WAS MYSTERY OF SUICIDE OF RICH CLUBMAN ENTANGLEDIN FREE LOVE PROBLEM?
WAS MYSTERY OF SUICIDE OF RICH CLUBMAN ENTANGLEDIN FREE LOVE PROBLEM?
There followed an article of subtle insinuation written by the hand of an adept. It crept around the edge of libel, telling only the facts that every one knew, but in such proximity that the train of thought must be complete—that one who knew anything of the people implicated could see that Margaret Duffield (never named) believer in all “doctrines of free madness” had “perhaps preyed upon the soul of the man.” And then after a little the “Sinn Feiner” came into the article, he too coming from groups who knew no “law but license.” Ugly intrigue—all of it—dragging its stain across the corpse of Walter Carpenter.
The news had come to the Flandons at breakfast too. Gage had come down first and picked up the newspaper while he was waiting for Helen and the children. He read it at a glance and the blow made him a little dizzy. Like a flood there came over him the quick sense of the utter blackness of Walter’s mind—more than any sense of loss or pity came horror at the baffled intellect which had caused the tragedy. He stood, reading, moistening his lips as Helen entered and lifted the children to their chairs.
“Any news, Gage?”
He handed it to her silently.
“Oh, my God!” said Helen, “How terrible! How awful, Gage!”
He nodded and sat down in his chair, putting his head in his hands. She read the article through.
“But why, do you suppose?”
Then she stopped, knowing the thought that must have come to him as it came to her.
“Poor, poor Walter!”
She went around the table to Gage.
“You’ll go down of course, but take a cup of coffee first,” she said, her hand on his shoulder.
He roused himself.
“All right.”
Some one telephoned for Gage and he said he would come at once to the club. They went on with the form of breakfast. The children chattered. The room shone with sunlight. Helen, through her shock and grief, caught a glimpse of the shrinking of their trouble against this terrific final snuffing out of life. Abashed at the comfort it gave her, she drew away from the thought.
But it made her tender to Gage. It kept persisting, that thought. “It wasn’t Gage. It might have been Gage. It might have been us. People like us do go that far then. How horribly selfish this is. Poor Walter!” She suddenly stopped short. She must telegraph Margaret. Margaret would have to know. Whatever there had been between her and Carpenter, she must know. Doubtless—perhaps—she would want to come to see him—Or would she?
She telegraphed Margaret as compassionately as possible. Yet it seemed a little absurd to be too compassionate. Margaret wouldn’t like the shock “broken.” She would want to know the facts.
The sun seemed brighter than it had been for days. Despite the grave weight of sorrow on her spirit, Helenwas calmed, attended by peace. She was feeling the vast relief attendant on becoming absorbed in a trouble not her own. It was not that her grief was not deep for Carpenter. He had been Gage’s good friend and hers. And yet—it was almost as if in dying he had deflected a tragedy from her, as if he had bought immunity for her with his terrific price. She dared not tamper with the thought of what this might do to Gage.
The mail man in his blue coat was coming up the steps. She opened the door for him, anxious to do something, wondering if there would be a letter from Margaret. There was. She laid the others aside and read that first. It was a long letter full of thought, which at another time would have been interesting. Margaret had wearied of Republicanism. She and many other women were talking of the “League” again.
And Walter Carpenter lay dead. Was it relevant?
Helen put down the letter and looked through her others. There was one from some hotel in Montana. She ripped it open and the first words startled her so that she looked for the signature. It was signed by Freda Thorstad.
A swooning excitement came over Helen. She hardly dared read it. Then, holding it crushed tightly, she went up to her own room. As she went the children called to her. They wanted her to come and see the castle in the sandbox.
“Soon,” she called to them, “I’ll be down soon. Mother’s busy—don’t call me for a few minutes.”
