“Did I drive away a visitor?” asked Walter.
“No—she was through with me. You’re rather a relief.”
Margaret could smile with the most complete friendliness of any woman he had ever seen, thought her visitor. She lifted her head and smiled straight at you. There were no evasions in her way of showing that she was glad to see you. She didn’t hold her gladness as a prize, but made you a straight gift of it. He liked the dress she was wearing—a fawn colored cloth dress that outlined the straight lines of her figure—he liked the way her hair grew away from its boyish side parting with a little curve here and there.
“I think I am a little early,” he said, looking at hiswatch, “but I thought since I was through at the office I’d come up, and you might be willing to come out for a ride before we dine. It’s just five o’clock.”
“That sounds very nice. Sit down and amuse yourself while I get my hat.”
He obeyed, finding a book which did not seem to interest him at all but which gave him a chance to turn pages while she put on her hat and piled the papers on her desk. She turned to him as she was doing that.
“You spoil me.”
“I’d like to spoil you.”
“Spoil me by treating me like a human being—forgetting that I’m a woman and that you’ve been taught to flatter women.”
“If I do that I can’t remind you that I’m a man and it might be I’d like you to think of that.”
It was very light. Their tones were the perfectly controlled tones of those who have emotions thoroughly in check. But the note of seriousness was there and they were both too wise to pretend that it wasn’t.
“I’m quite ready to go,” said Margaret.
He helped her with her cloak and they went down the stairway. Once in the car, with Margaret bundled in robes he turned to the boulevards and they fell into talk again. They liked to talk to each other. They elucidated things between them. They liked the calmness of each other’s reactions, the sense of mutual control they had as they held a subject poised on their reflections, as they explored the sensitive delicacy of some thought. Politics, people, books—but always their talk strayed back to men and women. As if in that kind of talk they got most pleasure from each other, as if the subject were inexhaustible.
Walter had told Margaret a great deal about himselfand she had listened with interest. Then little by little under that cloak of the impersonal she had told him something of herself, her interest in women. “Not that I idealize them. I don’t. But they are far more interesting than any work—their problems are the biggest in the world.”
“Are you looking for still further concessions?”
“You mustn’t use that word. We’re looking for the truth in the situation. You think because we vote that the game’s up, don’t you? It’s not. If women are ever going to be—women, Mr. Carpenter, they’ve got to develop all the qualities they’ve been letting rot and decay for hundreds of years. A few women have preserved the strength all women should have. But most of them—Do you dream that most of them have an idea of doing any real work—want any real work? Do you think they’re going to give up their security of support without a struggle? They don’t want independence in the majority of cases. They want certain rules relaxed for their convenience. But do you think that basically they want to give up their claim developed through ages as a ‘weaker sex’?”
She stopped, at the little smile in his eyes. “You think I’m as oratorical as Mrs. Thorstad, don’t you?”
“I do not, but I was thinking that it was time we had some dinner.”
They stopped at one of the hotels and maneuvered their way through a crowded, ornate dining-room to a little table on the side of the room, Walter bowing gravely to a great many people as they went along.
“You’re a very solid citizen, aren’t you?” asked Margaret.
“I like solid citizens,” he answered, “are they too on your list of obnoxious people and things?”
“Of course they are not.”
“I was a little worried after that list began developing. I don’t want to be on the list of people you don’t like.”
But it was not until they had finished dinner and were drinking coffee that he developed that thought.
“I wonder if you know how hard you women are making things for men,” he said, not abruptly but as if stating his brief.
“Perhaps it was too easy before.”
“Perhaps. But you make it so difficult—you stand so aggressively strong—so independent of us that we can’t find a thing with which to recommend ourselves. You don’t want our protection—our support—you mistrust our motives.”
“I told you this afternoon that I thought most women did cling to protection and support.”
“Not the women we may want. You don’t want the things I have to offer.”
His tones had hardly raised. In her first moment of embarrassment Margaret fumbled for words but he went on in that same quiet tone.
“I thought it was as well to be frank with you. I couldn’t see that I would gain anything by conventionalities of courtship. And I’m a little old to indulge in certain forms of wooing anyhow. I have never seen any woman I wanted to marry so much. I like your mind. And I mention it first because it is the thing which matters least. I like more than that the way you smile. I would always have the greatest enjoyment from you as a woman of intellect. But the real reason I want you to marry me is because you are a woman of flesh and blood—and all that that means.”
She had flushed a little and as he ended in that controlled way, though for all his control he could not conceal the huskiness in his voice, she leaned forwarda little to him, as if in sympathy. But she did not speak. Her eyes fell away from his.
“I care for you just as all men have a way of caring for women, Margaret—I love you very much.”
“I’m a very poor person to love,” she answered, slowly.
“You’re a wonderful person to love. Do you think you could care for me—ever? After you’d trained me a bit?”
“I like you to talk to—to be with as much as any one I’ve ever known,” she said at last. “We’ve had a great deal of sympathy for each other. Of course I guessed you liked me. I rather hoped you wouldn’t love me. Because”—and curiously enough her voice dropped as if in shame, almost to a whisper—“I’m so cold, Walter. I don’t feel things like most women.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Walter, rising abruptly.
