the desk in front of her. Gage watched her with curiosity, embarrassment and pity. To his mind this love affair was a shady business but she didn’t see it so. That was evident. Her abandonment touched a chord of sympathy in him. He knew how she was being rent by pain.
“My dear girl,” he told her, more gently, “I’m afraid you’ve been very unwise.”
“No—not unwise.” She raised her head and smiled unsteadily. “I’ve been quite wise. It’s just bad luck—that’s all.”
“Could you tell me about it?”
She got up and walked to the window, evidently trying to compose herself. “It’s nothing that matters to any one but me. And I suppose you are thinking things that, even if they don’t matter, had better be set straight. For perhaps you think they matter. There’s nothing that I’ve done that I shouldn’t have done. I was there at that Inn—with—with my husband. It was just that we wanted—he even more than I at first until I learned why—to keep that little bit of life for ourselves. We didn’t want people to know—we didn’t want to share with any one except each other. I know you won’t understand but there’s nothing to condemn except that we had our own way of—caring.”
“But I do understand,” answered Gage, “and I’m glad you told me. I do most entirely understand. Because I’ve felt that way. Is your husband here?”
“He’s gone,” said Freda, “but he’ll come back. You see I married Gregory Macmillan.”
A memory of that slim, gaunt young poet came to Gage. Yes, this was how he would do it. And how perfect they were—how beautiful it all was.
“Mr. Flandon,” said Freda, “let them say what they please about me. Let them talk—they don’t know about Gregory—or do they?”
“No—they don’t.”
“Then don’t tell them, will you? Don’t tell any one. I don’t care what they say now if they don’t lay their hands on the truth. I can’t bear to have the truth in their mouths. Please—what do I care what any one says? I don’t know any one. I never see those people. He will be back and we’ll go away and they’ll forget me.”
She was very beautiful as she pleaded with him, eyes fresh from their tears, her face full of resolution.
“It’s all right, my dear,” said Gage, “no one shall know. You are right. Keep your memories to yourself. What they say doesn’t matter.”
He was standing by her at the window now, looking down at her with a tenderness that was unmistakable. It was unfortunate that at that moment Mr. Sable entered without notice.
There was an argument that night. Sable had forced it. He had said that Gage had to “cut it out in his own office.”
Gage had asked him what he meant by cutting it out and his partner said that he definitely meant getting that girl out of the office at once.
“And my advice to you is to keep away from her after she is out.”
The upshot was that Gage had refused. He had simply said that there was no reason why he should turn out a useful employee simply because any one disliked her or thought evilly of her. Miss Thorstad was extremely useful to him and there was nothing further to say. At which Sable had snorted in disdain.
But, seeing Gage’s stubbornness he had possibly guessed at what might be the depth of it and grown milder.
“It’s a difficult business for me, Gage,” he said, “but I’ve got to go through with it. She must leave the office. We can’t afford scandal.”
“Suppose I won’t discharge her?”
“I’m not supposing any such nonsense. You aren’t going to act that way unless you’re crazy.”
“But if I did?”
Sable looked at him.
“It means a smash probably. Don’t let’s talk foolishness. You know you’ve got too much tied up in this business to let it go. You couldn’t afford to say you smashed up your business for a woman. That’s not the way things are done. I can’t insist on your giving up the girl but I can ask you to remove the scandal from an office in which not alone your name is involved.”
“Such rotten minds,” thought Gage, almost without anger. He was feeling curiously clear and light and deft. He had felt that way ever since he had found how Freda felt. Something had been strengthened in his own philosophy by her simple refusal to share her secret with every one. She put other things higher than the opinion of gossip. So must he.
They let the thing ride for a few days. Gage thought of nothing else and found himself dreaming a great deal when he should have been working, according to Sable. He also found that Helen was becoming almost anti-pathetic to him. She was to make the seconding speech for one of the candidates at Chicago and was busy with its preparation. There were conferences constantly, and she had allowed a picture of herself with her children to be syndicated. Gage found it before him everywhere and it enraged him. He felt it on his raw mind as an advertisement of the result of their love, as a dragging into publicity of the last bond between them.
“I feel like the husband of a moving picture actress,” he told her, viciously, one day.
She said what she had never meant to say. She was tired and full of worrying and important matters. Gage and his brooding seemed childish and morbid. And she had her own secret grievance.
“From what I hear of your escapades at the Roadside Inn you act like the husband of one,” she retorted.
She had not meant to say that. But when the gossip about Freda had reached her there had come an ugly coupling in her mind of that gossip and Gage’s interest in the girl. During that very week-end Gage had been absent from the city—on political business—he had said vaguely. Yet she had tried to control her suspicions, convince herself that there was no cause for investigation or accusation. This flare of hers was unexpected and unguarded—dangerous too.
