"... it was better youthShould strive, through acts uncouth,Towards making, than repose on aught found made,"
"... it was better youthShould strive, through acts uncouth,Towards making, than repose on aught found made,"
"... it was better youthShould strive, through acts uncouth,Towards making, than repose on aught found made,"
"... it was better youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Towards making, than repose on aught found made,"
she said poetry was all very well, but that, perhaps, if the poet or poetess who wrote that had had a daughter, they would think differently. When she was reminded that she, too, had had different ideas from those of her parents, she said, emphatically,never!—except in things where they had grown a little old-fashioned.
"I don't believe, when I was a girl, I ever crossed Mama in anything more important than in little matters of dress or furnishings.... Oh, do look at my puzzle before you go!"
But Arthur Weston, almost dizzy with the endless words, had fled. Down-stairs, while he hunted for his hat and coat, he paused to draw a long breath and throw out his arms, as if he would stretch his cramped mind, as well as his muscles, stiffened by long relaxing among the cushions of the big arm-chair.
"Is there anything in this world duller than the pronunciamento of a dull woman!" he said to himself. On the street, for sheer relief of feeling the cool air against his face, instead of the warm stillness of Mrs. Payton's sitting-room, he did not hail the approaching car, but strolled aimlessly along the pavement, sticky with fog.
"I wonder if she talks in her sleep?" he said. "I don't believe she ever stops! How can Fred stand it?" He knew he couldn't stand it himself. "I'd sell pop-corn on the street corner, to get away from it—and from Andy's old stovepipe!" It occurred to him that the ideals set forth in Mrs. Payton's ceaseless conversation were of the same era as the hat. "But the hat would fit Fred best," he thought—"Hello!" he broke off, as, straining back on the leash of an exasperated Scotch terrier, a girl came swinging around the corner of the street and caromed into him so violently that he nearly lost his balance.
"Grab him, will you?" she gasped; and when Mr. Weston had grabbed, and the terrier was sprawling abjectly under the discipline of a friendly cuff on his nose, she got her breath, and said, panting, "Where do you spring from?"
It was Frederica Payton, her short serge skirt splashed with mud, and a lock of hair blown across her eyes. "He's a wretch, that pup!" she said. "I'll give him to you for a present."
"I wouldn't deprive you of him for the world!" he protested, in alarm. "Here, let me have the leash."
She relinquished it, and they walked back together toward Payton Street, Zip shambling meekly at their heels.
"Well," she said, thrusting a confiding arm in his, "were you able to move her? Or did she turn Aunt Bessie loose on you, too? I knew Aunt Bessie was to be asked to the funeral. I suppose she talked anti-suffrage, and quoted 'my William' every minute? Aunt Bessie hasn't had an idea of her own since the year one! Isn't it queer what stodgy minds middle-aged women have? I suppose you are about dead?"
"I have felt more lively. Fred, why can't you see your mother's side of it?"
"Why can't she see my side of it?"
"But she thinks—"
"ButIthink! What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own." As she spoke, the light of a street lamp fell full on her face—a wolfish, unhumorous young face, pathetic with its hunger for life; he saw that her chin was twitching, and there was a wet gleam on one flushed cheek. "Besides," she said, "I simply won't go on spending my days as well as my nights in that house. You don't know what it means to live in the same house with—with—"
"I wish you were married," he said, helplessly; "that's the best way to get out of that house."
She laughed, and squeezed his arm. "You want to get off your job?" she said, maliciously; "well, you can't. I'm the Old Man of the Sea, and you'll have to carry me on your back for the rest of your life. No marriage in mine, thank you!"
They were sauntering along now in the darkness, herarm still in his, and her cheek, in her eagerness, almost touching his shoulder; her voice was flippantly bitter:
"I don't want a man; I want an occupation!"
"But it isn't necessary, Fred. And besides, there are home duties."
"In our house? Name 'em! Shall I make the soap, or wait on the table and put Flora out of a job? Where people have any money at all, 'home duties,' so far as girls are concerned, are played out. Machinery is the cuckoo that has pushed women out of the nest of domesticity. I made that up," she added, with frank vanity. "I haven't a blessed thing to do in my good home—I suppose you heard that I had a 'good home'? which means a roof, and food, so far as I can make out. But as there is something besides eating and sleeping in this life, I am going to get busy outside of my 'good home'!"
He thought of the towels, but only murmured vaguely that there were things a girl could do which were not quite so—so—
"'Unwomanly'? That's Mother's word. Grandmother's is 'unladylike.' No, sir! I've done all the nice, 'womanly' things that girls who live at home have to do to kill time. I've painted—can't paint any more than Zip! And I've slummed. I hate poor people, they smell so. And I've taken singing lessons; I have about as much voice as a crow. My Suffrage League isn't work, it's fun. I might have tried nursing, but Grandmother had a fit; that 'warm heart' she's always handing out couldn't stand the idea of relieving male suffering. 'What!' she said, 'see agentleman entirely undressed, in his bed!' I said, 'It would be much more alarming to see him entirely dressed in his bed'!" She paused, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully; "it's queer about Grandmother—I don't really dislike her. She makes me mad, because she's such an awful old liar; but she's no fool."
"That's a concession. I hope you'll make as much for me."
"They were poor when she was a girl, and she had to do things—household things, I mean; reallyhadto. So she has stuff in her; and, in her way, she's a good sport. But she is narrow and coarse. 'See a gentleman in his bed!' And she thinks she'smodest! But poor dear Mother simply died on the spot when I mentioned nursing. So I gave that up. Well, I have to admit I wasn't very keen for it; I don't like sick people, dressed or undressed."
"They don't like themselves very much, Fred."
"I suppose they don't," she said, absently. "Well, nursing really wasn't my bat, so I have nothing against Mother on that lay. But you see, I've tried all the conventional things, and I've made up my mind to cut 'em out. Business is the thing for me. Business!"
"But isn't there a question of duty?" he said.
"Do you mean to Mortimore? Poor wretch! That's what Mother harps on from morning to night. What duty have I to Mortimore? I'm not responsible for him. I didn't bring him here. Mother has a duty to him, I grant you. She owes him—good Lord! how much she owes him! Apologies, to begin with. What right had she and 'old Andy Payton' to bring him into the world?I should think they would have been ashamed of themselves. Father was old and dissipated; and there was an uncle of his, you know, like Mortimore. His 'intellect was there,' too, but it was very decidedly 'veiled'! I suppose Mother worked the 'veiled intellect' off on you?"
They had reached the Payton house by this time, and Frederica, her hand on the gate, paused in the rainy dusk and looked into Arthur Weston's face, with angry, unabashed eyes. "Don't talk to me about a duty to Mortimore!"
"I meant a duty to your mother. Think of what you owe your mother."
"What do I owe her? Life! Did I ask for life? Was I consulted? Before I am grateful for life, you've got to prove that I've liked living. So far, I haven't. Who would, with Mortimore in the house? When I was a child I couldn't have girls come and see me for fear he would come shuffling about." He saw her shoulders twitch with the horror of that shuffling. "It makes me tired, this rot about a child's gratitude and duty to a parent! It's the other way round, as I look at it; the parent owes the child a lot more than the child owes the parent. Did 'old Andy' and Mama bring me into this world formypleasure? You know they didn't. 'Duty to parents'—that talk won't go down," she said, harshly, and snapped the gate shut between them.
