She ran up-stairs, the violets in her hand. "Finishedyour puzzle?" she called out at the sitting-room door. But the puzzle was still chaotic; Mrs. Payton was standing before a mirror, tying a handkerchief around her head.
"Too bad you have a headache!" Frederica said. "Mother, I shall want Flora to-morrow. I'm going to the camp for the night. Here are some violets for you."
Mrs. Payton put out a languid hand and said, "Thank you, dear."
Then she sank into a pillowy chair and tried to dab some more bay rum on her temples, but it ran down her face on to her dress, and had to be wiped off, feebly.
"I hope it won't stain my waist," she bemoaned herself. "The violets are very nice, dear. I always used to say when I was a young lady—'Give me violets!' As for Flora, she is simply impossible! She's been crying all day."
"What on earth is the matter with her?"
"I'm sure I don't know. Some nonsense about not wanting to live. Rather different from the way servants talked when I went to housekeeping. She said—" Mrs. Payton paused, and with closed eyes cautiously tipped the bottle of bay rum on the bandage across her forehead, then hurriedly sopped her cheeks as it trickled down from under the handkerchief. "Oh, dear, itwillstain my dress! She said she had 'nothing to do.' I said, 'Nothing to do?Ican find you enough to do.' She said she was tired of housework. I told her that was very wicked. I said, 'I'mbusy from morning till night, and what would you think of me if I said I was tired of doing my duty?' Miss Carter says she is simply dead in love with one of the hack-drivers,who won't have anything to do with her. I can't think so; Flora has always seemed so refined. I don't believe she'd cheapen herself that way. I wish she was more religious. Religion is so good for servants. It makes them contented, and gives them an interest. Not but what Flora is a good girl, only I should be so much more comfortable if she was contented. I wish I didn't feel my girls' moods as I do. When they are cross, I feel it in my knees. I'm too sensitive. Freddy, dear, ask Miss Carter to bring me a hot-water bag. Oh, wait a minute! I want to speak to you. I—"
Something in the next room fell with a thud against the door; Frederica fled. Mrs. Payton sighed and shut her eyes, pressing the fresh fragrance of the violets against her hot face.
"Why does she mind him?" she thought, with languid resentment. "If she was only like Aunt Adelaide! I wonder if she'll remember to tell Miss Carter to get my hot-water bag."
Frederica did remember, but she did not tell Miss Carter: she never went into that room in the ell when she could help it. She filled the hot-water bag herself, brought it to Mrs. Payton, suggested bed instead of the big chair, and vanished into the welcome silence of her own room.
Later, in the dining-room, as she dreamed over her solitary dinner, she roused herself to tell Flora that she was to go out to the bungalow the next day. "You've got to get up a bully supper for me, Flora. Mr. Maitland is coming."
There was no reply, and Frederica looked up. "What's the matter? You got a headache, too?"
"I was expecting a friend o' mine would call on me to-morrow night," Flora said, sullenly.
Frederica was genuinely concerned. "I'm awfully sorry, but Mr. Maitland is coming to see me and I reallymustbe out there. Can't you put your friend off? Who is he?"
Flora looked coy.
"Ah, now, Flora," Miss Payton said, good-naturedly, "what's all this? I must look into this!" The teasing banished the gloom for a minute or two. "Send him a little note and tell him you'll be home Saturday night," Fred suggested. She wasn't quite sure of kitchen etiquette on such matters; but, after all, why shouldn't Flora do just what her young mistress was doing?
"Maybe he will come to-night," she said, encouragingly, and Flora, with a flicker of hope, said, "Maybe he will; if he does, I guess I'll invite him to go to a movie with me next week."
"Perhaps he'll invite you," Fred said.
But Flora's hopes did not rise to such a height. "If he doesn't come in to-night, I'll send him a reg'ler written invitation to a movie," she said, happily.