A shudder of misery shot through both of them at their own coarseness. But they were launched. And it was clear to Gage that in some way or other not only Sable but Helen had thought him involved with Freda. It did not make him particularly angry. He rather courted the injustice of the suspicion because it justified him in his own position. This was where this business of Helen’s had landed them then. Alienated, loveless, suspicious—this was the natural outcome of the whole thing. Minds running on sex all the time—that was what happened to these women—yet without delicacy, without reserve. So she thought he was like that, did she? She was thinking that sort of viciousness while he’d been trying to protect her even from himself. What was the use of it all?
“I don’t know what you hear of my escapades as you call them,” he answered. “Possibly you might inform me?”
She was sick with shame at her own impulse but perhaps it had been at the bottom of her mind corroding it more than she knew.
“I didn’t mean to say that, Gage.”
“You must have meant something.”
He was insistent, brutal. He would have the truth out of her. He wanted the inside of her mind, to torture himself with it if he could. He wanted it over with.
“Not to-night, Gage. I’m tired. Let’s talk over some of these things when we are both fresh. I—I apologize.”
She moved towards the door of the living-room on her way upstairs. But Gage caught her hand. He stood looking down at her and as she met his eyes she saw that his face was almost strange. His eyes looked queer. They were brutal, excited, strange glints. His mouth seemed to hang loose and heavy.
“Not to-night, Gage,” she repeated. In her voice was a droop of weariness that was unmistakable.
“Why not to-night? Because you want to save yourself fresh for your public to-morrow? You don’t want to be bothered with a husband and his annoyances?”
“Not to-night because you aren’t in the right mood.”
He still held her hand.
“But suppose I want to go into it to-night. There’ll be no better time. Day after to-morrow my wife goes to the National Convention to dazzle the American public. Suppose she sets her house in order first. Every good politician does that, Helen.”
“There’s a devil in you, Gage, isn’t there?”
“A hundred, and every one bred by you. Tell me, what you were referring to as my escapades? Tell me.”
He shook her a little. She felt a hairpin loosened and the indignity suddenly made her furious.
“Let me go.”
“I will not let you go. I want you to tell me.”
“I’ll tell you,” she said bitterly, her words coming as if anger pushed them out. “Heaven knows I’ve tried to conceal it even from myself. But your viciousness shows you’ve got a rotten conscience. When you took that Thorstad girl into your office I wondered why—and then after I told you she’d been seen at that place with a man, your silly defence of her might have told me what was the situation. You talk of her—all the time—all thetime. You were away that week-end. Where were you if you weren’t with her?”
He let her go then. She had said it. It was said, as he had wanted it said. He felt triumphant. And he would give her no satisfaction. He would hurt her—and hurt her.
She went on in a tumbled burst of words.
“I don’t blame the girl, though she’s a little fool. But I won’t stand having her let in for that sort of thing.”
“Why not?” asked Gage, lighting a cigarette. “Isn’t it a perfectly proper thing for a modern woman to choose her lovers where she will?”
Helen felt herself grow dizzy, not at his question but at the admission it made. She drew herself up and Gage wondered at her beauty with a hot surge of desire even while he wanted to torture her more. It was such a relief to have found a weapon.
“Come,” he went on, “we won’t discuss that young lady. There’s not a thing in the world against her. If you have been bending your ear to the ground and heard a lot of rotten gossip I’m not responsible. If the people who talk about her had half her quality—”
“I warn you, Gage, you’re going to pieces,” interrupted Helen. “I can’t stop you if you’re determined to ruin yourself. But you’ve acted like a pettish child for months about the fact that I wanted to do some work you didn’t approve of, apparently you’ve run off and got mixed up with this girl, you’ve been drinking far too much—you had whisky before breakfast this morning—it’s beginning to tell on you.”
“I miss you, Helen,” said Gage with a kind of sinister sarcasm.
She shivered.
“I’m going upstairs.”
“We’re not through.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Aren’t you going to divorce me—or would that hurt your career?”
“You’re not yourself, Gage,” said Helen. She had regained a loose hold on herself. “I’d sooner not talk to you any more to-night.”
He flattened the end of his lighted cigarette and pulled the chain of the table light.
“Then we’ll talk upstairs.”
“Not to-night.”
“Yes, we will, Helen. I’m lonely for you.” He came to where she stood. “Come along, my dear.”
There was not a tone in his voice that Helen could recognize. A kind of ugly caress—she shuddered.
He put his arm around her shoulders.
“Gage—you mustn’t touch me like this.”
He laughed at her.
“It’s quite the new way, as I understand it, my dear, isn’t it? Nature—openness—no false modesties, no false sentiments. After all we are married—or to be more modern, we’re openly living together. The pictures in the paper prove it. There’s no use being silly. You’ve had your way a lot lately—now how about mine?”