He looked at her helplessly. She was wrong, but much of what she had said was right,—or, rather, accurate. But when, in all the history of parenthood, had there been a time when children accused their fathers and mothersof selfishness, and cited their own existence as a proof of that selfishness! "Your mother will be very lonely," he said.
She shook her head. "Mother doesn't need me in the least. A puzzle of a thousand pieces is a darned sight more interesting than I am."
"You are a puzzle in one piece," he said.
"I'm not as much use to Mother as Father's old silk hat down in the hall;Inever scared a burglar yet. I tell you what, Mother and I have about as much in common as—as Zip and that awful iron dog! Mother thinks she is terribly noble because she devotes herself to Mortimore. Mr. Weston, she enjoys devoting herself! She says she's doing her duty. I suppose she is, though I would call it instinct, not duty. Anyhow, there's nothing noble about it. It's just nature. Mother is like a cat or a cow; they adore their offspring. And they have a perfect right to lick 'em all over, or anything else that expresses cat-love. But you don't say they are 'noble' when they lick 'em! And cows don't insist that other cows shall lick calves that are not theirs. Mortimore isn't mine. Yes; that's where Mother isn't as sensible as a cow. She can give herself up all she wants to, but she sha'n't give me up.Iwon't lick Mortimore!" She was quivering, and her eyes were tragic. "Why, Flora has more in common with me than Mother, for Flora is at least dissatisfied—poor old Flora! Whereas Mother is as satisfied as a vegetable. That's why she's an anti. No; she isn't even a vegetable; vegetables grow! Mother's mind stopped growing when her first baby was born. Motherand I don't speak the same language. I don't suppose she means to be cruel," she ended, "but she is."
"Did it ever occur to you that you are cruel?"
She winced at that; he saw her bite her lip, and for a moment she did not speak. Then she burst out: "That's the worst of it. Iamcruel. I say things—and then, afterward, I could kick myself. Yet they are true. What can I do? I tell the truth, and then I feel as if I had—had kicked Zip in the stomach!"
"Stop kicking Zip anywhere," he admonished her; "it's bad taste."
"But if I don't speak out, I'llbust!"
"Well, bust," he said, dryly; "that's better than kicking Zip."
Her face broke into a grin, and she leaned over the gate to give his arm a squeeze. "I don't know how I'd get along without you," she told him. "Darn that pup!" she said, and dashed after Zip's trailing leash.
Arthur Weston, looking after her, laughed, and waved his hand. "How young she is! Well, I'll put the office business through for her."
Somehow or other he did "put the office business through"; but the persuading of Mrs. Payton was a job of many days. So far as opinions went, he had to concede almost everything; of course Freddy's project was "absurd"; of course "girls didn't do such things" when Mrs. Payton was a young lady;—still, why not let Fred find out by experience how foolish her scheme of self-support was?
"It mortifies me to death," Mrs. Payton moaned.
"I don't like it myself," he admitted.
"What does Mr. Maitland say to it?"
"She says he says it's 'corking,'" Arthur Weston quoted; "I wish they would talk English! The smallness of their vocabulary is dreadfully stupid. They think it is smart to be laconic, but it's only boring. Do you think Fred cares about Maitland?"
"I wish she did, but she isn't—human! Rather different from my girlhood days! Then, a girl liked to have beaux. One of my cousins had a set of spoons—she bought one whenever she had a proposal. I don't think Freddy has had a single offer. I tell her it's because she cheapens herself by being so familiar with the young men. Not an offer! But I don't believe she's at all mortified. Well,it's just part of the 'newness' of things. I dislike everything that is new! I wish Freddy would get married."...
"Why," Mr. Weston pondered, as, having wrung a reluctant consent from Mrs. Payton, he closed the door of No. 15 behind him, "why do we consider marriage the universal panacea?" But whether he knew why or not, he believed it was a panacea, and even plotted awkwardly to administer it to Frederica. Maitland was just the man for her; a good fellow, straight and clean, and with money behind him. The worst of it was that he could not be counted on to discourage Fred's folly; indeed, he seemed immensely taken by all her schemes; the more preposterous she was, the more, apparently, he admired her. He was as full of half-baked ideas as Fred herself! But there was this difference between them: Howard did not give you the sense of being abnormal; he was only asinine. And every first-rate boy has to be an ass before he amounts to anything as a man.
But Fred was not normal.
A week later, "F. Payton" had been painted on the index of the Sturtevant Building, and Arthur Weston, pausing as he got out of the elevator, glanced at the gilt letters with ironical eyes. He was about to let the panels of the revolving door push him into the street when Mr. William Childs entered and hooked an umbrella on his arm.
"Hey! Weston! Most interesting thing: do you recall the twenty-third Sonnet? You don't? Begins:
"'As an imperfect actor on the stage';
"'As an imperfect actor on the stage';
"'As an imperfect actor on the stage';
"'As an imperfect actor on the stage';
I've made a most interesting discovery!"
His prisoner, saying despairingly, "Really?" looked for a way of escape—but the crook of the umbrella held him.
"In a hurry? Hey? What? Well, I'll tell you some other time." Then the umbrella was reversed and pointed to the index. "Perfec' nonsense! What?"
"Girls are very energetic nowadays," Mr. Weston murmured, rubbing his arm.
"She'd better put her energy into housekeeping!"
"Then Mrs. Payton would have nothing to do."
"Well, then let her get married, and keep house for herself,—instead of laying down the law to her elders! She instructed me who I should vote for, if you please! Smith is her man, because he believes in woman suffrage. What do you think of that?"
"I think she's a good deal like you or me, when we want a thing put through."
"No such thing! Smith is the worst boss this state ever had. I told her so, and—Hey, there! Stop—I'm going up!" he called, wildly; and skipped into the elevator. "Tell her to get married!" he called down to Arthur Weston, who watched his ascending spats, and then let the revolving door urge him into the street. "There it is again," he ruminated, "'get married.' But girls don't marry for homes nowadays, my dear William. There are no more 'Clinging Vines.' Mrs. Payton is one of the last of them, and, Lord! what a blasted oak she clung to!" He had an unopened letter from Mrs. Payton in his pocket, and as he sauntered along he wondered whether, if it remained unopened for another hour or two, he couldlie truthfully to her and say he had not received it "in time" to come and talk over Freddy. "For that's what she wants, of course," he thought, dolefully; "it's a nice point of conscience. I'll go and sit in the park and think it out. By the time I decide, it will be too late to go—and then I'll open the letter! Why do women who have nothing to say, always write long letters?"—he touched the envelope with an appraising thumb and finger—"eight pages, all full of Freddy's sins!"