But he was unlucky. At the very door they were hailed by a passing automobile and discovered the Flandons, Jerrold Haynes and three other people, had seen them. They were invited to come along to the theater where there were a couple of vacant seats in the boxes the Flandons had taken. It seemed ridiculous to refuse. The play was conspicuously good, it was too cold a night for driving and they all knew that Margaret had no home to which they were going. So, unwillingly, Walter found himself made part of the larger group. For the rest of the evening he heard Margaret arguing with Gage, whom Walter noted, seemed very bitter on the matter of his wife’s discussed entry into politics. He heard Helen say, suddenly and very quietly, after some rather blustering declaration of Gage’s, “If the women want me, I shall go, Gage.” Walter was conscious that there seemed an altercation beneath the surface, that the geniality of relation between Helen and Gage waslessened. For a few minutes he thought Helen was flirting rather badly with that ass of a Jerrold Haynes.
As he took Margaret home she talked at length of sending Helen to the Convention.
“You’ve shelved me, haven’t you?” he asked as they entered the tiny apartment so fragrant with his flowers.
“I didn’t mean to. Come in and we’ll talk about you.”
“About you and me.” He came in, readily.
“I didn’t understand that was what you wanted.”
She did not let him touch her and in the isolation of her room he could not persist. For a while he sat silent and she told him about herself and her lack of feeling. She had fine, clear, experienced phrases to tell of it. Yet she was conscious of making no impression.
“I’ve passed the marrying time,” she said.
“Why?”
“It involves things which have passed me by—that I no longer need.”
“You mean—children?”
“No—I haven’t a lot of sentimental yearnings about them. But of course I would like to have children. There’s an instinct to do one’s duty by the race, in every woman.”
He actually laughed.
“You chilled young woman. Well—what then has passed by you?”
She did not tell him. Perhaps there were no words, no definite thoughts in her own mind. She must have been full of strange inhibitions. Analysis crowded so close on the heels of feeling with her that she never could have the one without the other. All her study, her watching of men, all her study and analysis of women had made her mind a laboratory with her own emotions for victims of analysis.
Gregory had told her that in that sprawlingly writtenletter, now in the post office, being sent back to her from Mrs. Thorstad.
Gregory held her thought for a moment. Then she looked at Walter with fresh appreciation. She liked to be with Walter. He didn’t oppress her. His mind met hers without pushing. She felt protected in his companionship from that rude forcing of emotion which had been so hard on her.
He was going now. At the door he held her hand.
“I could be very good to you,” he said, quietly. “Let me try.”
MRS. THORSTAD went back to Mohawk a few days later, leaving behind her a trail of increased prestige and carrying with her many assurances of appreciation which she could cogitate at her leisure. Her husband met her at the station, quietly, graciously pleased as he always was at a home-coming.
“So Freda stayed for a while,” he said, as they went down the street his arm hanging heavy with her suit-case.
“Yes. It will be nice for her. Pleasant young girls, Mrs. Brownley’s girls, although they haven’t a great deal of mentality. Freda attracted quite a little attention. Miss Duffield is very anxious for her to stay in St. Pierre but of course Miss Duffield is an outsider and cannot exert any influence. Mrs. Flandon had some very sensible suggestions. They were going to see if there was a chance for Freda to get a place as secretary to the general Republican district committee and later do some work for the campaign committee. She can’t typewrite and that’s a drawback but they thought they might get around that. She’ll know in a day or so. It needs the consent of the chairman and he’s out of the city. But he’ll probably do just what Mrs. Flandon asks.”
“In the meantime Freda stays at Mrs. Brownley’s?”
“Yes, and if she stays for a definite work, Mrs. Flandon will find her a place to live.”
“The Flandons are nice people?”
“Oh, yes, a worldly sort, but very good. Mrs. Flandon is to be made delegate at large from the state if they can manage it.”
“That’s good stuff.”
“She’s hardly the person for it,” said Mrs. Thorstad. “As a matter of fact I am convinced that if this visiting organizer, Miss Duffield, who after all is in a most anomalous position, had not urged it (she is an intimate friend of Mrs. Flandon’s)—well, if she had not interfered I might have been made the delegate at large myself. As it is, I’ll have to try to get the Federated clubs to send me. I ought to be there. It’s important for the future. I should have been the candidate for delegate at large.”
Her husband whistled and shifted the bag to his other arm.
“I’m very glad you were saved that grave responsibility, Addie,” he said, with his unfailing tact.
“Yes—there is that side, of course. But this Miss Duffield is a person who’ll bear watching. I never can see the point in sending these unsettled young women about the country organizing. They’re dangerous in some ways. Now I happen to know that Miss Duffield is the sort of young woman who receives men in her rooms—it’s only one room and there’s a bed in it even if it has a cretonne cover—”
“Addie—Addie—!”
“But that’s not all. At the same time she does receive men in her room—of course it may be all right and just a modern way—but she also gets passionate, very suspicious letters from other men.”
Mr. Thorstad frowned. But they reached the house just then and in the business of entering and commentingon his housekeeping Mrs. Thorstad let the matter drop. She flew about efficiently and her husband sat back in his armchair and watched her. There was no doubt of his gladness at her return. His pleasant gray eyes were contented, a little sad perhaps, but contented.
“Freda isn’t involved with any young men?” he asked.
“No—they tease her about young Smillie—that’s H. T. Smillie, First National Bank, you know, but she says that’s just nonsense.”
Yet it was that very night after the Thorstads had gone to bed and were sleeping in the pale light of a quiet moonlit sky, that Freda was forced to admit that it wasn’t nonsense.
All along she had hated staying without her mother, who after all was her reason for being here. She had to do it, however, or else abandon the chance of getting the job as secretary to the committee. Freda herself was a little homesick under all her excitement but, steadying her, there had come letters from her father which urged her to make the most of any opportunities which might come to her, which bade her make suitable and wise friends and learn as much as she could.