He pulled her close to him and pushing back her head sought her lips roughly, as if he were dying of thirst and cared little what healthy or unhealthy drink he had found.
“You know,” said Cele Nesbitt to Freda, “I think Mr. Flandon acts kind of queer, don’t you?”
“He’s tired, probably,” she told Cele.
“Doesn’t look tired. He seems so excited. I thought he and old Sable must be having a row. I went into Sable’s office with some papers to-day and there they wereglowering at each other and mum as oysters all the time I was in the room. They don’t stop talking business when I’m around.”
“Well, don’t worry about them,” answered Freda, “Mr. Flandon is the kindest person I know and there’s something wrong with people who can’t agree with him.”
“Hate him, don’t you?” Cele teased her. “Isn’t it a pity he’s married. And such a stunning wife and children. Did you see her picture on Sunday? She ought to be in the movies instead of politics with that hair.”
Except for Margaret Freda saw only one other person at very close range. That was Gage’s stenographer, Cecilla Nesbitt, commonly known as Cele. Cele was a joyous soul who had taken a liking to Freda and shortly invited her to come home for dinner. Freda had gone and been made happy and intimate at once. There were all the traces of the cottage that the Nesbitts had before they moved to St. Pierre—old rattan rocking chairs and scroll topped beds. Over everything, invading everything was the Church. There was a little holy water font inside the door, there were pictures and holy cards framed and unframed everywhere, crucifixes over the beds, holy pictures in the bureau frames and rosaries on the bed posts. To Freda in her sparsely religious home, God had been a matter of church on Sunday and not much more than that except a Bible for reference and a general astronomical warder at the enormity of God’s achievements. This difference—this delightful easy intimacy with God was all fascinating. This was the comfort of religion, religion by your bedside and at your table. She expanded under it. There was a plenitude of Nesbitts, sleeping rather thickly in the four bedrooms—two brothers, young men of twenty or thereabouts—there was Cele after them and then two younger girls of ten andthirteen and stepping rapidly downward the twins of nine, Mrs. Nesbitt having finished her family with a climax, especially as the twins were boys and made up for being altar boys on Sunday by being far from holy on all other occasions. Still their serving of Mass endowed them in the eyes of Mrs. Nesbitt with peculiar virtues. She had a gently conciliatory Irish way towards her sons rather different from her tone to her daughters. Freda contrasted it with some amusement with the cold classicism of Margaret’s attitude. To Mrs. Nesbitt they were obviously slightly inferior in the sight of God and man, being female, to be cherished indeed, frail perhaps, and yet not made in the exact image of the Creator.
They were headed for the Nesbitt flat. Freda had no letter from Gregory, had had none for two days and her heart felt as if it were thickening and sinking. She would not let it be so. She set to work to make herself interested. She would not mope. It was not in her to mope. But she did not know where Gregory was, for his last letter had said he was waiting advice from the bureau—one of his talks having been cancelled—and that he didn’t know where he would go now. It did not make her worried or nervous but she had been drugging her emotions with his letters and the sudden deprivation hurt her cruelly. So she was going home with Cele to forget it.
They got on the street car and hung from their straps with the nonchalance of working girls who have no hopes or wishes that men will give up their seats to them, their attitude strangely different from that of some of the women, obviously middle class housewives, who commandeered seats with searching, disapproving, nagging eyes. Freda loved this time of day—the sense of being with people all going to their places of living, fraught with mystery and possibility. Her spirits rose. She wasnot thinking sadly of Gregory. She thought of how her intimate thought and knowledge of him reached out, over her unfamiliarity with these others, touching him wherever he was, in some place unknown to her. The thought put new vigor into her loneliness.
It was an oppressively hot evening for June. They climbed the three flights to the Nesbitt flat with diminishing energy and Cele sank on one of the living-room chairs in exhaustion as she went in.
“Hot as hell,” she breathed. “Let’s sit down a minute before we wash, Freda.”
Freda took off her hat and brushed her hair back with her hand.
“Pretty hot all right. Bad weather for dispositions.”
“My idea of this kind of weather is that it’s preparation for the hereafter.”
Mrs. Nesbitt opened the door to the kitchen and hot heavy smells from the cooking food came through to the girls. But Mrs. Nesbitt herself, mopping great hanging drops of sweat from her forehead, was serene enough. She shook hands with Freda with vast smiling cordiality.
“You’re as cool looking as the dawn,” she said to her. “Are you tired, dear?”
“Not a bit.”
“There’s a little droop to your eyes, dear. I thought maybe it was bad news now.”
Freda had a sudden impulse to confidence, a leap of the mind towards it. But she drew back.
“No—not bad news at all.”