Rambling toward the park in the warm November afternoon Arthur Weston wondered just what was the matter with Fred. When, ten years before, he had gone abroad to represent the Payton interests in France (and, incidentally, to cure a heart which had been very roughly handled by a lady whose vocation was the collecting of hearts), Frederica had been a plain, boring, long-legged youngster, who disconcerted him by her silent and persistent stare. She was then apparently like any other fourteen-year-old girl—gawky, dull, and, to a blighted being of thirty-six, entirely uninteresting. When he came home, nine years later (heart-whole), to render an account of his Payton stewardship, it was to find with dismay that "old Andy," just deceased, had expressed his appreciation of services rendered by naming him one of the executors of the Payton estate, and to find, also, that the grubby, silent girl he had left when he went to Europe had shot up into a tall, rather angular woman, no longer silent, and most provokingly interesting. She was still plain, but she had one of those primitive faces which, while sometimes actually ugly, are, under the stress of certainemotions, extraordinarily handsome. She was never pretty; there was too much thought in the jutting lines of her brow and chin, and her cheeks, smudged sometimes with red, sometimes rigidly pale, had no dimpling suggestion of a smile. Her gray, unhumorous eyes still held one by their nakedly direct gaze, even while a bludgeon-like truthfulness of speech made her hearers wince away from her.
Now, except for her rather tiresome slang, she never bored Arthur Weston; she merely bothered him—because he was so powerless to help her. He found himself constantly wondering about her; but his wonder was always good-natured; it had none of the bitterness which marked the bewilderment of her elderly relatives, or the very freely expressed contempt of her masculine cousins. Her man of business felt only amusement, and a pity which made him, at moments, ready to abet her maddest notions, just to give the wild young creature a little comfort. Yet he never forgot Mrs. Payton's pain; for, no matter whether she was reasonable or not, he knew that Freddy's mother suffered.
"I'd like to shake Fred!" he said; "confound it, I run with the hare and hunt with the hounds!"
In the park, in his discouragement at the whole situation, he sat down on one of the concrete benches by the lake, and looked at the children and nursery-maids, and at two swans, snow-white on the dark water. He wished he could feel that Fred was all right or her mother all wrong; but both were right, and both were wrong. Nevertheless, he realized that Fred's suffering moved him more thanMrs. Payton's. Think of having the "veiled intellect" in the ell, "shuffling round" all the time! "But that's life," he reminded himself. Duty handcuffs all of us to our relations. Look at the historic Aunt Adelaide, who wouldn't take any of her beaux—there were more of them every time Mrs. Payton talked of Fred's shortcomings! Aunt Adelaide had turned her beaux down because of this thing called Duty, a word which apparently conveyed nothing whatever to the mind of her grandniece Miss Frederica Payton, who, however, had her own word—Truth. A word which had once caused her to describe Aunt Adelaide's self-immolation as "damned silly."
Mr. Weston, looking idly at the swans curving their necks and thrusting their bills down into the black water, felt that though Fred's taste was vile, her judgment was sound—itwassilly for Aunt Adelaide to sacrifice herself on the altar of a being absolutely useless to society. Then he thought, uneasily, of the possible value to Aunt Adelaide's character of self-sacrifice. "No," he decided, "self-sacrifice which denies common sense isn't virtue; it's spiritual dissipation!"
Then his mind drifted to Laura Childs; Laura was not so hideously truthful as Fred, and her conceit was not quite so obvious; yet she, too, was of the present—full of preposterous theories for reforming the universe! Her activities overflowed the narrow boundaries of domesticity, just as Fred's did; she went to the School of Design, and perpetrated smudgy charcoal-sketches; she had her committees, and her clubs, every other darned, tiresome thing that a tired man, coming home from business, shrinks fromhearing discussed, as he would shrink from the noises of his shop or factory. "'The new wine's foaming flow'!—I should think Billy-boy would spank her," Weston thought, sympathetically. Furthermore, Laura detected, with affectionate contempt, the weak places in her elder's armor of pompous authority. He had heard her take off her father's "perfec' nonsense"! Her comments upon her mother's lazy plumpness were as accurate as they were disrespectful. Imagine girls back in the '70's, or even the '80's, doing such things! Yet Laura differed, somehow, from Fred; she was—he couldn't formulate it. He looked absently at the babies, and the nursery-maids, and then the dim idea took shape: you could think of Laura and babies together, but a baby in Frederica's arms was an anomaly. Why? After all, she was a female thing; you ought to be able to picture her with a baby. But you couldn't. "I wish," Arthur Weston began;—but before he could decide exactly what he wished, out of the brown haze across the park came young Maitland, swinging along, as attractive a chap as you would see in a day's work. He hailed the older man joyously, and, standing up before him with his hands in his pockets, began to josh him unmercifully.
"Is She late? I bet She's jealous of all these dames with white caps on! You should choose a more secluded spot."
"She is very late, Howard, and she will be later. She has got to have little curls in the back of her neck, and be afraid of sitting here without a chaperon. And she must have rubbers on, because there is no surer way of takingcold than by having damp feet. And she must do all that all her great-aunts have done. I won't accept her on any other terms. So you see, I shall have to wait some time for her. In fact, I have given her up. Sit down. I want to talk to you."
Maitland sat down, and said he thought one of those hoop-skirted, ringleted damsels would be a good deal of a peach. "You see the photographs of 'em in old albums, and they certainly were pretty things."
"Howard, Freddy Payton's going into business. Did you know it?"
"Yes; she's a wonder!"
"She is," the other man agreed, dryly.
"I was talking to Laura Childs about her last night, and she told me how tough it was for her at home,—youknow?"
Mr. Weston nodded.
"And her mother is an anti!" Howard said, sympathetically. "I've only seen Mrs. Payton once or twice, but it struck me she was the anti type. Not very exciting to live with."
"She does show considerable cerebral quietude," Weston admitted, chuckling.
"Did you ever make a call in the Payton house, and see old Andy Payton's silk hat on the hat-rack?"
"I have. But I'm not afraid of it;—there are no brains in it now."
"Well, I told Laura I thought she was the finest woman I knew," Maitland said, earnestly.
"Who? Lolly?"
"Heavens, no! Fred. She's no Victorian miss, I tell you what!"
"The Victorians would send her to bed on bread and water."
"I heard her make a speech to those striking garment-women," Fred's defender said; "she told 'em to get the vote, and their wages would go up. It was fine."
"Whether it was true is immaterial?"
Howard did not go into that. "And then, about morals; she talks to you just like another man. There's none of this business of pretending she doesn't know things. She knows as much about life as you or I."
"Oh, I don't pretend to know as much as you," Arthur Weston deprecated, lifting a humorously modest eyebrow.
"She talks well, too, doesn't she?" Howard rambled on; "I don't know what she's talking about sometimes, she's so confoundedly cultivated. The other day I said something about that nasty uplift play that they tried to pull off at the Penn Street Theater; and then I jerked myself up, and sort of apologized. And Freddy said, 'Go ahead; what's eating you?' And I said, 'Oh, well, I didn't know whether I ought to speak of that sort of thing.' And she said, 'Only the truth shall make us free.' That's out of the Bible, I believe."