One or two of the young men Freda met stood out, as being more interesting than the others. Ted Smillie, because he was so attracted to her from the first, had more or less intrigued her. Barbara’s obvious dislike of the situation had forced both Ted and Freda into somewhat closer acquaintanceship than would have naturally developed, but they both worked against Barbara’s interference. There was in Ted, for all his amorousness, a real feeling for health and beauty. That drew him to Freda and her to him and there was enough in theglamour of being chosen by the most competed-for man as worthy of attention, to make Freda feel rather strongly in his favor. If he had been rude to her, as he might have been to the country guest of the Brownley’s, she would have seen him more clearly, seen his weakness, his impressionability, read the laziness of his mind, seen the signs of self-indulgence which were already beginning to show on his handsome face. She would have seen him as too “soft” of mind and body. But he was frankly at her feet and it would have taken an older head than Freda’s to analyze too clearly past that during those first few weeks.
It was not the first attention she had had, of course. There were always young men who were ready to be nice to Freda in Mohawk. But much as they had liked her they had not, as she would have said, “made love to her.” Ted did that. In his own way, he was good at it and Freda was collecting experiences and naïve in spite of her power to get a perspective on her own situation. He had singled Freda out as capable of giving him a fresher thrill than any of the girls of his own “crowd.” And he had ended by being pushed a little more than he expected by his own emotions. The prospect of Freda’s return to Mohawk had annoyed him. He had felt that if she went now, it would be an incomplete experience. He wanted more than he had had. Freda had been pleasant, had been more than pleasant, been frank enough in showing how much she liked him. But he was used to more abandonment in the girls he knew—more freedom of caresses. He wasn’t quite sure how far he wanted to go and of course he had no intention of marrying anybody, certainly not Freda. But he was unsatisfied.
Mr. and Mrs. Brownley had gone to Chicago the day after Mrs. Thorstad had gone home and the three girlswere alone in the house with the servants. There had been a gay party at a hotel ballroom and at one o’clock the three girls had left the hotel with their escorts. Ted had his small car and Freda had wanted him to take Barbara home. But Barbara had demurred, strangely enough. She was going in the big car with the others, she said.
Barbara had been making life hard for Freda all day. Wherever they had been she had managed to make Freda miserable. When the older Brownleys were home, and when her mother was with her, Freda had never been so completely at Barbara’s mercy as she was to-day. Allie, her usual ally, had suddenly fallen away too. The fact was that Allie, having pressed her mother for the purchase of the new runabout, had been put off on the ground that her father said it was too expensive and on the further ground that Freda’s visit was not over and that anyway Mrs. Brownley had made no definite promise. Allie was disgruntled and the enthusiasm she had had for Freda having run its brief course, like most of Allie’s enthusiasms, she was willing to lend some slight support to Barbara’s evident ennui with their guest. All through luncheon Barbara had engineered an extremely rude conversation about things and places which were entirely foreign to Freda. Not once had she let her guest slip into the conversation. She had misled Freda deliberately into wearing her flame colored satin dress to a very informal afternoon affair and appeared herself, like every one else, in the most simple suit, making Freda feel foolishly over dressed. It was a little thing but it pricked Freda. At dinner she had asked some people to come in whom she knew would follow her lead and they had again left Freda high and dry on the conversational sands. It had not been a pleasant day and even as they danced, she and Ted, that evening, Freda felt Barbara’s eyes rather scornfully on her and guessed at the little tide of innuendo that was being set in motion. She knew Barbara’s ways by this time. She could not stand it another day, she vowed. In the morning she would see Mrs. Flandon or go to a hotel or back to Mohawk.
It was clear that the others had not arrived when they drove up under the Brownley porte-cochère where a single light was burning. Freda did not want Ted to come in. She wanted to make her escape to bed before Barbara might arrive and make her a further target. Besides it was clear that Ted had been drinking and that he was most amorous. But he was insistent. The others would be along in a minute and he wanted to see one of the boys, he said.
They went into the long drawing-room. A single standing lamp was lit beside a big divan and at Freda’s gesture as if she would turn on more, Ted caught her hand.
“Quite enough light,” he said. “Come sit down.”
His methods were not as subtle as usual and they frightened Freda. But she thought it wiser not to quarrel with him and sat down obediently beside him on the divan—much too close for her taste.
“You aren’t really going away, are you, Freda?”
“I can’t stay forever. My welcome’s wearing a little thin.”
She tried to pull away from that encircling arm but he would not have it. His strength had surprised her before, and she had not before minded his demonstrations. To-night she felt them as different, vaguely repellent.
“Please don’t, Ted.”
“I’m crazy about you, Freda. I’ve never seen a girl like you. There aren’t any girls like you. Never havebeen any. I never knew what it meant to be in love before.”
And all the time that arm tighter, heavier. His face seemed to Freda to thicken. She discovered that she hated it. Abruptly she wrenched herself free. But he followed her and unfortunately she had gone to an even darker corner.
He pulled her to him and kissed her. It was the first time he had done it and it seemed to exhilarate him.
There followed one of the worst half hours of Freda’s life. She kept wondering what had happened to the others. She was conscious of herself growing disheveled. She realized that he was in earnest, that he was excited past his own control.
In desperation she cried at him—
“But I don’t care for you at all.”
“That makes it more interesting to a man,” said Ted, gallantly. “Anyway, I’ll never give up.”
“And,” thought Freda, suddenly, with directness, “he hasn’t said one word about marrying.” With a kind of vague desire to sound the situation fully, she said—
“Do you really want me to marry you?”