“Your mother and father’s well?”
“My mother is coming to see me for a few days, I think. She’s going to Chicago for the Convention for the clubs and she’ll come back this way to see me.”
“Now, isn’t that the blessing for you,” said Mrs. Nesbitt rejoicingly.
The family streamed in, the boys from their work and the twins from school. Last came Mr. Nesbitt, his tin lunch pail in his hand, his feet dragging with weariness. They talked of the heat, all of them, making it even more oppressive than it was by their inability to escape the thought of it. And Mrs. Nesbitt who knew nothing of salads and iced tea, or such hot weather reliefs stirred the flour for her gravy and set the steaming pot roast before her husband. They ate heavily. Freda tried to keep her mind on what she was doing. She talked to the boys and let Mrs. Nesbitt press more food on her unwilling appetite. It was very unwilling. She did not want to eat. She wanted to sit down and close her eyes and forget food and heat and everything else—except Gregory.
Vaguely she was aware of Mr. Nesbitt talking.
“It was in the paper and no more stir made of it than if a stray dog was run over by an automobile—shot down they were, martyrs to Ireland.” His voice was oratorical, funereal, heavy with resentment.
“Who?” asked Freda.
“Fine young Irishmen with the grace of God in their hearts shot down by the hired wastrels of the Tyrants. Gentlemen and patriots.”
“What an outrage it is,” she answered.
He burst into invective at her sympathy, rolling his mighty syllabled words in denunciation, and his family sat around and listened in agreement yet in amusement.
“Come now, pop, you’ll be going back, if you get as hot under your shirt as all that,” said Mike.
“It’s too hot for excitement, pa,” Mrs. Nesbitt contributed equably. “Pass him the mustard, do you, Cele.”
“I’ll show you a true account of it inThe Irish News,” said Mr. Nesbitt, to Freda, ignoring his family.
He wiped his mouth noisily and abandoned the table,coming back to press into Freda’s hands hisIrish News, a little out of fold with much handling.
“The city papers tell you nothing but lies,” he said, “read this.”
To please him, Freda read. She read the account of the shooting of three young men poets and patriots, whose names struck her as familiar. And then she read:
“These young martyrs were part of the group who banded together for restoration of the Gaelic tongue to Ireland. They with Seumas, McDermitt and Gregory Macmillan now on tour in this country—”
She read it again. It gave her a sense of wonder to come on his name here, his name so secretly dear, in this cold print. And then came more than that. This was Gregory—her Gregory who might have been killed too if he had been there—who might be killed when he returned to Ireland. She didn’t know where he was. Perhaps—perhaps he had heard of this and gone back. Perhaps he had forgotten, forgotten about her—about them. This was so big—
She had to take her thought away from the presence of all these people. She wanted to con it over—she must get away. Suddenly she stood up and the heat and distaste for food—the accurate sight of a piece of brown stringy meat, embedded in lifeless gravy, sickened her. She pressed her hand before her eyes and swayed a little.
Mrs. Nesbitt jumped up with Cele.
“She’s sick—poor dear. The heat now has quite overcome her.”
They helped her into the least hot of the little bedrooms and she found herself very sick—nauseated—chilled even while she was conscious of the heat that oppressed while it did not warm her. The family was all astir. Mr. Nesbitt underwent censure for having bothered her. But when Freda, apologetic and recovered,went home on Mike’s arm, getting the first breath of air which came as a relief to the hot city, Mrs. Nesbitt came into the room where Cele hung half out of the window trying to catch the breeze.
“Sick she was, poor thing.”
“Rotten heat got her. She’s not used to working, either, I think. She felt a lot better. Her stomach got upset too.”
Mrs. Nesbitt pressed her lips together.
“It was a funny way she was taken. If she was a married woman I should have said the cause was not the heat.”
“Huh?” said Cele, pulling herself in. “What’s that you mean?”
“I mean nothing,” said Mrs. Nesbitt. “Nothing at all. Only I would have you always be sure to make sure your friends are good girls, my darlin’. Mind ye, I say nothing against the young lady. But she’s a pretty and dangerous face and she’s away from her home where by rights should every girl be.”
THE Convention gathered. It was an event signal enough to make an impress even on the great city. Convention Week was recognized by every one, hotel men, shop keepers, railroad men, newspapers, pickpockets, police, students in the great universities at the city’s gates, and the great subordinate multitude which read the newspapers and accepted the ruling of politics or commerce, as to which days should be held apart—Labor Day, Mother’s Day, Convention Week.
The streets were hung with banners, great, swinging canvas pieces of propaganda, bearing crude likenesses of candidates and still cruder catchwords supposed to represent their opinions or those of their opinions likely to excite popular pleasure. In the hotel lobbies men swarmed. Desk clerks, sated with patronage, gave smiling and condescending negations to those who applied for rooms. The girls at the cigar counters and newspaper stands worked steadily, throwing back saucy rejoinders to the occasional impudences of the men.