Mr. Weston nodded. "I know the book. I've even read it, which is probably more than either you or Fred have done. I don't think it says the truth shall make you free—and easy; does it?"
Howard laughed, and got on his feet. "I'm going to beat up business for her. I took her round in my car tolook up apartments for those relations of yours. Why doesn't Mrs. Payton have a car? Haven't they money enough?"
"Oh, yes. But that poor creature, the brother, has to go out in a carriage. An auto would excite him, I suppose."
"I see. I told Fred she ought to have a little motor of her own, just as a matter of business."
"Hold on!" Frederica's trustee remonstrated, in alarm. "Take her in your car, if you want to, but please don't suggest one for her. She'd have to put a mortgage on her office furniture to pay for a week's gasoline! Look here, Howard—don't stand there like the Colossus of Rhodes, looking down at me as if I only weighed as much as one of your legs—tell me this: don't you see that this business of Fred's earning her living is perfectly artificial? She has a little income, and she can live on it; and when her mother dies, she'll have all the Payton money. So it is entirely unnecessary for her to go to work, to say nothing of the fact that she won't earn enough to buy her shoe-strings."
"Oh, but," the young man burst out, "look at the principle involved! If you live on inherited money, you're a parasite. I know I do it myself," he confessed, frankly, "but I'm going to work as soon as I can get a job. I'm going in for shells. And I believe in work for a woman just as much as for a man. The trouble is that when a girl has money, there isn't anyrealwork for her, so she has to manufacture an occupation—like this social-service stunt at the hospitals they're so hot on nowadays. JoeGould—he's an interne—he told me the most of 'em were nuisances. But, oh, how they enjoy it! They just lap it up. It makes me a little fatigued to hear 'em talk about it," he said, yawning. "Laura Childs doesn't talk much, but Gould says the patients like to have her come round, because she's good to look at. But with most girls it isn't real. And if a girl doesn't do real things, if she just amuses herself, she'll go stale, just like a fellow. Fred put that up to me," he explained, modestly. "I wouldn't have thought of it myself."
"I bet you wouldn't!" Arthur Weston said; "but don't you see? Fred's own occupation isn't real."
"She's rather down on me because I'm not in politics," Howard said, drolly; "did you ever notice that reformers don't take other people's stunts very seriously? Fred has no use for shells. Laura thinks my collection is great. But Fred says that it's only an amusement."
"You might do worse," the older man told him; "but never mind that. What I want to know is, why don't some of you fellows brace up and ask Freddy to marry you?"
"She wouldn't look at any of us. I don't know any man who could keep up with her mentally! You ought to hear her talk."
Mr. Weston raised a protesting hand. "Please! I've heard her."
Maitland laughed and strode off into the dusk, leaving Arthur Weston to sit and look at the swans. The nursery-maids and perambulators had gone; the Chinese pagoda on the artificial island showed a sudden spark of light, andthe arc-lamps across the park sputtered into the evening haze like lurching moons. The chill of the water and the night made him shiver. That youngster was so big and up-standing and satisfied with life! And certainly he was in love with Fred.
"Then she'll be off my hands," Fred's man of business said; "what a relief!"
And life looked as bleak and uninteresting as the cold dusk of the deserted park.
"I never see her from morning till night," Mrs. Payton said. "Rather different from my day! When I was a young lady, girls stayed indoors with their mothers."
Mrs. Payton's mother, stroking her white gloves down over her knuckly fingers, shrugged her shoulders: "You didn't like 'those days' so very much yourself, my dear. But of course Freddy is shocking. It isn't that she has bad taste—she has no taste! All I hope is that she won't publicly disgrace us. Bessie Childs says that her husband says this business idea is perfect nonsense."
The two ladies were in the double parlor on the left of the wide hall of No 15. It was a gloomy place, even when the ailanthus-trees had lost their leaves; the French windows were so smothered in plush and lace that the gleam of narrow mirrors between them could not lighten the costly ugliness. In its day the room had been very costly. The carpet, with its scrolls and garlands, the ebony cabinets, picked out in gilt—big and foolish and empty—the oil-paintings in vast, tarnished frames, must all have been very expensive. There was an ormolu clock on the black marble mantelpiece holding Time stationary at 7.20 o'clock of some forgotten morning or evening; the bronzes on either side of it—a fisher-maid with her string of fish,and a hunter bearing an antelope on his shoulders—were dulled by the smoky years. Opposite the fireplace, against the chocolate-brown wall-paper, Andrew Payton, on a teakwood pedestal, glimmered in white marble blindness. Beside him, the key-board of a grand piano was yellowing in untouched silence. The room was so dim that Mrs. Holmes, coming in out of the sunshine, stumbled over a rug.
"You have such a clutter of things, Ellen," she complained, sharply.
"It's lighter up-stairs," Mrs. Payton defended herself.
"What did you say? Do speak more distinctly!"
"I said it was lighter up-stairs. Come up, and I'll show you a puzzle I've just worked out. Dreadfully difficult!"
But Mrs. Holmes never went up-stairs in the Payton house; to be sure, the door between the sitting-room and the room beyond it was always locked, but—you heard things. So she said she couldn't climb the stairs. "I'm getting old, I'm afraid," she said, archly.
"I suppose you are very rheumatic?" her daughter sympathized; "why don't you try—"
"Not at all!" the older lady interrupted; "just a little stiff. Mrs. Dale said her cousin thought you were my sister," she added, maliciously.
As far as clothes went, the cousin might have supposed Mrs. Holmes was Mrs. Payton's daughter—the skirt in the latest ugliness of style, the high heels, the white veil over the elaborate hair, were all far more youthful than the care-worn mother of Frederica (and Mortimore) would have permitted herself.
"I've been so dreadfully busy," Mrs. Holmes declared; "I meant to come in yesterday, but I had a thousand things to do! Bridge all afternoon at Bessie Childs's. I played with young Mrs. Dale. She ought to get another dressmaker."
"Did you know Mr. Dale's aunt was dying?" Mrs. Payton said.
Mrs. Holmes frowned. She was, as she often said, a very busy woman; she kept house, made calls, had "fittings," shopped, and read the newspapers. She did these things well and thoroughly, for, as her granddaughter had once said, she "was no fool." She was shrewd, capable, energetic, and entirely a woman of the world. Her daughter's social seclusion and mental apathy amazed and irritated her. But intelligent and busy as she was, she had leisure for one thing:Fear. She never said of what. Nor would she, if she could help it, allow the name of her Fear to be mentioned. "I always run away if people talk of unpleasant things!" she used to say, sharply. The mere reference to Mr. Dale's aunt made her pull her stole about her shoulders, and clutch for bags and card-cases that were always sliding off a steep and slippery lap.
"Why, Mama, you mustn't go," Mrs. Payton remonstrated, "you've just—"
"I only stopped a minute to say that if you don't keep Freddy in order, she will disgrace us all," Mrs. Holmes said, nervously; "but you keep talking about unpleasant things! I am all heart, and I can't bear to hear about other people's troubles."