As things turned out, Flora might have seen her "friend" in Payton Street Friday night, had devotion prompted him to call, for the festivity at the camp was postponed for three days. The morning mail brought Frederica a brief line from Howard Maitland; he had found, he said, after he left her office, that he had to run on to Philadelphia. Back Monday morning. If her invitation held good, he'd come out to Lakeville for supper Monday night. The letter ended with some scratched-out words, which looked like, "I may have something to tell you—" The obliterated line made her glow! But the delay was disappointing. Three whole days before she could hear that "something" he wanted to tell her—and she wanted to hear! Well, it would give her more time to fix things up in the cottage. With this in view, she and Zip and Flora went out to Lakeville Sunday morning, and Fred had a silent day to keep an eye on the dusting, and work on her suffrage paper, and jolly Flora, whose plaintive dullness was beginning to be rather trying.
"Youmustbrace up, Flora," she said; "you haven't half dusted the legs of the table! I don't want Mr. Maitland to think we are not good housekeepers, just because we are 'New Women,' you and I!" But Flora did notbrighten. She had telephoned the "reg'ler invitation to the movies" before leaving Payton Street, but the "friend" had only said (she told Frederica) "he'd see 'bout it. He'll write to me, and I'll git it Monday," she said. But it was evident that she had very little hope of an acceptance.
All that pleasant, hazy Sunday Frederica followed the old, old example of her grandmother, the cave-dweller, and decked her little shelter. She went into the woods and brought back an armful of maple leaves and, with Flora's melancholy assistance, fastened them against the walls and over the doors, hiding, to some extent, the frieze of fans and the yellow pennons of the Cause. She even took down the muslin curtains and washed and ironed them herself, and put them up again, crisp and dainty. The little room bloomed with her joy. When she sat down to "polish" her article she kept jumping up every few minutes to move a bowl of flowers, or put an extra book on the mantelpiece.
"I wonder," she thought, "if he can read the titles from that morris chair?" She had decided in what chair he was to sit. She tried the visual possibilities of the chair herself and, by screwing up her eyes, found she could just make out the appallingly learned names on the backs of some of the books. "Thatwill show him what I'm up to!" she said.
It was the old Life Purpose—the eternal invitation! The bird preens itself, the flower pours its perfume, the girl's cheek curves like a shell. A man can almost always see the beckoning of that rosy curve, or of a little curl nestling at the back of a white neck, or of soft, shy eyes;for so, in all the ages, Life has invited. But it has never beckoned with a German treatise!
Frederica, giving Zip a lump of sugar and making a solitary cup of tea for herself, did not know that she was beckoning....
When, at five o'clock, a motor came chugging along the road, and Arthur Weston opened the door and demanded tea, he, at least, felt the invitation—which was not for him. The white curtains, the open piano, the warmth and fragrance and pleasantness, and, most of all, Frederica, sitting on a little stool by the fire, her face sparkling with welcome. Everything was beckoning!
Standing up, warming his hands at the fire while Fred ran out to the kitchen to make fresh tea for him, the caller read the names of the books lined up in a row between the lighted candles on the mantelpiece, and whistled.
"Is this your light reading?" he said, as she came back with the cream-pitcher. "For Heaven's sake, lay in some funny papers for the simple male mind!" Then he pulled Zip's ears, took his tea, and said he wished he could ever get enough sugar.
"I saw Maitland on Thursday," he said, reaching for another lump.
"Yes, he is on deck," Fred said.
Her man of business made a hopeless, laughing gesture, as if he gave up trying to solve a puzzle. "Are they engaged, or aren't they?" he said to himself. Her way of speaking of the cub was certainly as indifferent as it well could be! "But that doesn't prove anything," he thought, drearily.