It was mostly a gathering of men, a smoky, hot, sweating collection of men who had a certain kind of training in this game of conventions and politics. They flung themselves into their parts, gossiping, joking, occasionally forceful, immensely knowing. No one of them was there who did not feel himself a commissioned prophet—perhaps not as to ultimate but as to tendencies anyhow. They spoke the great names with a jestingrespect, the lesser ones with camaraderie or a fillip of scorn—but for any suggestion of political idealists or of women they had a smile. They admitted the fact that women had been put in the show but it wasn’t going to change the show any. They knew.
Here and there in the hotels were groups of women, well dressed for the most part, some of them handsome, all of them more alert, less careless than the men—talking wisely too but with more imagination, with a kind of excited doubt as to the outcome, and despite themselves showing a delighted naïveté in their bearing towards the whole event. That was on the first day before the heat had really lowered over the city.
Helen and Margaret had been well provided for. They had long before engaged rooms in one of the most comfortable hotels where previous patronage made Helen able to choose her accommodations. Gage who had come after all, had no reservations anywhere and apparently no particular worry about them. He could always get in somewhere and he had no intention of staying at the same hotel with Helen and Margaret. He breakfasted with them on the train and enjoyed it in spite of himself, enjoyed being able to watch Helen and to bait Margaret with political pessimism and a jocular scorn as to the effect of women on the Convention. When they arrived he saw them to their hotel and left Helen to her “glory” he said, a little mockingly.
“It’s hot,” he said. “Don’t try to make over the whole Party to-day, my dear.”
“I won’t,” said Helen. Her eyes met his. For thirty-six hours every glance, every gesture towards him had been unreal, mechanically controlled. She was not apparently angry—nor cold. It was rather as if when she spoke to him she had no feeling. Deep in himself, Gage was frightened. He guessed the fact that anger is oftena denial of loss of illusion and that in Helen’s utter lack of response there was something deadly, ominous. A glimmer of respect for her work came as he first saw her, the morning after their catastrophic night, not moping or storming, but studying notes for her seconding speech. But the glimmer faded. It was because she really didn’t care. Shallow feelings, easy to suppress, he told himself. She had probably told Margaret about the whole thing and Margaret had tipped her off as to how to behave. That thought struck him and made him curdle with anger again.
If it had not been for Helen there was no doubt that he would have regarded the women with a kind of tolerance and with some speculation regarding their usefulness. There was a chance that they might be useful. But the intensity of his feelings, starting from his invaded love for his wife, from that sense of exterior influences over which he had no control and which he did not trust coming into the privacy of their relations, mauling those delicacies by weighing, appraising emotions and loyalties, chipping off a bit here and a bit there, bargaining, discussing, leaving a great imprint of self-consciousness of the whole, had spoiled all that. Gage was confused. He was in revolt against a hundred, a thousand things, and that he was not quite sure of the justice of his revolt made it none the easier for him.
He was in the lobby of the Congress Hotel, turning away from the cigar counter, alone for the minute, when he felt a touch on his arm and turned to see Mrs. Thorstad. She was dressed in a neat dark suit and a tan sailor hat, rimmed precisely with white daisies, looking very competent and attractive.
“How do you do, Mr. Flandon?” she asked.
He gazed down at her, smiling. She amused him and intrigued him. When he watched Mrs. Thorstad he felt convinced that all his protest against the progress ofwomen was somehow justified. It was his quarrel with Margaret and the foundation of his dislike of her that he could not get the same feeling with her and had to build it up with anger.
“I hope you’re well,” he answered, as he shook hands with her.
“I want to thank you for all your kindness to Freda. You’ve given her a great opportunity to find herself.”
Word slinging, thought Gage. What did she mean by “finding herself?”
“She’s a great addition to my office force.” He wondered what this little person would say if she knew, as she so obviously did not, of the tumultuous marriage of her daughter, of the ugly stream of gossip that was pouring about her feet.
“I have the greatest respect for the woman in business,” went on Mrs. Thorstad. “Of course I confess I had hoped that Freda would interest herself in something possibly a little more humanitarian, something perhaps a little more idealistic—oh, I don’t mean to decry the law, Mr. Flandon, but we can’t help feeling that the business world lacks certain great ideals—”
Gage grinned, looking like a great humorous puppy.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse me, if you will. I see a man over there I must speak to.”