Mrs. Payton understood; she gave her mother apitiful look. ("I believe she'd like to live to be a hundred!" she thought; "whereas, if it wasn't for poor Mortimore I'd be glad to go; I'm so—tired. And Freddy wouldn't miss me.") All the while she was talking in her kind voice, of living, not dying; of her intention of starting in early this year on her Christmas presents—"I get perfectly worn out with them each Christmas!" Of her cook's impertinence—"servants are really impossible!" Of Flora's low-spiritedness—"Miss Carter says she's simply wild to get married, but I can't think so; Flora is so refined."
"Human nature isn't very refined," Mrs. Holmes said.
"Miss Carter says she wants to take music lessons."
"That's terribly refined," Mrs. Holmes said, satirically.
"It's absurd," her daughter declared, with annoyance; "music lessons! Rather different from the time I went to housekeeping—then, servants worked! I gave Flora a lovely embroidered collar the other day; and yet, the next thing I knew, Anne told me she was crying her eyes out down in the coal-cellar. I went right down to the cellar, and said, 'Youmusttell me what's the matter.' But all I could get out of her was that she was tired of living. Miss Carter says Anne says that Flora's young man has married somebody else, and she—"
"Don't mumble! It's almost impossible to hear you," her mother broke in; "as for servants, there are no such things nowadays. They have men callers, a thing my mother never tolerated! And they don't dream of being in at ten. My seventh cook in five months comes to-morrow."
"Don't you think you are rather strict—I mean about hours, and beaux, and all that sort of thing? My three all have beaux—only poor Flora's don't seem very faithful. Mama, don't you think you ought to see an aurist? You really are a little—"
"Not at all! I hear perfectly;—except when people mumble. And I shall never change; my way of keeping house is the right way, so why should I change?"
"I couldn't keep my girls a week if I were as strict as you," Mrs. Payton ventured.
"It wouldn't be much loss, my dear!" the older woman said; she ran a white-gloved finger along the top of the piano beside her, and held it up, with a dry laugh. "You could eat off the floor in my house; but you never were much of a housekeeper. However, I didn't come to talk about servants; I came to tell you that I am going to call on those cousins of Mr. Weston's, and explain that at any rateIdon't approve of my granddaughter's going into business!"
"I'm sure I don't, either!" poor Mrs. Payton protested. "I am dreadfully distr—"
"Why don't you tell her it isn'tdone? Why do you allow it?" Mrs. Holmes demanded.
Mrs. Payton raised protesting hands: "'Allow' Freddy?"
"If you'd stop her allowance, you'd stop her nonsense. That is what I would do if a daughter of mine cut such didos!"
"I can't—she's of age. You can't control girls nowadays," Mrs. Payton sighed.
"She ought to be married," said Mrs. Holmes, clutching at the back of a gilt chair as she got on to her shaking old legs; "though I can't imagine any nice man wanting to marry a girl who talks as she does. Maria Spencer told me she heard that Fred said that men ought not to be allowed to marry unless they had a health certificate."
Mrs. Payton gasped with horror. "Mama! are yousure? I can't believe— Whatarewe coming to?"
"It mortified me to death," said Mrs. Holmes. ("Oh, do pick up that card-case for me!) I wish Arthur Weston would marry her, but I suppose he never got over that Morrison girl's behavior? No; the real trouble is, you insist on living in this out-of-the-way place! Oh, yes, I know; poor Mortimore. Still, the men won't come after her here, because it looks as if she had no money—that, and her queerness. Really, you ought to try to get her settled. You ought to move over to the Hill; but you love that poor, brainless creature up-stairs more than you do Fred!"
Mrs. Payton stiffened. "I love both my children just the same; and I can't discuss Mortimore, Mama, with anybody. As for being brainless, Doctor Davis always said, 'The intellect isthere; but it is veiled.'" The tears brimmed over. "You don't understand a mother's feelings, Mama."
Mrs. Holmes shrugged her shoulders and brushed a powdered cheek against her daughter's worn face. "Good-by. Of course, you never take any advice—I'm used to that! If I wasn't the warmest-hearted creature in theworld I should be very cross with you. I suppose you are terribly lonely without Freddy?"
"Oh, terribly," said Mrs. Payton.
When Mrs. Holmes had gone, teetering uncertainly down the front steps to her carriage, Freddy's mother, pausing a moment in the hall to make sure that Mr. Andrew Payton's silk hat had been dusted, went heavily up-stairs and sat down in her big cushioned chair. She wished that she had something to do. Of course, there was that new puzzle—but sometimes the thought of a puzzle gave her a qualm of repulsion, the sort of repulsion one feels at the sight of the drug that soothes and disgusts at the same moment. The household mending was a more wholesome anodyne; but there was very little of that; she had gone all through Freddy's stockings the day before, and found only one thin place. To-day there seemed nothing to do but sit in her soft chair and think of Freddy's shocking talk and how unkind Mrs. Holmes was about Mortimore. She knew, in the bottom of her heart, that her son's presence was painful to everybody except herself; she knew that Freddy didn't like to have people call, for fear they might see him, and that her reluctance dated back to her childhood. "But suppose she doesn't like it, what has that got to do with it?" Morty's mother thought, angrily; "it's a question of duty. Mama doesn't seem to remember that Freddy ought to do her duty!" It came over Mrs. Payton, with a thrill of pride, that she herself had always done her duty. Here, alone, with everything silent on the other side of the bolted door, she could allowherself to think how well she had done it! To Mortimore, first and foremost—she paused there, with a pang of annoyance at her mother's words: "I donotlove him best!" she declared. She did her duty to Freddy, just as much as to Morty. When Fred had scarlet fever no mother could have been more devoted. She hadn't taken her clothes off for four days and nights! Her supreme dutifulness, however, a dutifulness of which she had always been acutely conscious, was in enduring Andrew's behavior. "Some women wouldn't have stood it," she thought, proudly. But what a good wife she had been! She had let him have his own way in everything. When he was cross, she had been silent. When he was drunk, she had wept—silently, of course. When he had done other things, of which anonymous letters had informed her, she had still been silent;—but she had been too angry to weep. She shivered involuntarily to think what would have happened if she had not been silent—if she had dared to remonstrate with him! For Andrew Payton's temper had been as celebrated as the brains which had once filled the now empty hat. "Some wives would have left him," she told herself; "but I always did my duty! Nobody ever supposed that I—knew." When Andrew died, and her friends were secretly rejoicing over her release, how careful she had been to wear the very deepest crape! "I didn't go out of the house, even to church, for three weeks, and I didn't use a plain white handkerchief for two years," she thought—then flushed, for, side by side with her satisfaction at her exemplary conduct was a rankling memory—a memory which made her constantly tell herself, andeverybody else, that she "loved both her children just the same." The remorse—for it amounted to that—began a few weeks after Mr. Payton's death, when Freddy, listening to her mother's pride in the black-bordered handkerchief, had flung out: "If you told the truth, you'd use a flag for a handkerchief, and you'd go to church to return thanks!"
There had been a dreadful scene between the mother and daughter that day.