The drinking that Ted had done had not improved his keenness of wit. He laughed.
“I think you could almost make me do that,” he answered, “but what’s the use of marrying? What we want is love—you know. I sized you up at the start. Freda—you wonderful girl—let me tell you—”
What he told her, the outlines of his plan, struck Freda with impersonal clearness. She had an odd sense of watching the scene from the outside, as an observer who jeered at her a little for being implicated. Similar scenes she had read about ran through her mind. She thought of Ann Veronica and Mr. Ramage. “He hasn’t gonequite far enough for me to actually fight him,” she thought—and then—“I ought to ring for a servant or something—that’s what’s always done. I’m being insulted. I ought to either faint or beat him. I’m interested. Isn’t it shocking!”
Above all these almost subconscious thoughts her mind dealt with practicalities. She wondered where the others were. She must get out of the house early in the morning. She wondered if Ted would keep this up even if the others came in.
She tried to get to the door but her movement towards escape roused him further. It had evidently never entered his head that she really meant to rebuff him. He caught her in his arms.
“So you see, beautiful, how easy the whole thing will be—”
He was growing noisy and she realized that she did not want the servants to hear. After all it wasn’t her house. She saw that they had been alone for an hour. It was past two. And then to her immense relief she heard the limousine outside.
“The others are here,” she said to him.
“Damn the others,” he said mumblingly, and, without apology, forced himself into his overcoat. In the hall he seemed to recover himself. Perhaps his sense of social convention struggled and overcame his amorousness temporarily. He went out, past the entering girls, vaguely speaking rather at them than to them.
Nothing of what happened after that seemed quite real to Freda. She was fairly worn out from her trying day and hour of struggle and embarrassment. As she stood for a minute by a long window trying to collect her thoughts, she heard the girls at the door and it flashed through her mind to ease the disgust from her own mindby telling the whole business. She knew how frankly these girls talked of such things among themselves.
They came in, Barbara leading. With a quick, sharp movement Barbara turned on all the lights and as if in a spotlight the disarrayed parts of the room seemed to stand out, the rug in which Ted’s foot had caught and which he had kicked aside, the several chairs at unfamiliar angles, the divan all tossed, with pillows crushed—most of all Freda herself, hair somewhat disheveled, cheeks angrily flushed. Allie looked a little queer as she gazed around. Barbara, after one scornful glance, never took her eyes off Freda.
“So you brought him here?”
“Brought him? Ted? Where were the rest of you?”
“You knew where we were. We said where we were going. We waited and waited at the Hebley’s. Every one was wondering where you’d gone. You and Ted Smillie—at two o’clock. But I didn’t really think you’d have the audacity to make my mother’s house the scene of your—”
The awful thing, thought Freda, is that she doesn’t believe that. But she’s going to pretend she believes it and it’s just as bad as if she did. Some one had let her in for this. It looks exactly as if—she looked around and the color swept her face again.
“You shameless girl!” Barbara went viciously on. “If my mother was here you wouldn’t dare have done it. To think that we have to stay in the same house—to think—come Allie—”
But Freda was roused, infuriated. The scorn of her own position, a position which allowed her to be insulted by such a person, rose above all else. She flung her cloak around her.
“I wouldn’t stay in your house another night,” she cried, “if I have to sleep on a park bench all night.”
The front door closed after her. As she reached the sidewalk she heard the door open again, her name called cautiously, heard the latch slipped. They were leaving the door open. As if she would go back—
She went through the streets swiftly.
ALL the time, under that motivating anger and determination not to go back, ran the two threads of thought—one quickly sifting the practicalities of a situation for a bare headed young girl in the streets of a city at two o’clock in the morning, the other analyzing, jeering at the melodrama of her position.
“It’s a warm night,” she thought, “I’ll probably get nothing but a terrific cold in my head if I do sit in Lincoln Park all night. That young devil! She planned all that. She deliberately didn’t tell Ted they were not coming straight home. There’s no way of proving it. I’d like to bring her to her knees. I’ll probably meet some fool policeman. How it will embarrass mother if this gets about. It’s an ugly mess if I don’t do things right. Nice ending to this visit. I knew the whole thing was bound to be disastrous. It was all a fake trip. That girl hated me from the start. As if I wanted that young fool.”
She was walking in the direction of the park, past the long iron fences, the smooth sloping terraces which characterized the Brownley part of the city. The street was absolutely quiet. Street lamps seemed very bright as she passed them. Here and there a light gleamed in a house, a night light behind an iron grilled door. Her footsteps seemed to resound with disastrous noise. She felt the sound of her walking was a disturbance of thepeace, an affront to the quiet of everything about her. She hurried, trying to feel as if she were called out by illness, imagining what she would say if accosted, a little cooler of anger and beginning to be enthralled and intrigued by her own adventure.
Angry as she was, there was a thrill in the circumstances. She was sure she would not go back to the Brownley house and that resolve was backed perhaps by her interest in what might happen—what adventure might be awaiting her. Quite fearless and untroubled by any physical nervousness, her only anxiety was that she was not quite sure of how to meet any eventuality. But the night was hers. For a few hours she was thrown upon its mercy, and it exhilarated her, as if she had been released from annoying restraints. In her rush from the Brownley house she had satisfied a host of petty feelings which had been accumulating for weeks. It was as if she had broken through a horde of petty conventions which had been gaining a hold on her. She felt more herself than she had yet felt in the city. As she went along she almost forgot Barbara.
The park was still. The iron benches had long ago been deserted by even the last of the romantic couples. The policeman had evidently left the park for the night. Freda sat on a bench under a tree and tucked her feet under her to keep warm.