Mrs. Thorstad smiled in acquiescence, leaving her chair herself. She sent a dutiful postal to Mr. Thorstad and went out on the Avenue in front of the hotel. She had calls to make. The galling sense of the fact that her impress on the Convention must be a slight one was undoubtedly under her gallant, moral little smile. To be sure she had come to the Convention, she had a seat reserved, she was, as she always would be, taking what she could get, but if Margaret Duffield had not come West it might have been more.
None the less she called on Miss Duffield and Mrs.Flandon. She found them at their hotel where congregated a brilliant circle. Harriet Thompson, renowned from coast to coast as a leader of women, was there. She was a rather plain woman of forty-five, lean faced with good brown eyes and a rather disconcerting way of seeming to leap at you intimately to discover what sort of person you were. And there were Grace Hawlett, the novelist, and the wives and sisters of famous politicians. It was a gay, knowledgeable group. Most of the women knew Margaret and were instantly attracted by Helen’s beauty and charm of manner. Margaret introduced Mrs. Thorstad as “one of the best woman organizers in the Middle West,” and they were all cordial. Mrs. Thompson took the Mohawk leader aside for a little talk. It was astonishing how much Mrs. Thompson knew about the situation in St. Pierre—how she had her finger on the strength of the women and the strength of the organization in the entire state. She put rapid questions to Mrs. Thorstad and checked her a little abruptly in the middle of some generalities.
“How did you all like Miss Duffield?” she asked.
“Very much indeed,” answered Mrs. Thorstad, with the slightest pursing of lips. The keen brown eyes looked at her for a minute. It was not the answer usually made to a question about Margaret Duffield.
Mrs. Thorstad departed to find her own kind. She knew she was not at home in that particular group which while it awed her by its sparkle of mind and personality, yet left her resentful, and she went on the round of her further calls. She found women with petty lobbying to do, with little reputations which they wished to secure, airing their platitudes and generalities to each other in heavy agreement, talking of the new day and denouncing the vagaries of modernity with a fervor that was half jealous, half fearful.
Harriet Thompson looked at Margaret after Mrs. Thorstad had left them. She always liked to look at Margaret. The serenity in her calm face, the touch of austerity which kept it from becoming placid, pleased her. She crossed to where she was sitting.
“What did you do to that little person, Margaret?”
“I? I didn’t do anything. She rather wanted to be delegate at large in Helen’s place, I think. Don’t speak of it to Helen. I told Helen there was no one else even willing to do it.”
“Your Mrs. Flandon is a lovely person.”
She wondered, as she said that, at the soft flush of enthusiasm which came over Margaret’s face.
“Isn’t she? She’s just what you want, too. I hope she keeps interested.”
“Isn’t she very much interested?”
“Yes—but it’s not too easy for her. Her husband’s rather opposed—makes it difficult.”
“Odd that a woman like that should be married to a reactionary.”
“He isn’t at all an ordinary reactionary,” said Margaret. “He’s a politician, without any illusions. Hates all the publicity she gets. I think he wants her to himself you see—most awfully in love.”
“He’ll never have her to himself if she gets into this game. She’s the sort of woman, from the little I’ve seen of her that we need. Brains and personality—not a wild woman or an old fashioned suffragist. Did she reconcile the husband?”
“Not a bit. He’s here. You ought to meet him. But better carry a weapon.”
“He might be rather interesting.”
“He is all of that.”
“After all, Margaret, it is rather hard on some of these men. I’ve seen it before. They suddenly have so littleof their wives to themselves. It affects them like the income tax. They hate to give up so large a share of their property.”
“To a government they distrust. That’s it with Gage. He doesn’t mind Helen doing any amount of music. But he hates all kinds and forms of modern feminism. Thinks it’s shameless and corrupting.”
“It is pretty shameless and sometimes a little corrupting. There’s a lot in the man’s point of view that you never saw, Margaret. They’re fighting for themselves of course but they’re fighting for the sex too. It’s all right, too. Man is, I sometimes think, the natural preserver of sex. Women get along very well without it, or with enough of it to decently populate the earth. But men are the real sentimentalists. A woman’s ruthless when she begins to houseclean her sentiments. A man never likes to throw anything away, you know, according to the tradition. He doesn’t like to throw away sex. He’s used it badly, spotted it up and all that—in his lucid moments he’ll even admit it. But none the less it’s very often the one thing which can excite his tenderness and reverence and when he sees us invade the home, as he says, it isn’t that he’s afraid the dishes won’t get washed. He says that, but what he is afraid of is that we’ll find the secret places of his sentiment and ravish them. I’m awfully sorry for some of the men. They’re going through a lot just now. They seem to feel so left out, under all their loud jocosity and foolish talk—you know,” she ended a little weakly.
“I know. I’ve been sorry for Gage myself. Terribly sorry for him. But I don’t see how one can make concessions. What I’m afraid of is that in his bitterness he’ll break Helen down. And she might give in but she’d never forgive him now.”