"As for 'mourning' him," Andrew Payton's daughter said, "you don't. It's a lie to smother yourself in that horrid, sticky veil. You are mighty glad to get rid of him! You were as afraid as death of him, and you didn't love him at all. All this talk about 'mourning' is rot."
Mrs. Payton cowered as if her daughter had struck her: "Oh, how can you be so wicked!"
"Is it wicked to tell the truth?"
Mrs. Payton clasped and unclasped her hands: "I did my duty! But do you suppose I've beenhappy?" Her breath caught in a sob. "I've lived in hell all these years, just to make a home for you! I did my duty."
"I should have thought 'duty' would have made you leave him," Frederica said; "hell isn't a very good home for a child." She was triumphantly aware that she had said something smart; her mother's wincing face admitted it. "I suppose you were afraid to make a break while he was alive," she said, "but why not tell the truth now?"
Already the consciousness of self-betrayal had swept over Andy Payton's wife; her face flamed with anger. "You had no business to make me say a thing like that!You only tell the truth to hurt my feelings.You are just like Andrew!" She looked straight at her daughter, her eyes fierce with candor. "I love Mortimore best," she said, in a whisper.
For a single instant they stared at each other like two strangers. The mother was the first to come to herself. "I—I didn't mean that, Freddy. I love you both alike. But it was wicked to speak so of your father."
"I was a beast to hurt your feelings!" Frederica said; "and I don't in the least mind your loving Mortimore best. But what I said about Father is true; his being my father doesn't alter the fact that he was horrid. Mother, youknowhe was horrid! Don't let's pretend, at any rate to each other."
Her face twitched with eagerness to be understood; she tried to put her arm around her mother; but Mrs. Payton turned a rigid cheek to her lips; and instantly Fred lapsed back into contempt of unreality. The fact was, the deed was done. Each had told the other the truth. Mother and daughter had both seen the flash of the blade of fact as it cut pretense between them. Never again would Mrs. Payton's vanity over duty done dare to raise its head in her daughter's presence: Freddy knew that, so far as her married life went, duty had been cowardly acquiescence. Never again would Frederica be able to fling at her mother her superior morality: Mrs. Payton knew she was cruel, knew she was "just like her father."... Like Andy Payton! She ground her teeth with disgust, but she could not deny it. She was so truthful that she saw the Truth; saw her father's intelligence in her own clearmind; his ability in hers; his meanness in her ruthless smartness in proving a point. She hated him for these things—but she hated herself more.
Mrs. Payton told Arthur Weston of this revealing scene; but her confession confined itself to her remorse for having said she loved one child more than the other. "Of course I love them justexactlythe same, but Freddy was wicked to speak disrespectfully of her father."
Then Frederica poured her contrition into his pitying ears.
"I was a beast, but I was not a liar."
"It isn't necessary to be a beast, to be truthful," he reminded her.
"I made her cry," she said. "Father used to do that. Do—do you think I'm like him?"
"Like your father? Good Lord, no!" he said, in horrified haste; then apologized. "I—I mean, Mr. Payton was a very able man, I had great respect for his brains; but he was—severe."
"'Severe'? Well, I'm 'severe,' I suppose? No; the trouble with me is, I'm hideously truthful—and I like to be."
The ridiculous part of Fred's dash for freedom was that she actually picked up a client or two! Of course, her commissions did not quite pay for the advertising that brought the clients—"But what difference does that make?" she demanded.
Arthur Weston, who had come up to the "office" on the tenth floor to check over a bill for her, said, "Oh, no difference, of course. You remind me of the old lady, Fred, who bought eggs for twenty-four cents a dozen and sold them for twenty-three cents. And when asked how she could afford to do that, said it was because she sold so many of them."
"I don't care," she said, doggedly; "when you begin you've got to put up something. I'm putting up my time. If I come out even—"
"You won't," he prophesied.
"Your old dames are coming to-morrow," she said. She had fastened Zip to the umbrella-rack and was sitting on her office table, showing a candid and very pretty leg in a thin silk stocking; she looked at him with the unselfconscious gaze of a child.
"They are to arrive at five, and I'm scared to death for fear that the walk to the Episcopal church is six feet shortof half a mile! I wish I had a motor to run around and look at places. Don't you think, as an investment, I could have a motor?"
"I do not!" he said. "Maitland made that alarming suggestion, and I told him not to put such ideas into your head."
"He's on the track of three Ohio girls who want five rooms and a bath, for light housekeeping, furnished. He's going to haul me round in his go-cart to look at some flats. Trouble is, I can't charge my full commission—they're poor. Students at the College of Elocution. Why do girls always want to elocute?"
"Why do they want to run real-estate offices? It's the same thing. Strikes me Howard hauls you round in his go-cart a good deal."
She shrieked with laughter. "Nothing doing! Nothing doing! I see your little hopeful thought. You've got me on your shoulders, like the aged Anchises, and you hoped that Howard might come to the rescue. Mr. Weston, I suppose your aunts, or cousins, or whatever they are, think I'm a freak?"
"Well, you are," he said; "I'll tell you what they think: they think (not having seen you) that you are a 'sweet girl who is doing something very kind for two old ladies.'"
"A 'sweet girl'! Me, a 'sweet girl'?"
"Don't worry. You're not."
"I suppose they think I am doing it to please you? Very likely they think I'm trying to catch you," she said, chuckling.
He looked at her drolly: "Well, you've caught me.You are a perfect nuisance, Fred, but you do serve to kill time."
She slipped down from the table, her high-heeled, low-cut shoes clicking sharply on the floor, and, going over to the window, peered down into the cañon of the street. Zip scrabbled up, leaped the length of his leash, jumped, pounced, then put his nose on the floor between his paws and wagged his hindquarters. "No, sir!" she told him, "not yet!" And he crouched down again, patiently curling a furtive tongue over the toe of her shoe. "Howard was to come round for me in his car at four," she said. "Zip! Stop licking my shine off! I hate unpunctual people." Coming back to her caller, she fumbled in the pocket of her coat for her cigarette-case. "Have one?"
He helped himself and approved the quality.
"I offered Mr. Tait one," she said, "and his hair began to curl!"
"My hair is perfectly straight."
"That's the beauty of you. Yet Tête-à-tête couldn't have given a reason for his horror, to save his life."
"I could."
She was plainly disappointed in him. "I thought better of you than that! There's no 'right' or 'wrong' about it."
"No, of course there isn't," he agreed; and she applauded him. "But there is a very excellent reason, all the same, why a girl shouldn't smoke."
"What?" she demanded.
"Makes her less agreeable to kiss."
"Well, I'll wait till somebody wants to kiss me," she said, gayly; "when they do, I'll give up cigarettes—andtake to a pipe!" She pulled down the top of her desk and slipped the loop of the puppy's leash on her wrist. "As for smoking," she confessed, "I'm not awfully keen on it. Sometimes I forget to open my cigarette-case for days! But I have just as muchrightto do it as you have."
The defiance made him laugh. "That's like your sex, insisting that, because we make fools of ourselves, you will make fools of yourselves. That's your principle in demanding an unlimited suffrage."
But Fred was not listening. "I'm afraid you must clear out," she said; "Howard must be on hand by this time."