“Good thing mother insisted on an interlining in this coat,” she said to herself.
She heard the clock in Trinity High School sound half past two, after what seemed a long time. She was already chilled and cramped. Then she heard a sound of voices and looked up to see two men on the far side of the park, half a block away. It made her a little apprehensive. She suddenly felt a little unable to copewith two of them. Two had no romantic possibilities. If it had been one wanderer—
Hurriedly getting up, she slipped through the shadows and cleared the park, thankful that her coat was dark.
“Well, then, I must walk,” she said, trying to reassure herself by her own voice. Her feet were very cold and a little damp in their thin slippers. They hurt.
For a minute she considered going to Mrs. Flandon’s house. But she abandoned that idea. Mrs. Flandon wasn’t the sort of person she wanted to know about all this. She’d think she was such a fool. It might hurt her chances of getting that place. Did she want that place, she queried and kept her mind fixed on that for a little, sliding into a dream of what she might do and how she might confound Barbara Brownley.
By this time her walking had become fairly aimless. She had come through the residence district where she had been living, into a street of tall apartment houses. Here and there in the windows of these buildings lights still gleamed. Freda tried to amuse herself by wondering what was happening there, tried to forget her painful feet. Then she met her second adventurer.
He was walking very fast, his head up, and he rounded a corner so abruptly that she had no time to avoid him. As if he had hardly sensed her presence he passed her, then she heard his steps cease to resound and knew he was turning to look at her. He did more, he followed her. In a few strides he had caught up with her and Freda, turning her head, gave him a look meant to be fraught with dignity but which turned out to be only very angry. The man laughed.
“Oh, all right,” he said, “if you look like that, maybe there is something I can do for you. I wasn’t sure of what sort of person you were. But I see now.”
His voice was rich and clear and pleasant. Freda could not see what he looked like but she could tell he was young, and he did not sound dangerous.
“Please don’t bother me,” she said, “I’m just—out for a walk.”
“I hope you’re near home,” he answered.
Freda couldn’t resist it.
“I’m just exactly a hundred and thirty-nine miles from home.”
He tried to see her closely but her head was down.
“No, you’re not crazy,” he commented, “so there must be a story or a mystery to you. Can I walk home with you—the hundred and thirty-nine miles?”
“It’s too far—and I’m really better alone.”
“Please. I’m not in the least dangerous and I don’t want to annoy you. But you must admit that a young woman at three o’clock in the morning ought to let somebody accompany her on such prodigious walks. I’m out for one myself. I’d enjoy it.”
He talked like an Englishman—or an Irishman, thought Freda. And why shouldn’t she talk to him. It was all too ridiculous anyway. But rather exciting.
“I’m in a very silly mess,” she told him, “and I haven’t any place to go to-night.”
“And you wish I’d mind my own business?”
“No—but there’s nothing you can do. I’m not in the least a tragedy. In the morning I can straighten things out. I haven’t committed any murders or anything like that. But I said I wouldn’t go back to-night, and I won’t.”
The young man considered.
“Is it by any chance a husband to whom you made that statement?”
“Oh, no,” Freda laughed. “It wasn’t a husband or even a father. It was just a girl.”
“Well, you’re a bit thinly clad to carry out your high resolve.”
She shivered.
“Nights are longer than I thought.”
“Oh, you’re right there,” said he, “nights can stretch themselves out to infinity. However, we must shorten this one for you. I’d just as soon do it by conversation but your slippers—don’t you think you’d better go back—for this one night?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Well, I approve of high resolves myself. I’m used to them and seeing people offer themselves up on their altar. There’s no real reason why you should give in on any position you took, just because the sun is on the other side of the world. Could you tell me a bit more, maybe? If names mean anything to you at this hour of the night, mine’s Gregory Macmillan. I don’t live here. I’m staying at some hotel or other and I came here on business—that’s what you always say in the States, isn’t it, when you give an account of yourself?”
“You’re English.”
“Oh, God forbid,” he cried, “English! You insult me—but you don’t mean to. No—Irish, Irish, Irish—I should have said it first and have been spared that accusation.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what your accent was. I see now. It was stupid of me.”
He laughed at her. “It’s no matter. You’re a very young woman, aren’t you? I can tell from your voice. Well, you don’t want to wander further with an Irish adventurer, do you?”
“I can’t help myself.”
“Let’s get down to facts. You quarreled.”
“Hardly that. I tell you it’s a silly business. A drunk young man—a vicious girl who chanced to be myhostess said things. So I walked out of her house. I can’t go back without crawling back, can I?”
“No—you can’t go back if you’d have to crawl. But where else can you go? Haven’t you some friend—some intimate?”
“No—I can’t disturb families at this hour—and I only know people here a little.”
“Isn’t there perhaps some single lady? Some unmarried woman to whom you could turn? At this hour of the night it may be easier, you know, than at dawn. And you’re dressed for the evening. Of course we might go back to my hotel. Let’s see—a motor accident might do. No—that would involve things. You’re sure you don’t know some discreet spinster?”
She thought.
“I’ve only been here three weeks. Only perhaps Miss Duffield—?”
He started.
“You don’t mean Margaret Duffield? You know her? Why, of course, she’s the very one. Do you mean her?”
“And you know her too?”
“Know her? I have been talking with her until an hour ago. You mystic child, of course you’d know Margaret. Come, let’s go to her and she’ll tell me about you—and I’ll get a chance to see her again to-night even—and perhaps, with you in charge, she’ll want to see me.”