She locked her door and read the letter. What had startled her was that abrupt beginning “Asking for money is the hardest thing in the world—at least nothing has ever been so hard before.” It went on “But I don’t know what else to do, and I must do something. I can’t write any one else, partly because no one else I know hasenough money to send me and also because I haven’t told any one except your husband about myself—and I suppose he has told you. If he hasn’t he’ll tell you now that it is the truth. It’s this way. My husband has been terribly sick and what money he had was stolen while he was at the hotel before I got here. He’s still weak and of course he wants to go home. But I haven’t dared tell him we haven’t any money because he doesn’t know the maid picked his pockets while he was ill. We have to get away from the hospital now that he’s well enough to travel—we don’t know anybody in the city and there are his hospital bills to pay. The doctor told me he would wait, but I can’t ask the nurses to do that. It seems almost ridiculous for an able bodied person to be asking for money but we owe so much more than I can earn that I must borrow. There doesn’t seem to be any way to get money sometimes except by borrowing. I know I could pay it back as soon as Gregory gets well again. I suppose you’ll wonder why I don’t ask father. Well—he hasn’t as much money as we need. We need nearly six hundred dollars to take Gregory to Ireland and pay the bills here. Perhaps it would be better to get it from Gregory’s friends in Ireland. But I know from what he’s told me that they all are trying so hard to do things for the country with what little money they have that it would worry him to ask them. And it would take too long. He mustn’t be worried, the doctors say, and he must get back to his home soon. You know something about him for I remember that I saw you at his lecture. He is really very wonderful and.... It isn’t as if I had a right to ask you either, except perhaps a kind of human right.... You’ve been so kind to me, you and Mr. Flandon....”
Helen finished the letter with a rueful, very tired smile. Then she took it into Gage’s room and laid it on hisbureau where he would see it, when he came in. He telephoned at noon to tell her that he was coming out; she kept out of the way so that he would read the letter before she saw him.
He brought it to her and gave it back, folded.
“I suppose I should have told you that business but it was the girl’s secret. She didn’t want it known and I stumbled on it.”
“I see,” she answered, inadequately.
“Looks like a bad situation for them, doesn’t it? I didn’t know, by the way, where she had gone. I assumed she had gone to join him but I did think Sable had driven her to do it. Evidently he sent for her.”
“And he nearly died.”
They paused in embarrassment. Helen held herself tautly.
“There’s an apology due you,” she began.
He held his hand out, deprecating it.
“No, please—you had every reason.” He changed the subject abruptly.
“Do we let her have the money?” He smiled for a minute. “Money’s tight as hell. I haven’t got much in cash you know. But I don’t see how we can refuse the girl.”
“We won’t,” said Helen.
“By the way, what I came out to say was that Walter’s lawyer thinks we should send for Margaret Duffield. There’s a rumor that she is his legatee. He had no family—his mother died last year. From what Pratt said he left it all to Margaret. She’ll be rich.”
“I did wire her,” answered Helen, “an hour ago. I thought she ought to know.”
“That’s good.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was all in the paper. He shot himself a little aftermidnight. He was alone in his room. It was evidently quite premeditated. There was a sealed letter for his lawyer with instructions undoubtedly and everything was in perfect order. He—he had simply decided to do it. And he has done it. Something made him lie down—that’s all.”
He spoke reflectively, with a degree of abstraction that was surprising.
“Why do they think he did it?”
“Heat—not well physically. That’s what goes to the papers. Better spread that. If the girl is involved, we’ll keep her name clear.”
“Oh, yes.”
“For Walter’s sake,” Gage went on. And then very slowly, he added, “I wouldn’t like people to know that she got him.”
“Yet if it comes out that he left her everything, won’t people guess?”
“They won’t know. Nor do we know. Nobody knows except Walter and he’s dead.”
They sent a second wire to Margaret requesting her presence for urgent reasons and by night they had heard that she would come. The funeral was to be on Friday.
It was Thursday evening when the “Town Reporter” bristled with ugly headlines on the streets of St. Pierre. Walter’s body lay in the undertaking “parlors” those ineffective substitutes for homes for those who die homeless, in the brief period between their last hours among human kind and the grave. No place except a home can indeed truly shelter the dead. Walter lay inscrutably lonely, in the public parlor, mysterious in the death which was a refusal to go on with life, a relinquishment so brave and so cowardly that it always shocks observers into awe. As he lay there, a raucous voiced newsboy outside the window ran down toward the main throughfare, abunch of “Town Reporters” under his arm, shouting, “All the noos about the sooicide”—and in half an hour his papers were gone, some bought openly, some bought hurriedly and shamefacedly. Hundreds of people now knew the reason Elihu Robinson gave for the death of Walter Carpenter, his version of the struggle in the stilled brain of the man he had not known except by sight and hundreds of people as intimate with the tragedy as he, wagged their heads and said wisely that this “was about the truth of it,” with other and sundry comments on the corruption of the age and particularly of the rich.