He stayed a long time; he had a feeling that his call was a sort of last chapter. "In about a week I'll get one of those confounded engagement letters," he told himself. He settled down in the morris chair—the chair in which Howard was to sit the next evening—and started her talking. He did not need to make any replies. Once Frederica "got going" on her own affairs he could watch her in lazy, tender silence.... How soon it would be over—this watching and listening! How soon his plaything would be transformed into a happy, self-absorbed, quite uninteresting wife and mother! For Fred Maitland, he was cynically aware, would cease to interest him, because she would cease to be preposterous; she would be normal. Of course Fred Payton would always be a darling memory; she would never leave his heart. His heart ached at the thought of its own emptiness if he should try to turn Fred Payton out just because Fred Maitland was another man's wife. No, he would not even try to forget his wild, sweet, silly Freddy! She should always remain as, back somewhere in his memory, Kate remained, dark-browed and cruel. The Kate of to-day, whose presence in his heart would be an impropriety, was not even an individual to him! But the old Kate was his. He wondered if Fred would ever become as vague to him as Mrs. Kate——.... "What is her name! Oh, yes—Bailey. When I heard she'd married him, I didn't sleep for two nights; and now I can hardly remember his name! 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them—' ... Fred, almost all the houses out here are boarded up. I only saw a light in one house."
"I was telling you of the woman's movement in Sweden," she said, affronted.
"I'd like to see a woman's movement back to town from this cottage! You really ought not to be out here at night, just you and Flora. That one house which is open will be closed pretty soon, I suppose?"
"To-morrow," she teased him. "And Flora and I are such fragile flowers, it's dreadful to think of our losing the protection of Mr. and Mrs. Monks! He is a paralytic, and she weighs two hundred and twenty-five pounds."
"You'll move in town to-morrow, won't you?" he said, really disturbed.
She had to admit that she expected to. "Not that I'm nervous, but Howard Maitland is coming here to supper to-morrow night, and I'm going to make him take us back in his car because I've got such a lot of stuff to carry home."
"Oh," he said, blankly. "He's coming out to supper?" He stared into the fire for a while; then he got on his feet. "I must start," he said, and stood looking down at her. "Fred," he said, suddenly—in the uncertain firelight his face seemed to quiver—"you're a good fellow. And if your husband, when you get him, isn't the finest thing that ever happened, I'll punch his head!"
His voice was so moved that she, sitting on her little stool, close to the hearth, looked up at him, quickly. "Why, he'sfondof me!" she thought. Her own deep experience made her heart open into generous acceptance of any human affection. She jumped up and put bothimpulsive hands into his. "You are the dearest friend I have!" she said; then hesitated, laughed—and kissed him.
Her lips against his cheek were softly cool, like the touch of flowers. Nothing that she had ever said or done removed her more completely from the possibility of passion. He was able, however, to make a grandfatherly rejoinder to the effect that he had dandled her on his knee when she was a brat—which was not strictly true, for he had had no inclination to dandle the gawky fourteen-year-old Freddy Payton on knees that were bent before the cruel Kate. He put a friendly—but shrinking—hand on her shoulder as she went with him to the front door, and a minute later waved good night from his car. As he drove home in a bothering white fog from the lake, he was very unhappy. "It hurts more than I supposed it could," he told himself. "I don't like this kind of 'amusement!' Damn it, I wish she hadn't kissed me."
As for Frederica, going back into the cottage, her eyes were very kind. "He's an old dear to bother with me; I'm awfully fond of him." Then she forgot him. "Twenty-four hours more," she was thinking, "and Howard will be here!" Twenty-four hours seemed a long time! She was glad when the moment came to blow out the candles and look into the other room to say good night; ("only twenty hours now!").
Flora, at the kitchen table, was listlessly shuffling a pack of cards by the light of a little kerosene-lamp; as Fred entered, she dropped her head in her hands and sighed. Frederica sighed, too. "I suppose I've got tocheer her up," she thought, resignedly. "What's the matter?" she said, kindly.
"Nothin'."
"Come in the other room and I'll play for you."
Flora shook a dreary head. Fred, with a shrug of impatience, sat down at the other end of the table. The fire in the stove was out and the kitchen was cold and damp; except for the lisping wash of the lake and the faint fall of Flora's cards, everything was very still. Fred watched the cards for a moment without speaking, then abruptly brushed them all aside and clapped her warm young hand on Flora's thin wrist. The movement made the lamp flicker, and on the opposite wall two shadowy heads nodded at each other.