“You’ve done some speedy work, haven’t you?Smashed up homes and everything. What happened to your own pet Sinn Feiner?”
“He’s lecturing somewhere or other.”
“Is that all off?”
“It never was on.”
“You couldn’t get absorbed in his enthusiasm because you’ve got one of your own, haven’t you?”
“I have yours.”
Mrs. Thompson patted her affectionately on the arm. Her contacts were all warm and intimate. With men and women alike, she seemed to get inside their minds and look out on the world as they saw it.
“You’re a dear girl,” she told her, “but you must remember that humanity is a bigger thing even than feminism, Margaret. Be a little more tender towards the poor men. After all, they can’t all be transported.”
All afternoon the crowds swelled. In the evening the great hotel dining-rooms were filled with people who represented almost everything—power, wealth, notoriety, ambition. Headquarters were established. Newspaper men idled to and fro, joking, prophesying, gossiping. Underneath the fatuousness of much of the pretense that this was a great popular meeting, most of the people knew that the rules were already laid down and things would take their course—must take their course. And yet there was a certain amount of fair speculation as to whether in some way the great leaders might not be outwitted after all—whether some new element might not show sudden strength, whether the unorganized, half formulated hopes and ideals of millions of ordinary people might this time put themselves across and lead instead of follow. The Convention, like the world, was attuned to surprises, revolts, inexplicable overturnings.
Helen was more than excited. A little less than two days ago she had felt that she could not go on with this—that the personal agony had to be fought out first. To her amazement she found that Margaret had been right. Helen had always agreed with her that women were really not dependent on emotion but that had been because Margaret’s contention seemed reasonable and to take the other side hardly worthy. An inner feeling had persisted that after all Margaret was unmarried and didn’t—couldn’t know the strength of the emotional pull. But now she found herself breaking through personal emotional wreckage to impersonal interest—or if not impersonal interest at least interest in which sex played no part. She had at first kept up the signs of control because she must. Now she no longer needed the signs. She thought of Gage almost dispassionately. Now and then the tragedy of the ruined feeling between them shook her violently. But she could see their situation spread out before her. She could see it in relation to the children, to other work. She could see where things must be stopped in that they did not improve. And most of the time she hardly thought of Gage at all. She was responding to all the excitement and interest and admiration around her. She felt part of a great organization about to act in ways which would affect the world. The great sensibility of her woman’s imagination, undulled by much experience in the direction of things beyond her contact, was played upon by a vision of great power which she might help direct.
For the first time she understood what Margaret meant by the freedom of women and why she was not content with the formal letting down of the gates. She understood what some of the others meant when they talked of the easy contemporary victories as obscuring the real things which women needed.
The best of them did not talk the lingo of the “new day.” They knew that any day was not new long enoughto get used to its title. They talked of adjustment of contemporary circumstances to an evolution as old as that of civilization, as old as that of man—merged with male development and yet distinct from it again. They avoided catch words and the flattery which was sprinkled so thickly, avoided it not pedantically but with humorous knowledge of its purpose.
They dined with Mrs. Thompson and three other women and held a kind of informal court afterwards in one of the parlors of the hotel. Every notable man who came into the hotel seemed to want a word with Mrs. Thompson. She had a way with them that they all liked, a kind of keen camaraderie, especially effective in a woman who, like Mrs. Thompson, could never be accused of trying out any arts of sex attraction. They liked her company and her brisk tongue and there was added interest in finding such company in a woman. Helen met the Senators—the men whose names the party conjured with and handled them as she handled most people—skillfully.
It was a little after nine when Helen saw Gage at the end of the room. She had been talking with a gray haired, affable Senator who was telling her what a beneficent influence the women were to have on the Convention and she was excited, amused and sparkling. She was wearing a dinner dress of black lace that Gage had always liked and as she caught his eyes on her that was the first thought which flashed through her mind. It was followed by a quick appraisal of Gage himself. He was looking a little untidy and showing clearly the signs of recent strain and worry.
He did not make his way to her at once. He stopped to talk casually to some men whom he knew. Helen thought suddenly that Gage was not a big man politically. He did not have nearly as much prestige as Mrs.Thompson of course, not nearly as much strength as she herself might have—. She saw Margaret introducing him to Mrs. Thompson. His manners were bad. He had none of the easy pleasant way with which the other men had come up to her. He must be making an extremely bad impression. It humiliated her somewhat. They were still too close for her not to feel that.
She joined the group where were Gage and Mrs. Thompson and Margaret.
“Have you had a good day, Gage? I called up the house and the children are fine. Not a trace of their colds, Esther said.”
He nodded gravely. Their eyes met, denying any intimacies of exchange, coldly, a little cruelly.