The Flandons read it with mixed disgust and anger. They knew it was the kind of stain that only time could scrub away. It did not matter much to Walter now that he was slandered. His suicide was a defiance of slander. They were sorry for Margaret but not too much bothered by her reception of such scandal if it came to her. It was only local scandal.
“The worst of it,” said Helen to Gage, “is tying Gregory Macmillan up that way just as they were about to announce his marriage. I telephoned Freda’s father this afternoon for I was going to tell him you had had a business letter from her and knew where she was. It seemed wise. But anyway he had just heard from her too. He was so happy, poor fellow. Now to have this nasty scandal about his son-in-law will be another blow. I shall go to see him and tell him that it’s an utter lie. I know from what Margaret told me that there never was a thing between her and Macmillan.”
Mr. Thorstad had already taken the matter up with Elihu Robinson. He had called him what he was and his white faced indignation was something the editor preferred to submit to without resistance. But he was not without trumps as usual.
“But who is your authority for saying that Macmillan was implicated with this lady?” asked Mr. Thorstad, angrily.
He had not told that Macmillan was his son-in-law and the editor wondered at his defense of Macmillan.
“My dear fellow,” he said with that touch of apologetic and righteous concern with which he always met such attacks. “My dear fellow, your wife told me that.”
MARGARET came, calm and yet clearly distressed beyond measure. It was pathetic to see her control, to see that she could not even break through it to the relief of abandonment. She was very white during the day of the funeral and the ones succeeding it and her eyes met other eyes somewhat reluctantly. She came on Friday morning and Helen had not been able to persuade her to stay with them. She had gone to a hotel and from there, quite simply to the parlors of the undertakers.
“Don’t wait for me, Helen—and I’d sooner be alone. I’ll be here a long while, probably.”
Perhaps after all Walter and Margaret found relief in each other when the grim parlor door was shut. At least at the funeral Margaret sat very quietly, though the well-bred curious eyes of the little group of people strayed unceasingly toward her. She went through it as she went through the following days. It was soon known, before the will was probated, that she was Walter’s legatee. There was a great deal of business to be done. Walter had decided no doubt that the brief embarrassment of inheriting his fortune was better than the recurrent fear of cramping poverty which had always pursued her and of which she had told him. She saw the lawyers and his business associates and discussed with them the best way of disposing of Walter’s interests, and word of her coldness spread around rather quickly and was considered to justify Mr. Robinson’s deductions.
Gage saw her at the funeral. He had not looked forher—had not felt ready to see her. But in the semicircle of chairs facing the gray satin coffin, he was so placed that his eyes met hers unexpectedly. When they did, hostility glinted in his. “You got him,” they seemed to say—and hers looked back steady, unrepentant, even though her mouth was drawn with pain and sorrow.
It had hit Gage as it had Helen. The lightning had been drawn from him. Walter’s death had roused in him an instinct of resistance which had been dormant. He had no certain idea of what had passed between Walter and Margaret but he knew what Carpenter’s point of view had been—how far he had gone, how willing he had been to yield every concession to a woman—to Margaret—in the belief that it would then be possible to build love on a basis of comradeship. Walter had found failure, just how or why no one knew except perhaps Margaret herself. Gage’s mind stumbled along nervously, trying to analyze his and Walter’s failure. He remembered how they had talked together about women, how Walter had said he would be “willing to trust to their terms.” For some reason he lay dead of their terms. And he himself—he had looked at himself in the glass an hour ago with a kind of horror as if he saw himself for the first time in weeks. There was a softening of his features it seemed to him, a look of dissipation, of untrimmed thought, brooding. The memory of his face haunted him. That was what came of being unwilling to trust to the terms of women. Either way—
He looked across at Margaret again, quiet, firm, persistent through tragedy, through all emotional upheaval, and a grim admiration shot through his hostility. After all she was consistent. With all his admiration for women, even at the height of his passion for Helen, he had never connected her or any woman with ability to follow a line of action with such consistency. He hadsome sense of what was going on in Margaret’s mind—an apperception of her refusal to let this tragedy break her down.