"Now, Flora," she said, "we'll have this out! Whatisthe matter?"
"I tell you, Miss Freddy, there ain't nothin' the matter."
"There is! You're awfully depressed."
"I'm used to that."
"But why? Come now, you've got to tell me!"
Flora dropped her head on her arms and began to cry.
"Flora! Flora! What shall I do with you? You are so silly!"
The woman sat up and wiped her eyes. The little hysterical outburst evidently relieved her; she smiled, though her lips still trembled. "I was tellin' my fortune to see what kind of a letter I'd git to-morrow mornin' from my friend about goin' to the movies. I like 'em, but 'pears he ain't stuck on 'em. An'—an', I'm bettin' he'll say hewon't go. The cards make out I ain't goin' to have no luck."
"Nonsense! You've got too much sense to believe in cards."
"Miss Freddy, Mr. Maitland'll think the house real pretty the way you fixed up them leaves. Some of 'em is as handsome as if they was hand-painted!"
Fred preserved a grave face, and said yes, the leaves were lovely.
"An' he's comin' out to-morrow night?" Flora said, nodding her head. "Well, I guessyou'rehappy." Her opaque black eyes gleamed with unshed tears. Frederica, rising, put an impulsive arm around her; Flora suddenly sobbed on her shoulder.
"Is it because your beau has been unkind?" Fred said. She used Flora's own vernacular.
"I 'ain't never had a real beau. Oh, well, I don't care! I'm glad you got a beau, anyhow."
"I don't know that I have," Fred said, smiling. "But you'll get one some day." Under her friendly words was a good-natured contempt—Flora was so anxious for a "beau"!
"An' your gentleman'll come out here to-morrow night," Flora repeated,—it was as if she turned the knife in her own wound; "an' you and him'll set in the living-room. And you'll talk. And he'll talk. An' he'll ... kiss you."
"Oh," Fred said, laughing, "Mr. Maitland and I are not interested inthatkind of thing! We are trying to give women the vote, and to make the world better—that's what we are going to talk about. And, Flora, remember,you've got to give us an awfully good supper! Come, now! you're tired. You really must go to bed."
She laid a gently compelling hand on the frail shoulder, and Flora, sighing miserably, took the lamp from its bracket and followed Miss Freddy up-stairs to the cubby-hole under the roof where she slept.
The next day it rained and the little house was dark and damp. Across the sodden beach-grass Fred and Flora could see the fat woman in the next bungalow moving her trunks and her paralyzed husband back to town; when they had gone, the owner of the bungalow came to give a look around and see how much damage his tenants had done. Then he closed the shutters and boarded up the front door. By noon the sound of his hammering ceased, and the shore, with its huddle of cottages, was entirely deserted. The only human sign was the wisp of smoke from Fred's chimney. All the morning it rained heavily. At ten o'clock Flora put on her things and walked nearly a mile to the post-office. She came back soaking-wet, and empty-handed.
"Didn't he write?" Fred asked, cheerfully.
Flora shook a forlorn head. But when she had had a cup of tea there was a rally of hope. "Them postmen! They're always losin' letters. I shouldn't wonder if my friend's letter was stickin' in a mail-box, somewheres."
"Very likely!" Fred said. She really didn't know what she said; her joyous preoccupation was only aware of Time—"six hours more, and he'll be here!" At noon the rain ceased and the fog crept in. Some yellowleaves blew up on the porch; a squirrel ran down the chestnut-tree at the corner of the cottage, lifted an alert tail, looked about, then ran up again. After that everything was still.
The lake was smothered in a woolly whiteness that muffled even the lapping of the waves. It muffled one's mind, Frederica thought. She wished she had something to do—housework or anything! "I haven't the brains to work on my article; I'm only intelligent enough to be domestic!" But there was nothing domestic to be done; everything was swept and garnished. She tried to read; she tried to write; said "darn it!" to both book and pen, then got up to walk about and stare out of the window into the wetness. At last, in desperation, she put on her things, called Zip, and went out into the mist to tramp for an hour under the dripping branches. When they came back, Zip horribly muddy, Fred was as fresh as a rain-wet rose, and full of the joy of living. "Only four hours now!"