Freda was enchanted. Her feet were forgotten. Barbara was forgotten. The night, the delicious hour, the stranger who was chivalric and mysterious and knew Margaret Duffield,—all of it was rounding out a perfect adventure. She laughed in sheer delight.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” she asked, “this meeting you—you knowing the only person I could go to, isn’t it curious and like a well-made dream?”
He took her by the arm, holding her up a little as they crossed the cobbled street.
“Life at its best is only a well-made dream,” he answered.
In all her life Freda had never met any one who dared to talk like that.
It was three o’clock but the light in Margaret’s apartment still burned. Little lines of it streamed out from the curtain edges. At sight of the light Gregory stopped.
“Lucky it’s on the ground floor,” he said, “she can let us in without any of the others hearing us tramp by.”
Freda hung back a little.
“It’s rather an outrageous thing to do. I wonder if I should.”
“Nonsense. Anyway, you’ve no choice. I’m bringing my refugee here myself.”
They tiptoed into the little hallway and rang her bell—then went over by her door. It was characteristic of Margaret that she did not call, “Who’s there?” from behind the door. She opened her door a little and looked out.
“It’s I,” said Gregory, softly, “and a distressed lady, whom you know. Can we come in?”
The door opened wider and Margaret put out her hand as Freda shrunk back a little.
“Why, Freda—where did you come from?” Margaret looked at Gregory, but he waited for Freda to tell her own story, perhaps not knowing how much she wanted to tell.
In the light again, Freda had blushed scarlet and then turned pale, her cheeks wonderfully waxen and lustrous from the night air. Under her eyes there were circles of fatigue and her hair had clung to her head, damp from moisture. She looked at Margaret and seemed to remember that her adventure had begun in disaster.
“I’m so sorry to bother you like this—I’m so sorry. But he said I’d better.”
Again Margaret exchanged glances with Gregory. Gregory was looking at Margaret now as if he were conscious of the picture she made in the blue Grecian negligée which suited that slim, straight figure so well. But if she noticed his glance, she was impatient of it.
“Of course it’s no question of bother—but what is it?”
Freda had made no move to drop her cloak. She held it close around her as she stood against the inside of the door.
She told them as much as she could.
“I couldn’t go back.”
The eyes of her hearers were angry.
“Of course you couldn’t,” said Margaret, simply. “And you can perfectly well spend the night here. In the morning I’ll send for your clothes.”
She drew Freda, who was shivering now, over on the couch, then turned to Gregory.
“Good night, Gregory—again. You bring adventure with you.”
There was a smile in her eyes which he seemed to answer by a look in his own. Then he looked past her to Freda.
“Good night, little wanderer. I’ll see you to-morrow.”
Freda saw him fully now. He was tall and thin and ugly. His dark eyes seemed to flash from caverns above his high cheekbones. But he had a wide Irish mouth and it smiled very tenderly at them both as he softly went out.
Freda would not take Margaret’s little couch bed for herself so Margaret had to improvise a bed on the floor for her guest, a bed of blankets and coats and Freda slept in Margaret’s warm bath robe. Oddly, she slept far better than did Margaret, who, for a long while, held herself stiffly on one side that her turning might not disturb Freda.
They both wakened early. Freda found the taste of stale adventure in her mind a little flat and disagreeable. There were a number of things to be done. Margaret telephoned briefly to the Brownley house, left word with a servant that Miss Thorstad had spent the night with her.
“I’ll go up there after we have some breakfast,” she said to Freda, “and get you some clothes. Then I think you’d better stay here with me. I’ll ask the landlady to put an extra cot in here and we can be comfortable for a few days. And please don’t talk of inconvenience”—she forestalled Freda’s objections with her smile—“I’ll love to have company. If you stay in town we’ll see if you can’t get a place of your own in the building here. Lots of apartments have a vacant room to let.”
She was preparing breakfast with Freda’s help and the younger girl’s spirits were rising steadily even though the thought of an interview with Barbara remained dragging. It was great fun for Freda—the freedom of this tiny apartment with its bed already made into a daytime couch, the eggs cooking over a little electric grill on the table and the table set with a scanty supply of dishes—two tall glasses of milk, rolls and marmalade.
“It’s so nice, living like this,” she exclaimed.
Margaret laughed.
“Then the Brownley luxury hasn’t quite seduced you?”
“I was excited by it. I’m afraid it did seduce me temporarily. But for the last week something’s been wrong with me. And this was it. I wanted to get out of the machinery. They leave you alone and all that—but it’s so ordered—so planned. Everything’s planned from the menus to the social life. They try to do novel things by standing on their heads sometimes in their owngrooves—at least the girls do—but really they get no freshness or freedom, do they?”
“I should say that particular crowd didn’t. Of course you mustn’t confound all wealthy people with them. They’re better than some but a great deal less interesting than the best of the wealthy. And of course just because their life doesn’t happen to appeal to your temperament—or mine—”
“Are you always so perfectly balanced?” asked Freda, so admiringly as to escape impertinence.
“I wish I were ever balanced,” answered Margaret. “And now suppose you tell me a little more about what happened so I’ll be sure how I had better take things up with the Brownley girls.”
Freda had been thinking.
“It really began with me,” she said. “Ted Smillie was Barbara’s man and I was flattered when he noticed me. And of course I liked him—then—so I let it go on and she hated me for that.”
“Stop me if I pry—but do you care for the young man now?”
“Oh—no!” cried Freda. “I’m just mortally ashamed of myself for letting myself in as much as I did.”
“Everybody does.”