He became conscious of Helen’s sigh. She sat beside him, her hands folded loosely in her lap. The minister talked on, performing with decent civility and entanglement of phrase, the rites of last courtesy for the dead. Gage wondered what he and Helen would do. He was glad that the mess about Freda Thorstad was cleared up. Not that it made any grave difference except in a certain clearness of atmosphere. If she got a divorce she couldn’t get it on those grounds. He wondered how their painfully sore minds could be explained in a divorce court which was accustomed to dealing with brutal incidents. Perhaps a separation would be better. He wondered how he was going to provide for her decently. It was going to be a long job building up the new practice. Things were breaking badly.
Some emphatic phrase of the minister, starting out of his droning talk, brought Gage’s eyes back to the coffin. Strange how the sense of that silent form within it gave him fresh energy. Life had got Walter. Women had got him, in some obscure way. He felt his shoulders straighten with stubborn impulse. They wouldn’t get him. Deftly and logically his thought became practical. He would cut out all this thinking about women. He would—perhaps he would get the Thornton business. It meant a big retainer. He could have done it a few months ago. Now—he visualized old Thornton’s tight mouth, keen eyes. He’d want value received. Have to get in shape—cut out the booze—concentrate on business—men’s business. The actual phrase took shape in his mind. Men’s business. By God, that was how women got you. They got you thinking about them until you became obsessed, obsessed with them and their business.It was so and it had always been so. These new problems were not what people thought they were. They were not sex stuff. Perhaps they altered the grain of woman—changed her—but the adjustment of sex was as it always had been, between each man and each woman. Let the women go on, be what they wanted, do what they wanted. It made some of them better, some of them worse—put new figures in the dance but it was the same dance. Even if it wasn’t the minuet or the waltz there was still dancing. And there was choosing of partners.
Every one stood up. Gage was standing too, with the rest, his vagrant thoughts brought back from their wanderings to the ever shocking realization that he was helping in the laying away of this friend of his and the inevitable feeling that life was a short business for him and every one. He fell back into triteness. You must play the game.
After it was all over he was standing beside Helen.
“I want to go to see Margaret,” said Helen. “I’ll go to her hotel now, Gage.”
“Bring her home if you like,” answered Gage.
The ease of his tone startled Helen. She looked at him in quick surprise, meeting his unexpected smile.
“I merely meant I thought I could be reasonably civil,” he said—and with impulse, “I feel rather cleaned out, Helen. I’ll run down town now and see what I can do before dinner.”
She thought, “He hasn’t had anything to drink for two days,” placing the responsibility for his unwonted pleasantness on a practical basis. It cheered her. She went to Margaret’s hotel and found her in her room, lying on her bed and her head buried in the counterpane. It was the nearest to abandonment that Helen had ever seen in her friend so she ventured to try to comfort.
“It’s the awful blackness of his mind that I can’t bear,” said Margaret, “the feeling he must have had that there was no way out.” She sat up and looked at Helen somewhat wildly. “It frightens me too. For he had such a good mind. He saw things straight. Perhaps there isn’t any way out. Perhaps we are battering our heads against life and each other like helpless fools.”
“Did you love him?” asked Helen. It seemed to her the only vital point just then.
Margaret threw her hands out futilely.
“I don’t know. I was afraid of what might happen if we married. Either way it looked too dangerous. I was afraid of softening too much—of lapsing into too much caring—or of not being able to care at all. He wasn’t afraid—but I was. And—the rotten part is, Helen, that I wasn’t afraid for him but for myself.”
She was hushed for a moment and then broke out again.
“It wasn’t for myself as myself. It was just that if our marriage hadn’t been a miracle of success, it would have proved the case against women again.”
“You mustn’t think any more than you can help,” said Helen. “It wasn’t like Walter to want to cause you pain and I know he wouldn’t want you to suffer now.”
“No, he was willing to do all the suffering,” said Margaret in bitter self-mockery. “He did it too.”
She got hold of herself by one swift motion of her well-controlled mind and stood up, brushing her hair back with the gesture Walter loved. “It’s not your burden, poor girl. You have enough.”
“Not so many,” said Helen. “By the way, Margaret, you haven’t heard about Freda Thorstad, have you?”
“Did she come back?”
“No—she wrote. She had married Gregory Macmillan secretly when he was here. They sent her wordthat he had typhoid out West and she went to him. Why she didn’t tell people is still a mystery.”
“Married him—Gregory? But she’d only known him four days.”
Helen nodded. “That’s just it. Isn’t it—” she stopped, fearing to wound.