In the kitchen she wiped Zippy's reluctant paws, and told Flora, who was sitting motionless, her hands idle in her lap, to hang her sou'wester up to dry. "Now, Flora, come to life!" she said. "If you come into the living-room I'll play for you."
Flora shook her head. "There ain't no use listenin' to music. There ain't no use in anything. You get up in the morning and button your boots. Well, you gotta do it the next day," Flora said, with staring eyes, "an' the next. An' the next. What's the use? There's no use." But after serving her young lady with a somewhat sketchyluncheon, she did go into the other room, and after helping to start the dying fire, crouched on the floor, her head against the piano, and listened to Fred's friendly drumming.
"Trouble with you," said Frederica, looking down at the crouching figure, "is that you've nothing to do that you care awfully about doing."
Flora was silent, and by and by Fred forgot her, for, velvet-footed, through the fog, the hour when Howard should arrive came nearer, and her own life grew so vivid that the moping brown woman ceased to exist for her—except, indeed, for momentary pangs of fear that Flora would make some blunder—roast the duck a minute too long, or forget to put pieces of orange on the sizzling breast just before serving it!
He had said he would come at five. But it was nearly six before she heard the car panting in the road. She opened the door, and, holding a candle above her head, told him he needn't expect anything so swell as a garage. "Just run her up under that big chestnut!" Then she put the candle down on the porch, and went out to help him lift the top, for the moisture was dripping like rain from the branches.
"But the fog is clearing," she said, with satisfaction. She did not add that she had been anxious at the idea of his poking back on the wood road in the thick mist. Such concern was an absolutely new sensation to Frederica. She had never in all her life felt anxious about anybody!
The top up, they went into the fire-lit room, warm and fragrant and comfortable, with the candles burning on themantelpiece on either side of the learned books. The supper was a great success. Flora had "come to life," and the duck was perfect; indeed, she even brightened, for an instant, under Mr. Maitland's appreciation: "Flora, I take off my hat to that duck. You are a bully cook!"
"She is!" Fred said, heartily. But Flora's face gloomed again.
"Bully!" Howard repeated. His vocabulary was never very large, and hunger made it smaller than usual. He was, however, able to tell Fred that he had missed Laura in Philadelphia.
"Strikes me she's gadding about a good deal; she's gone to Boston. What's the clue?"
"Just a good time. Lolly is rather young still, you know," Fred excused her. Howard made no comment, and she had an uncomfortable feeling that he did not appreciate Laura. "I pretty nearly went with her, myself!" she declared, boldly. She wasn't going to have even Howard think Laura was frivolous! "She's the sweetest thing going," she said.
"You bet she is," Howard agreed, and began to talk about shells.
When they had finished the last scrap of dessert, the young man put what was left of his beer on the mantelpiece, and, his pipe drawing well, stood up with his back to the fire, and told her about the pearl he had found.
"I want to show it to you," he said; and, digging it up out of his pocket, dropped it into her extended hand. "I'm going to have it set in a—a ring," he explained, as it lay, round and shimmering, in Fred's palm. "Of course,I could buy a bigger one, and more perfect. But there's a kind of association in a pearl you pick up yourself—don't you think?"
"Of course there is!"
"Put it there, on your finger, and let's see how it looks," he said, his head on one side, his eyes anxious. She balanced it as well as she could on the back of her hand, then returned it to him hurriedly. "Pretty good?" he said.
"Fine!" she assured him. Then, resolutely, changed the subject; there must be no talk about rings—yet!
Howard, a little disappointed at her indifference, put the pearl, in its wisp of tissue-paper, into his pocket, and listened to the outpouring of her plans for the winter work of the league. In the midst of it, he kicked the logs together in the fireplace, and, sitting down, smoked comfortably. Once he said that one of her arguments was bully, and once he called her attention to the way the sparks marched and countermarched in the soot on the chimney back; "I used to call 'em 'soldiers' when I was a kid."