"I wonder when you'll earn the cost of that desk?" he mused, and looked about the office, with its one big window that muffled the roar of the city ten stories below, and framed, black against a lowering sky, the far-off circle of the hills. It was a gaunt little room, with its desk and straight chairs, and its walls hung with real-estate maps. A vision of Mrs. Payton's fire-lit upholstery flashed into his mind, and made him smile. What a contrast! "But this interests Fred," he thought; "and the petticoated easy-chairs don't. And the only thing that makes life endurable is an interest." He wondered, vaguely, what interests he had himself. Certainly his trustee accounts were not very vital interests! It occurred to him, watching Fred thrust some long and vicious pins through a very rakish hat, that when she settled down and married Maitland he would lose a distinct interest. "I'll have to transfer it to her infants," he thought, cynically; "I suppose I'll be godfather to the lot of 'em, and she and Howard, inthe privacy of connubial bliss, will speculate as to how much I'll leave 'em— Damned if I leave them anything!" he ended, with a flare of temper.
"Come on," said Fred.
They went down-stairs together, and waited in the cold for five minutes until Howard came, brakes on, against the curb, in a great hurry, but not in the least apologetic.
"I stopped to look at some shells at Beasley's," he vouchsafed as Fred was climbing into the car; then opened his throttle, and Mr. Weston, standing on the corner, watched them leap away down the crowded street.
"Look at him trying to cut in ahead of everybody!" he reflected; "but she thinks he's perfect."
If Fred believed her cavalier perfect, that did not keep her from criticizing his driving. Howard, too, was entirely frank, and told her her nose was red. After that they talked about the Ohio girls, and when they reached South G Street, leaving Zip on guard in the auto, he went all over the flat with her, and said the kitchenette was a slick place, but the bath-room was small—"and dark," he objected, following her in, and peering about at the plumbing. Then they decided that they had just time to whiz around to the apartment she had arranged for Arthur Weston's cousins. "They are to come to-morrow," she said.
If Mrs. Payton had seen her Freddy that afternoon, she would hardly have known her. No girl of Mrs. Payton's youth could have been more efficient as to dust; and certainly few young ladies of that golden time would havemade better arrangements for storing away the kindling, nor would they have trampled a negligent plumber more completely underfoot than did Frederica Payton. She had sent Howard flying in his car to bring the man, and she stood over him until he finished his job; then packed him and his kit out of the apartment and washed his horrid finger-marks off the white paint. In the parlor, she sat down on the sofa, drawing up her feet and snuggling back against the cushions.
"This is mighty nice," she said, looking around with a satisfaction as old as the cave-dweller's who hung skins on dripping walls and spread rushes over stone floors.
Howard, sprawling luxuriously in an arm-chair, regarded her with admiration. "It's funny that you can dothissort of thing," he waved an appreciative hand at the details of curtains and table-covers.
She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm in it for loot. If I'd thought they'd wanted a silk hat in the hall, I would have got it for 'em."
Howard roared. "That's where a woman's instinct comes in. I couldn't have fussed."
"Cut out woman's instinct," she commanded; "there's no such thing. To try to please a customer is only common sense. As for me, I hate all this domestic drool of tidies." And they both believed that she did!
They sat there—or, at least, Maitland sat, and Frederica reclined, for nearly an hour; the empty flat, the wintry dusk, the innumerable cigarettes, all fitted into their talk....
At first Howard told her about the shells he had seenat Beasley's. "I bought agloria-matis," he said; "cost like the devil!"
Frederica frowned. "I don't see how you can bother with shells when the world is just buzzing with real things! For instance, Smith has come out for votes for women. Isn't that splendid?"
"He'd come out for votes for Judas Iscariot if it would put him in office," he said, sharply; "and let me tell you, Fred, research work, in any department of science, helps the world, finally, a blamed-sight more than most of this hot air that the reformers turn on. It isn't so showy, but one single man like Pasteur is of more permanent value than all the Smiths in our very corrupt legislature, boiled down!"
"Peeved?" she said, good-naturedly. "Why don't you say 'one single woman like Madame Curie'? Well, buy your old shells, if you want to!"
"I will," he said, grinning. "How's business?"
When she announced some small success, he said, wonderingly, "You are the limit!" And added what he thought of her pluck and her intelligence: "I never knew a woman like you!"
"All women are like me—when you let 'em out."
"No, they're not!" he contradicted, with admiring rudeness.
The rudeness pleased her, as, no doubt, the male cave-dweller's candor of fist or foot pleased the female cave-dweller. His praise and wonder were like wine to her. She wanted more of it. Curled up on the sofa, she grew more and more daring in her talk; her face, flushing withexcitement, was vividly handsome, and her mind was as vivid as her face; he could hardly keep up with her mind! She was an Intelligence to him, rather than a woman; and that was why he was totally unaware of anything unusual in the situation—the darkness and the solitude. There was absolutely no self-consciousness in him.
With her it was different—she was acutely self-conscious. Once a woman, bred in the tepid reticences of propriety, takes the plunge into free talk, the very tingle and exhilaration of the shock makes her strike out into still deeper water.... She talked about herself; of her life at home; of Mortimore—"He ought to have been killed when he was born," she said; "but, of course, he ought never to have been born."
"Of course," Howard said, gravely.
"It all came from ignorance on the part of women," she explained. "In Mother's day, people confused innocence with ignorance—and as a result, Mortimores were born. What do you think? The day Mother was married, her father said to her (she told me this herself!), 'Remember, Ellen, your husband's past life is none of your business.' Think of that! And poor Mother didn't know enough to know that it was the one thing that was her business!"
Her hearer concealed his embarrassed knowledge of that "past life" by nodding and frowning.
"From Mother's point of view," Frederica went on, contemptuously, "every vital thing is indelicate—I mean indecent," she corrected herself, with the satisfaction of finding a more striking word; "according to people likeMother, a really refined baby would think it improper to be born!"
He laughed uproariously; he wished he could repeat that to Laura Childs, but of course he couldn't. However, the fellows would appreciate it. "As for babies," Fred said, with a shrug, "there's going to be lots of reform along that line. To merely rear children is a pretty poor job for an intellectual being. Did I tell you what I pulled off in a speech at our club?... 'The child is the jailer that has kept woman in prison.' Don't you think that's pretty well put?"
"Bully," he said.
Then she told him that she had found a bungalow out on the north side of the lake—"the unfashionable side; that place they call Lakeville; all camps. You know? It's just beyond Laketon, where the nice, useless rich people go." She was going to hire it for the summer, she said, and take occasional days off from business, and get up a rattling good speech on woman suffrage—"and sex-slavery. The abolishment of that is what we're really working for, and it will come when we face Truth! Until now, women have been fed up on lies." She would live by herself: "I don't mean to have even a maid; I'm going to be on my own bat. I suppose Grandmother will throw a fit; she'll say, 'It isn'tdone!' That's Grandmother's climax of horror. She'd have said it to every Reformer who ever lived."
"You don't mean to say you'll stay there at night, all alone?" he said, astonished.