“Magnificent—brave—foolish—” finished Margaret. Her voice broke unaccustomedly. “It’s wonderful. Gregory will be a strange husband but if she shares him with Ireland and—oh, it’s rather perfect. And so all that nonsense about Gage being involved—”
“Was nonsense.”
Margaret did not ask further about Gage. She reverted to Freda and Gregory. The news left her marveling, an envy that was wonder in her remarks. She made no comparisons between Freda and herself and yet it was clear that Freda wrought herself to another phase—a step on towards some solution of thought.
Helen urged her to come to dinner.
“I’d rather not, I think. I’ll have a rest perhaps.”
“Then you’ll go out with us for a ride to-night?”
“Gage wouldn’t like it, would he?”
“He suggested your coming to dinner, my dear.”
They smiled at each other.
“Then I’ll go.” She turned swiftly to Helen. “Oh, work it out if you can, Helen. Not working it out—is horrible.”
FREDA was trying to mend a blouse. Her unskillful fingers pricked themselves and it was obvious that even her laborious efforts could do little to make the waist presentable. Its frayed cuffs were beyond repairing. However, it would do until they got to Mohawk and she could get the clothes which she had there. She had not written her mother to send her anything. Nor had she spent any of the money the Flandons had sent for such luxuries as new clothes. She had been uplifted when that check for a thousand dollars—not for six hundred—had slipped out of the envelope with Mrs. Flandon’s kind, congratulatory letter. Gregory’s three hundred had been put back in his purse and then, as it gradually came over her impractical mind that such a sum was totally inadequate to their need she had told him that she had some money of her own—a little reserve which had been sent to her. Naturally he had assumed her father had sent it and later she thought she would tell him that it was a debt they had assumed and make arrangements for paying it. Not now. He must not worry now about the money. She looked across the room at him—their shabby little hotel room, with its lace curtains pinned back for air and the shaky table desk dragged up before the window. He had not been quite fit enough to travel when they left the hospital, and she had insisted that he must try his strength before they made the journey to Mohawk, the first lap on the way back to Ireland. How eager he was to be off now—howimpossible it was to check him! She forgot the blouse and sat looking at him, sitting there unconscious of her regard. His profile was outlined against the blank window opening, still so thin, and yet so restored.
“It’s getting dark. You ought to stop now, Gregory. You’ll be worn out.”
He did not hear her. That was one of the things she had found out could happen. Especially since this lot of mail had been forwarded from his bureau, letters full of such terrible news for him from Ireland. His friends were in prison—were killed. Devastation was spreading.
She rose, with a new air of maturity and crossed to him.
“It’s growing late.” This time she came behind his chair and bent her cheek to his.
He moved absently.
“Yes, sweetheart—I’ll be soon through. I was writing to Larry’s widow, poor girl. There seemed so much to say.”
“I know, but you must stop.” She used the appeal she had already learned to use when he was bound to tax his fragile strength. “You’ll never get back there unless you rest more.”
“Oh, yes I will. And when I do get back—how I’m going to start some things in motion. It will be a terrible swift motion too. I’ve lost a sad amount of time.”
Freda laughed and he looked at her. It was a laugh of pure amusement, and so contagious that he joined her, jumping up from the letter to kiss her.
“No—you laughing rogue—not time lost in winning my bride. Mocker.”
Freda held him at arms length teasingly.
“I have you for a minute now, haven’t I?”
“You always have me. You don’t mind, darling, that they need me? You wouldn’t—not share it with me?”
“Of course I share it. And I know I have you—when you remember me.”
He buried his lips in her hair and then drew her to his knees.
“Sweetheart, if you could know how they suffer—when you see—”
She composed herself to listen, knowing how it would be. He would hold her close like this and tighter and tighter his arms would feel as he explained and related. Then, in his excitement, he would loose her and leave her, gently, while he paced up and down the room and forgot the tenants in the next room and herself and everything in his impassioned oratory.
So he was. That was Gregory. When he put her down she turned on the light and picked up her sewing. It was not that she did not listen willingly. She did. If she could not kindle in his flame she was warmed in the glow of it. She too had come to care. Perhaps when they reached Ireland and she saw for herself she would kindle too—she rather hoped so.
He stopped talking and his mind, relaxed, shot back to her.
“Do you feel well to-night, darling?”
“Of course. I’m the most indomitably healthy person you ever knew. I can’t help it.”
“You’re so sweetly healthy that I keep forgetting to take care of you.”