"I meant to read you my paper," Fred was saying, "but I guess it will keep. Let's talk. Howard, Laura and I are going to get all the girls we know to take a stand—this is a pretty serious thing!—against playing around with men we know are dissipated. The idea grew out of this bill we're trying to get before the Legislature."
"Good work!" he said, lazily, and leaned forward to knock the ashes out of his pipe. Zip yawned and curled up on the skirt of Freddy's dress. It was a warm, domestic scene, full of peaceful certainties.
"You see," she said, "women are facing facts, nowadays. They believe in freedom, but they believe most of all in Truth. There'll be no more hiding behind a lot of conventions! That is what has held us back. We have as much right to say what we—feel, as men. Don't you think so?" Her voice was a little breathless.
Howard, looking dreamily at the "soldiers," said, absently, "You bet you have!"
"I want to tell you just what we're up to about turning down the rotten fellows," Fred said. "I want to talk it out with you and get your advice. But not now, because—because there are other things I want to say. But sometime."
"Any time! I've just been laying for a jaw with you, Fred. I don't know any other woman I can talk to just as I can to a man!"
At that, she couldn't help a little proud movement of her head, and to hide her pride she stooped down and stroked Zippy; as she did so the firelight fell on her face, smiling, and quivering a little. Her good gray eyes brimmed with joy. "Yes, we are pretty good friends," she said.
"You see," he said, "youunderstand! Why, those letters of yours—I can't tell you what they meant to me!" He paused and laughed: "That reminds me. I told Leighton—you know the man I wrote to you about?"
"The anti man?"
"Yes; Tommy Leighton—"
"I'll send him a bunch of literature—if he has any kind of mind?"
"Oh, well; so-so. He's an anti, so what can you expect? I told him that you had the finest mind of any woman I had ever met. I told him that mighty few men could talk back to you—" He paused to fumble about in his pocket for his tobacco-pouch. "Laura gave me that," he interpolated; "Leighton said—"
She leaned forward and laid her hand on his arm; the suddenness of her grip made him drop the little pouch, and as he stooped to pick it up, she said:
"I've missed you—awfully."
He did not see that she was trembling. He put the pouch in his pocket and retorted, gaily:
"I bet you haven't missed me as much as I've missed you!"
"I've missed you," she said, in a whisper, "more!"
Howard Maitland stopped midway in a breath. But instantly the thought that leaped into his mind vanished in shame. He actually blushed with consternation at his own caddishness. He tried to say, again, something about her letters—but she was not listening; she was saying, calmly:
"You see—I love you."
He was dumb. His brain whirled. He said to himself that he hadn't understood her—of course he hadn't understood her! What had she said? Good Lord! whathadshe said? Of course she didn't mean—what you might think! She only meant—friendship. If he let her know what, for just one gasping moment he had thought she meant, somebody ought to kick him! But the shock of her words brought him to his feet. She rose, too, andstood smiling at him. "Of course," he began, "we are—you are—I mean, I don't know what I would have done without your let—"
"I love you," she said. She held out both her hands—"will you marry me, Howard?"
He had it, then, between the eyes. His boyish stumbling ceased. He caught her hands in his.
"Fred," he began—a door banged in the kitchen and they both started, "Fred," he said, again—his throat was dry, and he stopped to swallow. Instinctively she was drawing away from him; the smiling offer was still in her eyes, but a frightened look lay behind it. He did not try to hold the withdrawing hands.
"Fred, I care for you so much—" He was white with pain. Frederica was silent. "I care for you so terribly, I—I have to be—straight. I never thought—" She made a gesture, and he stopped.
"It's all right. I understand. You needn't go on."
"Fred! Look here—I care for you more than I can tell you. You are—you are simply stunning; but—"
She laughed: "Cut it out, Howard; cut it out! I understand."