Margaret’s remark brought other ideas into Freda’s mind. She remembered Gregory Macmillan and his apparent intimacy with Margaret. But she asked nothing, going on, under Margaret’s questioning, with her tale of the night before, and as they came to the part of Gregory’s intervention, Margaret vouchsafed no information.
An hour later, she came back from the Brownley house, with Freda’s suitcase beside her in a taxi.
“You did give them a bad night,” she said to Freda, “Bob Brownley looks a wreck. It appears that later theywent out to search the park—scared stiff for you. And you had gone. They saw some men and were terrified.”
“Are they very angry?”
“Barbara tried to stay on her high horse. Said that although it was possible she had misunderstood the situation it looked very compromising and she thought it her duty in her mother’s absence—. Of course, she said, she was sorry that matters had developed as they had. Poor Allie’d evidently been thinking you’d been sewed up in a bag and dropped in the river. They both want to let the thing drop quickly and I said they could say that you were staying with me for the remainder of your visit. I also told Barbara a few home truths about herself, and advised her to be very careful what she said to her mother or I might take it up with her parents.”
“All this trouble for me!” cried Freda. “I am ashamed!”
“Nonsense. But I must go along quickly now. I’ve a meeting. Your trunk will be along sometime this morning. Put it wherever you like and the landlady will send the janitor up with a cot. And—by the way—if Gregory Macmillan drops in, tell him I’m engaged for lunch, will you? You might have lunch with him, if you don’t mind.”
“I feel aghast at meeting him.”
“Don’t let any lack of conventions bother you with Gregory. The lack of them is the best recommendation in his eyes. He’s a wild Irish poet. I’ll tell you about him to-night. I think you’ll like him, Freda. He’s the kindest person I know—and as truthful as his imagination will let him be.”
“What is he in St. Pierre for?”
“Oh, ask him—” said Margaret, departing.
IT was on that morning that Gage Flandon made his last appeal to his wife not to let herself be named as a candidate for Chicago at the State Convention. He had been somewhat grim since the district convention. As Margaret had realized would happen, certain men had approached him, thinking to please him by sounding the rumor about sending his wife to the National Convention. Many of them felt and Gage knew they felt that he had started, or arranged to have started, a rumor that his wife would be a candidate and that he meant to capitalize the entrance of women into politics by placing his own wife at the head of the woman’s group in the State. It was a natural enough conclusion and its very naturalness made Gage burn with a slow, violent anger that was becoming an obsession. It began of course with the revolt against that suspicion of baseness that he could capitalize the position of his wife—that he could use a relation, which was to him so sacred, to strengthen his own position. Yet, when these men came with their flattery he could not cry down Helen without seeming to insult her. There was only one way, he saw, and that was for Helen herself to withdraw. If she did not, it was clear that she would be sent.
So he had besought and seemed to always beseech her with the wrong arguments. He knew he had said trite things, things about women staying out of politics, theunsuitability of her nature for such things, but he had felt their triteness infused with such painful conviction in his own mind that it continually amazed him to see how little response he awoke in her.
She had said to him, “You exaggerate it so, Gage. Why make such a mountain out of a molehole? I’m not going to neglect you or the children. I’ll probably not be elected anyhow. But why not regard it as a privilege and an honor and let me try?”
“But why do you want to try?”
She looked as if she too were trying vainly to make him understand.
“I’d like to do something myself, Gage—something as myself.”
“You were content without politics two months ago.”
“I’ve changed—why begrudge me my enthusiasm?”
“Because I can’t bear to see you a waster like the rest of the women. Because you’re so different. Everything about you is true and sound, dear, and when you start deliberately using yourself for political effect, don’t you see how you become untrue? There’s nothing in it, I tell you. The whole thing’s cut and dried. There’s no big issue. If the women want to send some one, let them choose some other figurehead!”
He had not meant it so but of course he seemed disparaging her.
“Perhaps,” she said rather frigidly, “perhaps I’ll not be such a figurehead as you think.”
“But I didn’t mean to say that to hurt you.”
“I’m not sure what you do mean. It seems to me we’re actually childish. You’ve chosen, quite deliberately, to be a reactionary in all this woman’s progress movement. I’m sorry. But there is a loyalty one has to women, Gage, beside the loyalty one has to a husband and I reallycannot share your prejudice against progress, as it applies to women.”
The unexpressed things in Gage’s mind fairly tore at him.
“If you really had one sensible objection, Gage—”
“There’s just one objection,” he said, doggedly, “you desecrate yourself. Not by entering politics particularly. But by using yourself that way. You mutilate your sex.”
She did not get angry. But she put one hand on his shoulder and they looked at each other helplessly.
“Don’t you see,” said Helen, “that I want, like these other women, to once in a while do something that’s clean of sex? That’s just me—without sex?”
His eyes grew very hard. She struck almost mortally at the very thing he loved most. And he moved away, as if to remove himself definitely.
“I’m sorry you feel so. It’s a pleasant remark for a man’s wife to fling at him.”
Irony was so unusual in Gage that Helen stood looking after him after he went out of the room. Her mind ached with the struggle, ached from the assertion of this new determination of hers. Never had she wanted so to give him comfort and be comforted herself. She saw the weeks ahead—weeks of estrangement—possibly a permanent estrangement. Yet she knew she would go on. It wasn’t just wanting to go on. She had to go on. There was a principle involved even if he could not see it. Clearer and clearer she had seen her necessity in these past two weeks. She had to waken her own individuality. She had to live to herself alone for a little. She had to begin to build defences against sex.