She tossed the blouse from her restlessly and stretched her long arms back of her head to make a cushion.
“It doesn’t bother me when you forget,” she told him. “I’m very glad that it doesn’t, too. I’m glad I haven’t begun marriage by learning habits of dependency. I think we’re rather lucky, Greg. Being us, as we are, with a two day wedding trip and a crowning episode of typhoid and now a baby and an Irish question aheadof us, we’ve learned how to stand alone. Mind our own business instead of crowding into each other’s, you know.”
He did not know. A great deal of modern difficulty and problem making had slipped by him. “You are an obscure young person,” he told her, “and most divinely beautiful. I am going to get Francis Hart to paint you—like that, with your head thrown back. I want a hundred paintings of you just to compare with you, so that I can show that no painting can be as lovely as you are.”
They spent a week in Mohawk and because Gregory found that Mr. Thorstad knew Irish history with unexpected profundity and sympathy he was content to spend much time with his father-in-law. They met on many points, in the simplicity of their minds, the way they wound their thoughts around simple philosophies instead of allowing the skeins of thought to tangle—in the uncorrupted and untempted goodness of them both and their fine appreciation of freedom—the freedom which in Mr. Thorstad had bade his daughter seek life and in Gregory had tried to unloose the rigors of Margaret Duffield. Gregory did not talk so much to Mrs. Thorstad. He was apt, in the midst of some flight of hers, to look a little bewildered and then become inattentive. She, however, took it for genius. The chastening which she had suffered after that mistake of blackening Gregory’s name in connection with Margaret had still some effect. She was anxious to wipe that error out and to that end she worked very hard to establish the fame and name of Gregory. His books were spread over the library table and she had already, in characteristic method, started a book of clippings about him.
She spent a good deal of time with Freda. Freda wasrather more gentle than she had been, and interested honestly in many of the details of child bearing that her mother dragged up from her memory on being questioned. If Mrs. Thorstad felt disappointment in Freda, she tried very honestly to conceal it but now and again there cropped out an involuntary trace of the superiority which she as a modern woman was bound to feel over a daughter who took so little interest in the progress of politics and listened so much to her husband’s talk. She spoke of it once only and most tactfully.
“You must be careful not to be a reactionary, my dear. You are going from the land of freedom and the land in which women are rising to every dignity, to a country which may be—of course is bound to be—comparatively unenlightened. I hope indeed that you have your children. Two—or even three children—are very desirable. But you must not forget that every woman owes a duty to herself in development and in keeping abreast of the times which may not be neglected. I don’t want to hurt you, dear. Of course I myself am perhaps a little exceptional in the breadth of my outlook. But it is not personal ambition. It is for the sex. Did I tell you that Mrs. Flandon talked to me when she saw me in St. Pierre about doing much of the state organizing for the Republican women? She says she needs some of my organizing ability. I shall help her of course. In fact I hope I may be able to prevail upon your father to apply for a position at the University in St. Pierre. I feel we have rather outgrown Mohawk.”
“But, mother, that means an instructorship again for father, and it’s a step backward.”
“Not exactly that. Think of the advantages of living in the city—the cultural advantages. And there is a great field open in municipal politics. I have some strong friends there—and one gentleman—an editor—even wentso far as to say there might be a demand for me in public life in St. Pierre, if I established residence there.”
“It would be pretty rough on father to pull up stakes here—”
The hint came again.
“My dear child, you must not be a reactionary. I do not like to see you start out your married life with the idea of subordinating your life as an individual to a husband, no matter how beloved he may be. It is not wise and it is not necessary. Look back over our life. Have I ever for one moment failed in my duty towards the home or towards my husband or child and has it not been possible at the same time for me to keep progress before me always and to remember that the modern woman owes it to herself to go out of the home and keep abreast with the times?”
But it was not a question. It was a statement. Freda made no reply and her mother changed the subject with the satisfied air of the sower of seed.
“When you come to Ireland,” she told her father laughingly that night, “you will sit on the doorstep and learn to smoke a pipe. And Gregory will be president of the Republic. And I will be—(ask mother)—a model housewife, chasing the pigs—”
They laughed with an abandonment which indicated some joke deeper than the banality about the pigs.
“It’s a worthy task,” said her father. “I’ll come—and I’ll enjoy learning to smoke a pipe and see Gregory run the government—and as for you—whatever you do you’ll be doing it with spirit.”