"Of course. Why not?"
"Won't you be frightened?"
"Frightened? What of? Wouldyoube frightened?"
When he was obliged to admit that he would not be what you'd call frightened, "but a girl—"
"Rot! Why should a girl be frightened? I shall take a revolver."
After that, naturally, Feminism became the engrossing theme, bringing with it, as usual, those shallow generalizations that so often belittle this vital and terrible subject, even as creeds sometimes belittle Religion. To Fred's mind, as to many serious minds, Feminism had a religious significance; but she did not know—arrogance never does know!—the stigma her conceit put upon her cause.
"Look at the unrest of women, everywhere. I don't mean the agitation for suffrage;—that is just a symptom of it. It is yeast," she said, with passion; "yeast! We can't help it; something is fermenting; something is pushing us. All kinds of women feel it. I know, because I go round to the factories and talk to the girls at their noon hour, trying to get them to organize—that's the only way we can get the men to do what we want. Organization! Women have got to get together! I've made a door-to-door canvass for our league, and I came up against this—this, I don't know what to call it! thisstirring, among women. Every woman (except fat old dames whose minds stopped growing when they had their first baby) is stirred, somehow. Twenty years from now the women who are girls to-day won't be putting picture puzzles together for want of something better to do." The contempt in her voice revealed nothing to HowardMaitland, who scarcely knew the poor, dull lady in the sitting-room on Payton Street; but he wondered why Fred's face suddenly reddened. "No; girls are doing things! When they get to middle age their brains won't be chubby. Look at the factories, and shops, and offices—all full of women! Girls don't have to knuckle down any more, and 'obey'; they can say 'Thank you for nothing!' and break away, and support themselves. I tell you what! this life servitude that men have imposed upon women of looking after the home, is done,done, for good and all! That sweet creature, 'the devoted wife,' is being labeled 'kept woman,'—but the ballot is the key to her prison door!"
"Bully simile," he said.
"But isn't it all queer—the change in things?" she said, her voice suddenly vague and wondering; "it's a sort of race movement, with Truth as the motive power. It's bigger than just—people. Even our parlor-maid, Flora, feels it! She wants to do something; she doesn't know what. (I wish she'd put her energies into laundering the centerpieces better, but I regret to say she has a soul above laundry.) Yes, things are stirring! It's yeast."
Such talk was new to Howard. Until now, his young Chivalry had concerned itself only with women's demand for suffrage—which, as Frederica Payton had very truly said, is only a symptom, alarming, or amusing, or divine, as you may happen to look at it—of the world-unrest which she called "feminism." He was keenly interested.
"Gosh, Fred," he said, soberly, as she ended with the assertion that Feminism was the most interesting thingthat had come into the Race Conscienceness since humanity began to stand on its hind legs—"gosh, I take off my hat to you!" His admiration was not so much for the thing she was trying to do, as for the fact that she was trying! She wasdoingsomething—anything!—instead of sitting around, like most people, in observant and disapproving idleness. He forgot her snub about his shells; his eyes were ardent with admiring assent to everything she said. "You are the limit!" he said, earnestly.
And she, speaking passionately her poor, bare, ugly facts—all true, but verging on lies, because no one of them was the whole Truth—going deeper into her adventure of candor, felt, suddenly, a quickening of the blood. She had an impulse to put out her hand and touch him—the big, sprawling, handsome fellow! His voice, agreeing to all she said, made her quiver into momentary silence, as a harp-string quivers under a twanging and muting thumb. That his assents, which gave her such acute satisfaction, were merely her own convictions, thrown back to her by the sounding-board of his good nature, she did not realize. The intellectual attraction she felt in him was hers. The other attraction, which was his, she did not analyze. She realized only that something seemed to swell in her throat and her breathing quickened. The newness of the sensation threw her off the track of her argument, which was to prove that women would save society by facing facts—"facts" being, apparently, the single one of sex.
"When I marry," Fred said, "nobody's going to pull that devilish bromide on me, that the man's past isn't my business. There'll be no Mortimores inmine! Imean to have children who will push the race along to perfection!"
"I bet they will!" he said.
She sat up on the sofa, cross-legged, clasping an ankle with each hand, her eyes glowing in the dusk. "You've given me a brace!" she said.
"You've givenmeone! I'd rather talk to you than any man I know."
She put out her hand impulsively, and he gripped it until the seal ring on her little finger cut into the flesh and made her wince with pain and break away; but with the pain there was a curious pang of pleasure. She got on her feet with a spring, and, rubbing her bruised finger, gave a last look about the apartment.
"I hope the tabbies will like it. Heavens, Howard, do you think they'll smell cigarette-smoke? I suppose they'd have a fit if they discovered that the 'sweet girl' smoked cigarettes!"
"Do they call you a 'sweet girl'?" he said, and roared at the idea.
"Mr. Weston doesn't like me to smoke. It gave me quite a shock to find he was such a 'perfect lady.'"
"Oh, well, he's old. What can you expect? I like you to. You knock off your ashes like a kid boy."
"Open the window a second, will you?" Fred said; "that smoke does hang around.—Howard, I believe they'll think I'm trying to lasso Mr. Weston into marrying me! Poor old boy, you know when he was young, before the flood, some girl turned him down, and I understand he's never got over it. The cousins will think I'm trying tocatch him on the rebound! Funny, isn't it, how the elderly unmarried female is always trying to make other people get married? I think it's a form of envy; sort of getting what you want by proxy. Men don't do it."
"Men are not so altruistic," he said.
Frederica's face bloomed in the darkness, rose-red. They went out to the elevator, and dropped down to the entrance in silence. Howard, cranking his car, and getting a slap on the wrist that made him bite off a bad word between his teeth, thought to himself that Fred Payton was a stunner!
He said so that night to Laura Childs, when they were sitting out a dance at the Assembly. They had talked about hisgloria-matis, and she had thrilled at its cost, and pleaded with him to show it to her. "I'm crazy to see it! Please!"
"Fred didn't care a copper about it," he told her, with some amusement. "She's sort of woozy on reforms."
Laura nodded. "Fred's great, perfectly great," she said, looking down at the toe of her slipper, poking out from her pink tulle skirt.
"She has a man's brain," he said.
"Now, why do men always say that sort of thing?" Laura objected, her eyes crinkling good-naturedly. "Brain has no more sex than liver."
Howard made haste to apologize: "'Course not! I only meant she's awfully clever, you know."
Laura agreed, a little wistfully: "I admire Fred awfully. Do you know, she talked to the girls in the rubber-factory out in Hazelton about the Minimum Wage? She wantedme to go there with her, but I'd promised Jack McKnight to play tennis. Well, I'm afraid I wouldn't have gone, anyhow," she added, soberly; "those things bother Father, and it isn't as if I could accomplish anything, as Freddy can. If anybody asked me to make a speech, I should simply die. But Fred has no end of sand," Laura ended; her admiration was as honest as it was humble.
"Sand?" Howard said; "you bet she has sand! Why, she is going to take a bungalow out in Lakeville this summer, and live there all by herself. She wants to read and study, and all that sort of thing."