Gage was right. Margaret had sown the seed in his wife. Helen had not watched her for nothing. She had seen the way that Margaret made no concessions to herself as a woman, fiercely as she was working for the establishment of woman’s position. It seemed paradoxical but there it was. If you were truly to work for woman’s welfare you had to abandon all the cushions of woman’s protected position, thought Helen—you couldn’t rest back on either wifehood or motherhood. You couldn’t be lazy. You had to make yourself fully yourself.
Here was her chance. She hadn’t wanted it but they had insisted. The women wanted her to go to Chicago—not because she was Mrs. Flandon but because she was Helen Flandon, herself. A little quiver of delight ran through Helen as she thought of it. She would see it through. Gage would surely not persist in his feeling. Surely he would change. He would be glad when she proved more than just his wife.
She had a strange feeling of having doffed all the years which had passed since she had left college, a feeling of youth and energy which had often dominated her then but which had changed in the seven years of her marriage. Since her marriage she had walked only with Gage and the children—shared life with them very completely. Now it was not that she cared less for them (she kept making that very clear to herself) but there was none the less a new independence and new vigor about her. She felt with them but she felt without them too.
It hurt her that Gage should feel so injured. But her exhilaration was greater even than the hurt, because she could not sound the depths of her husband’s suffering.
Gage went out of the house with no more words. He managed to focus his mind on the work of the day which was before him but the basic feeling of pain and anger persisted.
In the middle of the morning Helen called him, reminding him of his promise to see if Freda Thorstad could beplaced. She ignored, as she had a way of doing, any difference between them.
“Are you going to drag that child in too?” he asked, ungraciously, and then conscious of his unfairness for he knew quite well that the object was to place Freda so she could earn her own living, he capitulated.
“Drummond gets back this afternoon. Send Miss Thorstad in about four and I’ll take her to see him.”
“You’re a dear, Gage,” Helen rang off.
Gage tried to figure out whether something had been put over him or not. There he let it go and sat in at the club with a chosen crowd before lunch. It pleased him immensely to see Harry Harris stuck for the lunch. He kidded him, his great laugh rising and falling.
At four Freda came and at her, “You’re sure I’m not too early, Mr. Flandon?” Gage felt further ashamed of his ungraciousness. Freda was a little pale, after her difficult night, and it made her rather more attractive than ever to Gage. He thought she might be worrying over the chance of getting the new work and was eager to make it easy for her.
“So you want to get into politics like all the rest?” he asked, but smilingly.
“I want some work to do,” said Freda, “I’d just as soon do anything else. But I really will have to work or go back to Mohawk and there isn’t anything for me to do in Mohawk. I don’t much care what I do, to tell you the truth, Mr. Flandon, so it is work. And I’ve a theory that I might be better at washing windows than doing anything else.”
“This isn’t much of a job, you know.”
“Probably it’s all I could handle. I’m really a littlenervous. Will they ask for all kinds of qualifications?”
“There’s no ‘they’ There’s only one man and I think all he is looking for is some one who is discreet and pleasant and can do ordinary secretarial work.”
“I’m going to learn typewriting evenings,” said Freda.
It was so pleasant to be free from controversial conversation, or from conversation which glossed over controversy that Gage found himself feeling much warmer and more cheerful than he had for days. Together they walked over to the office of the man who had the district chairmanship. Mr. Drummond was embarrassed. Clearly he was embarrassed by the necessity of refusing a favor Flandon asked. But he was put to it.
They left the office and at the street corner Freda stopped and held out her hand.
“Pretty lucky for them that young Whitelaw got there first, I fancy.”
“Have you something else in mind?”
“I’ll try to find something. Maybe I can get a place as somebody’s companion. Or maybe Miss Duffield will know—”
A tight little line came around Gage’s mouth. He didn’t want Margaret Duffield running this girl. His dislike was becoming an obsession.
“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you’d like to come into my office. I could use another clerk, as a matter of fact. I’m away a great deal and I find that since my assistant has been handling more law work he is too busy to do things around the office—handling clients, sorting correspondence and such things. The ordinary stenographer just messes up everything except a sheet of carbon paper, and the last good one I had got married, of course. There wouldn’t be much in it—maybe sixty a month, say—but if you’d like to try—”
Freda looked at him straightly.
“If you’re just trying to find a job for me, I’d rather not, Mr. Flandon.”
He liked that, and gave her back honesty.
“Of course I would like to see you fixed. I thought this other thing would work out better. But in all seriousness I could use another clerk in my office and I’ve been wondering whom I could get. What do you say to trying it for a month—”
“Let me try it for two weeks and then if I fail, fire me then. Only you’ll surely fire me if I don’t earn my money?”
“Surely.”
Gage went home that night more cheerful than he had been for some time. He had a mischievous sensation of having rescued a brand from Margaret Duffield. At dinner Helen asked him if he had attended to Freda’s case.
“Drummond had other arrangements already.”
“What a shame,” she said, “I wonder where we can place that girl. She is too good to go back and do nothing in Mohawk. And she really wants to earn money badly.”
“I placed her,” said Gage, hugging his mischief to himself.
“You did? Where?”
“I took her into my office.”
Helen looked at him in surprise.
“You know that she can’t typewrite?”
“I know. But I can use her. She has a good head and—a nice influence. I think I’ll like to have her around. Since she has to work she’d be better there than grubbing in politics.”
“As if your office wasn’t full of politics!”
“Well they’re not Duffield-politics.”
“Whatever you mean by that is obscure,” said Helen, “but don’t eat the child’s head off, will you?”