She nodded.
“I’ve just begun to break my trail.”
Then the day came when they must leave the little frame house and after the excitement of getting extremely long railway tickets at the station and checkingall Freda’s luggage through to New York, they said good-by to the Thorstads and left them standing together, incongruous even in their farewells to their daughter.
They were to stop at St. Pierre over night. Mrs. Flandon had written to urge them to do so and Freda would not have refused, if she had been inclined to, bearing the sense of her obligation to them. She had not told her father of that. It amused her to think that her father and Gregory each felt the other responsible for those Fortunatus strings of railway ticket. But she wanted Gregory to meet the Flandons again that the debt might be more explainable later on.
St. Pierre was familiar this time when they entered it in mid-afternoon as she had on that first arrival with her mother. It was pleasant to see Mrs. Flandon again and to taste just for a moment the comfortable luxury of the Flandon house. Freda felt in Mrs. Flandon a warmth of friendliness which made it easy to speak of the money and assure her of Gregory’s ability to pay it a little later.
“You’re not to bother,” said Helen, “until you’re quite ready. We were more glad to send it than I can tell you. It’s a hostage to fortune for us.”
Then she changed the subject quickly.
“I wonder if you’ll mind that I asked a few people for dinner to-night. You married a celebrity and you want to get used to it. So many people were interested in the news item about your marriage and wanted to meet Gregory and you. I warned them not to dress so that’s all right.”
“It’s very nice,” said Freda, “I’ll enjoy it and I think—though I never dare to speak for Gregory—that he will too. I remember having a beautiful time at dinner herebefore. When I was here visiting the Brownleys you asked me—do you remember?”
“I asked the Brownleys to-night. They were in town—all but Allie. I asked the elder two and Bob and her young man—Ted Smillie, you know.”
She looked at Freda a little quizzically and Freda looked back, wondering how much she knew.
“Think they’ll want to meet me?” she asked straight-forwardly.
“I do, very much. I think it’s better, Freda, just to put an end to any silly talk. It may not matter to you but you know I liked your father so much and it occurred to me that it might matter to him if any untrue gossip were not killed. And it’s so very easy to kill it.”
“You take a great deal of trouble for me,” protested Freda.
Helen hesitated. She was on the verge of greater confidence and decided against it.
“Let me do as I please then, will you?” she said smilingly and Freda agreed.
Helen felt a little dishonest about it. The dinner was another hostage to fortune. It was gathering up the loose ends neatly—it was brushing out of sight bits of unsightly thought—establishing a basis which would enable her later to do other things.
She had an idea that it would please Gage, though he had been non-committal when she had broached the idea of having Gregory and his wife for a brief visit. Helen had seen but little of Gage of late. She knew he was working hard and badly worried about money. They had sold a piece of property to raise that thousand for the Macmillans and he had told her definitely of bad times ahead for him. She offered to reduce the expenses of the household and he had agreed in the necessity.They must shave every expense. But it invigorated Helen. She had amends to make to Gage and the more practical the form the easier it was to make them. Neither of them desired to unnecessarily trouble those dark waters of mental conflict now. Helen guessed that Gage’s mind was not on her and that the bad tangle of his business life absorbed him. Brusque, haggard, absorbed, never attempting or apparently needing affection, he came and went. Never since Carpenter’s death had they even discussed the question of separation. That possibility was there. They had beaten a path to it. But hysteria was too thoroughly weeded out of Gage to press toward it. Without mutual reproach they both saw that separation in the immediate future was the last advantageous thing for the work of either of them and flimsy as that foundation seemed for life together, yet it held them. They turned their backs upon what they had lost or given up and looked ahead. Helen heard Gage refer some political question to her for the first time, with a kind of wonder. She suspected irony, then dropped her own self-consciousness as it became apparent that he really did not have any twisted motive behind the query. She began to see that in great measure he had swung loose from her, substituting some new strength for his dependence on her love. And, when some moment of emotional sorrow at the loss of their ardors came over her, she turned as neatly as did he from disturbing thought to the work, which piled in on her by letter and by conference.
They sat at dinner in the long white-paneled dining-room, twelve men and women. The three Brownleys and young Ted Smillie—Jerrold Haynes because Helen wanted to have him meet Freda and Emily Haight because she fitted in with Jerrold now that Walter Carpenter was gone. To these Helen had added the young Harold Spencers because they were the leaders of that group of young people who made or destroyed gossip. It was a dinner party made up hurriedly on the excuse of Gregory’s celebrity and such little intrigue as was hidden in its inception made it no less a pleasant company.