"You don't!" he said, greatly agitated; "you can't understand how—how I appreciate—I shall never forget—"
She motioned him back to his chair, and dropped into her own. "You needn't worry about me. I've made a mistake, that's all. Many a man has done the same thing and lived through it. I assure you I sha'n't pine!"
She was very pale, but smiling finely. He sat down.His confusion was agonizing. He was trying to think how he could tell her what she meant to him; how he respected, admired—yes,lovedher! Only not—not just in the way she meant. He tried to say this, then stopped, realizing, dazed as he was, that his explanations only made things worse.
"I am not worthy of the friendship of a woman as noble as you are!"
"Oh, nonsense! Let's talk of important things."
"No, but listen," he entreated, with emotion. "You won't turn me down? You're the best friend I have—we won't stop being friends?"
"You'll 'be a brother to me'?" she quoted; it was her only bitter word; and she covered it with a laugh. "'Course we are pals, always! Howard, I want to tell you what I accomplished here this summer. And oh, by the way, did you give 'Aunty Leighton' the pamphlet on the New Zealand situation?" She pulled Zip up on her lap, and teased him, kissing him between his eyes, and squeezing his little nose in her hand.
Howard said, as casually as his breath permitted, that Tommy Leighton was a fine chap—"but no mind, you know. One of those people you can't argue with on any really serious subject like suffrage. Opinions all run into molds. Can't bend 'em." Now that he had got started talking, he couldn't stop; he talked faster and faster; he told her everything he had ever heard or surmised about Mr. Leighton; "his ideas belong to the dark ages—"
"Believes in sex slavery, I suppose?" Fred interposed.
"Exactly! I—I guess I'd better be getting along," hesaid, with a sort of gasp. Her instant acquiescence, in springing to her feet, was at once a relief and a stab.
"Would you mind," she said, easily, "putting a basket into your tonneau and leaving it at our house? Flora and I will have such a lot of things to carry in town to-morrow."
As she spoke, she was listening with satisfaction to her own voice—calm, matter-of-fact, friendly.
He said he would be delighted to take the basket—"or anything else! Load me up, and I'll deliver the goods in Payton Street to-night!"
"Oh, no; it's too late," she said, laughing; "but if you'll take it around in the morning—"
"Of course I will; delighted!"
"I'll tell Flora to take it out to the car," she said; and went into the kitchen: "Flo—" she began, and stopped. The kitchen was empty. "Flora!" she called, looking at the unwashed dishes in the sink, and at Flora's untasted supper set out on the kitchen table in the midst of a clutter of cards. She said a single distracted word under her breath; went to the foot of the stairs and called up to the little cell under the eaves.... No answer. She ran up and looked into each room.... No Flora.
"She seems to have vanished," she said, coming into the living-room with a puzzled look. "She isn't in the house. Do you suppose she can be wandering about in the woods at this time of the night?" In her own mind, frantic at Howard's delayed departure, she was saying to herself: "I'll die if I don't get rid of him! I couldkillFlora!" She sat down again by the fire, and said thatshe was bothered about Zippy's eyes; that made a momentary diversion. Howard examined the little dog's eyes and said they were all right; then made desultory remarks about dogs in China. He was trying, wildly, to find something—anything!—to say. Both were listening intently for Flora's step. "I'll see if I can find her now," Frederica said.
He followed her into the empty kitchen. "Bird flown?" he said. He, too, was pleased to find he could speak so casually. Frederica opened the back door and strained her eyes into the mist.
"It's awfully funny," she said; "why should she go out into the fog?Flora!" she called loudly—and they held their breaths for an answering voice. But there was only the muffled lapping of the waves and an occasional drop falling from the big tree. They went back to the living-room, and looked at each other, blankly.
"Can she have started to walk into town?" he asked.
"Thirty miles? Howard, I am sort of worried about her! Do you remember? the door slammed, and—" she stopped short, remembering just when she had heard that slamming door. "Do you think she can have been ill, and gone out to one of the other houses for help? No," she corrected herself. "She knows every house in Lakeville is closed!"