“I hear your wife is to make the prize seconding speech to-morrow, Mr. Flandon,” said Harriet Thompson, bending towards him.
“I have no doubt of it,” said Gage.
“Do your views agree?” asked the older woman lightly.
“Very seldom,” answered Gage. He had not made it light. It was like the flick of a whip.
Margaret interposed.
“Gage doesn’t believe in women’s progress, Harriet—don’t get him started, please.”
“I wish he would get started. There are plenty of times when I think we’re all talking balderdash and it would be a relief to hear some one give testimony against us. What is the matter with women, Mr. Flandon?”
Gage’s tired, half-haunted eyes looked at her as if he suspected mockery but he found none.
“According to most belief, there is nothing the matter with them. They are supremely successful. They’ve got what they wanted. If they don’t like the taste of their little mess of pottage as they eat it, it will be unfortunate.”
“You don’t think they will like it?”
“I may be mistaken. It may suit their taste.”
“I’m afraid it won’t but it’s the best food we’re able to provide so far. Perhaps we’ve overpaid for it.”
“You have.”
He stopped, abruptly conscious of being drawn into discussion in public. Margaret and Helen had been listening to the brief dialogue, and he stiffened to the sense of their presence.
“I can’t stay, Helen—I’ve an appointment. Is there anything I can do?”
She walked with him to the end of the room, impelled by a desire to preserve what she could of appearances but more by an unexpected pain at having him leave her. She did not want him to stay—she was clear about that, but she hated to have him go away in that lonely fashion. The gentleness that welled up only lasted for a moment. He was ugly still. She could tell by the set of his lips. It brought back her terribly painful memories.
“Good night, Gage.”
That was all. Towards morning Gage went to bed. He had been drinking other people’s whisky and he was ill enough to suspect it had not been good stuff.
He did not go to the great Auditorium until the next afternoon. It took some time to get himself into shape. The heat had begun, heat which settled thickly on the city for three days and played its own part in making possible agreements and compromises. By noon the smart look, the brisk look had gone from everything and everybody and the sticky battle with the weather had begun. Gage had met some men from his own part of the country and they entered the great hall where the banners hung limp from the ceiling and the delegates were already comingback to their places after the noon recess. Gage did not look for his wife but after a while he saw her—as usual looking the mistress of herself. His head was hot and thick and he hated her for the fine mastery of her health and beauty. He wanted to see her in tears—prostrate—and because he knew his desire was ugly he slipped down in his own self-respect, which already was becoming such a frail reed to cling to.
All that day he did not go near her. He watched her furtively sometimes while he was in the auditorium but most of the time he spent with other men in hotel rooms which grew hotter in spite of the efforts of electric fans and all the time the whisky which he drank made his brain hot and seething with misconceptions and desires and hatreds.
By the afternoon of the second day it had settled down to an endurance meeting.
Watching the restless, heated crowd, going through the same old formalities, Gage wondered whether Helen was aware now what kind of game this was she had chosen to sit in—whether the farce of it was clear. He did not wonder clearly. It was a kind of vindictive spite which pricked a muddled brain.
He had not intend to be there when she spoke but in the end he stayed. He heard the round commonplace phrases of the man who was nominating the candidate she was working for—a good man, as Gage admitted—better caliber than most, but without a ghost of a show for nomination. He listened with irritation to the outburst of applause. Then he saw his wife before the great crowd. It seemed quite unreal.
He had not guessed her voice would carry like that. He had not known she would show up like that. She came like a breath of cool air into that heated place. In her blue linen gown and white feather hat she looked cool,fresh, immaculate. When she spoke they listened to her and for a few minutes Gage caught himself listening eagerly. She was talking well. No nonsense. It was to the point. Just then he heard a man behind him.
“Some looker, isn’t she? That’s the kind of dames we ought to have in politics all right.”
Blind rage swept over Gage again. He wanted to turn on the man and fight. But he did nothing of the sort, being held by a thousand inhibitions. Instead he watched his wife and as she talked he seemed to see her offering her beauty to the crowd, seemed to see in every man’s face—as they watched her—amusement, desire, lust.
He heard the burst of applause when she finished, applause with real enthusiasm and at every hand clap he felt fury rising. Getting up, he found his way to the door.
If Helen had expected a tribute from him, piled on the many she received that night, she was mistaken. Men, women, newspapers all congratulated her on having put some real fire into the speeches. Her speech, printed and flashed all over the country was given its own share of praise. It was clear, forceful, new in its outlook. The women of the country had chosen a good spokesman, said the papers. But from Gage there was only a note at the hotel, saying briefly that he had thought it best to return to St. Pierre—the convention was the usual farce.
Helen twisted his note in her hands.
“So he couldn’t stay away from Freda Thorstad even that long,” she thought. “Well,—”