Interest was concentrated on Freda and Gregory of course and under Helen’s deft manipulation the story of their marriage and its secrecy was told, lightly, but with a clearness of detail that sent Ted’s eyes rather consciously to his plate once or twice as he avoided Barbara’s glance. Ted was sitting beside Freda and paying her open homage when he could get her attention. But Gage had much to say to her.
“Are you still chasing romance?” he asked. “I always remember your startling me with your belief that women were more attractive when they believed in romance.”
“Yes—I’m still after it. I feel the least bit guilty towards Gregory. Because while he goes back to Ireland with his heart in his hands ready to offer it to the country, the whole revolution is to me not as great tragedy as it is adventure. It is tragedy intellectually but not emotionally as far as I am concerned while to Gregory”—she turned her head to glance at Gregory.
“And marriage is adventure too, isn’t it?”
She forgot Ted and leaned a confidential elbow towards Gage, resting her chin in her cupped hand.
“I wouldn’t dare say it in the hearing of my mother or the feminist feminists but that’s what it is. They talk of partnerships and new contracts—but they can’t analyze away or starve the adventure of it. All this talk—all the development of women changes things, but its chiefchange is in making the women type different—stronger, finer, you know, like your wife and Margaret Duffield. But even with women like that when it comes to love and to marriage it is adventure, isn’t it? You can’t rationalize things which aren’t rational and you can’t modernize the things that are eternal.” She became a little shy, afraid of her words. “Mother thinks I’m a reactionary. I don’t think I am. I want women to be stronger, finer—I’ll work for that—but that’s one thing, Mr. Flandon. It hasn’t anything to do with the adventure between men and women, really.”
He started at that. But Ted claimed Freda’s attention and reluctantly she turned to him.
“I think you treated me rather badly not telling me you were married. I thought all along that I had a chance, you know.”
The brazenness did not make her angry. Nothing could anger her to-night. She was all warm vigor, pervading every contact between her and every one else.
“Barbara looks very well to-night,” she answered with cool irrelevance.
Barbara did. She had dressed with her customary skill but with the wit to avoid her usual look of sophistication. To-night she was playing the artless simple girl for Gregory’s benefit, listening to him with only an appreciative comment now and then. It was clear that Gregory was talking to her as he talked to one in whom he felt there was intelligence.
“And how clever she is,” added Freda reflectively.
The talk grew more general. Barbara called the attention of every one to something Gregory had said, a concession for one who did not usually share her dinner partners or else a successful attempt to break up other conversations. Irish problems led to a discussion of general politics. Helen was in the talk now—vigorously. Mrs. Brownley gave the retailed opinion of Mr. Brownley before he could quote himself.
Gage heard without contributing to what was being said. He was listening with amusement to Mrs. Brownley’s platitudes and half unconsciously letting his admiration rise at the clarity of Helen’s thought and the deftness of her phrases. What presence she had! In the contemplation of her he felt the problems which had been harassing him all day—deadlocks in plans, money shortage, fall away. As they had used to—he slipped into memories and amazingly they did not cause him pain, though even as he looked he saw upon her the marks of the work she had done and would do, the new definiteness, the look of being headed somewhere. But his rancor seemed to have burned itself out and with it had gone the old possessive passion. He stirred restlessly. Some phœnix was rising.
Mr. Brownley turned at his movement, offering sympathy.
“Nothing for us to do, Gage,” he chuckled tritely, “except to talk about recipes. The women talk politics now.”
Gage did not laugh at the old joke.
“Women and men may get together on a subject yet,” he answered, with heavy awkwardness.
Instantly it seemed to him that it was what he had meant to say for a long time. He caught the incredulous, almost pitiful look on Helen’s face as she heard and pretended not to hear, met the quick, wondering glance she snatched away from him.
Her tremulousness gave him confidence. Impatient of his guests now, he looked across at her, his eyes kindling. Whether they could work it out through his storms andhers ceased to gnaw at his thought of her. He saw her strong, self-sufficient, felt his own strength rising to meet hers, also self-sufficient. The delight of the adventure, the indestructible adventure between man and woman remained. His mind moored there.
THE END