Again she ran up-stairs, calling and looking; then they both went out on the back porch, and called.
Again the lake answered them, lapping—lapping.
"You can't stay here by yourself," he said.
"I can't go back to town and leave Flora here by herself. We've got to find her!"
He nodded; they were both of them entirely at ease. That tense consciousness of a few minutes before had disappeared.
"I'm worried," Fred said, again; "she was awfully low-spirited because—because somebody hadn't written to her."
"Oh, she's all right. She'll be back in a few minutes."
"But where has she gone?"
"Perhaps she walked into Laketon."
"What for? Besides, it's nearly five miles!" They were standing in the kitchen doorway; Zip pushed past them and went out into the mist; smelled about, stretching first his front legs, then his hind legs. The motor loomed like a black monster under the tree. Zip gave a bored look at the lingering guest.
"Flor-a-a!"
No answer; just the lake, sighing and rippling in the sedge.
"Could she have gone down to the water?" Howardsaid; "have you got such a thing as a lantern? I'll go out and look."
"No; but light that lamp on the center-table—a candle might blow out."
He went into the other room, and she heard him scratch a match and fumble with the lamp-chimney. In that minute, alone, listening all the while for Flora's returning step, her mind leaped back to that moment in front of the fire. His look—astounded, incredulous, shocked—was burned into her memory; his distressed words rung in her ears. She was not conscious of any pain because he did not love her. She was simply stunned by the jolt of suddenly and unexpectedly stepping down into the old, irrational modesties....
Her face began to scorch. She went out on the porch and called again, mechanically; some water dripping from the eaves on her bare head ran down one blazing cheek; the coolness gave her an acute sense of relief that struggled through the medley of tearing emotions; she was saying to herself: "Where can she be? She hasn't washed the dishes! (He refused me.)"
Howard, holding the lamp over his head, came up behind her and went down the steps into the mist. Fred followed him, Zip lumbering along at her heels.
"She must have left the house this way; we know that," she said.
"Come down to the beach," he said.
"Yes; sometimes she used to sit on that big rock," Frederica remembered.
He walked ahead of her; the light, shining through thesolferino lamp-shade, made a rosy nimbus about his bare head, but scarcely penetrated the fog. They went thus, all three, single file, along the path to the rickety wooden pier; at the end of it, they stood staring out into the mist. Twice he called, loudly, "Flora!"...
"Not a sound!" he said. "Is there any possible place in the house where she could have hidden herself? I mean, gone to sleep, or anything?"
"Not a place! I've looked everywhere. (He refused me.)"
They turned silently to go back. Just as they reached the path again Howard stopped—so abruptly that the lamp sent a jarring gleam into the white darkness.
"Fred—?"
She looked where he was looking, and caught her breath.
"No!" she said; "oh, no—no! It can't be!"
"Hold the lamp. I'll go and see—"
He climbed down the little bluff and waded into the sedge. The swaying mass that had looked like a stone until a larger wave stirred it, came in nearer the shore, caught on the shoaling beach, rolled, and was still. Frederica saw him bend over it, then try, frantically, to lift it in his arms. She put the lamp on the wharf. ("Don't touch it, Zip!"), slid, catching at tufts of grass, and bending branches—down the crumbling bank, plunged into the water up to her knees, and together, half pulling, half carrying that sodden bundle, they stumbled over the oozy bottom and through the sedges. The lifting it up the bluff was terrible; the dripping figure, sagging and bending, was so heavy!
"We must get her into the house," Frederica panted. And, somehow or other, they did it, Howard taking the shoulders, and Fred the feet. They were gasping with the strain of it when they laid her on the floor of the living-room.
"Is she dead?" he said.
Frederica thrust her hand into the bosom of Flora's dress—and held her breath.
"I can't tell; we mustn't stop to find out! You know what to do? Pull her arms up, this way!"
They stood over her, Howard following Fred's short, sharp directions, and, even in the horror of the moment, conscious of a wondering admiration at her efficiency. But no quiver of life came into the still face.
"We ought to get a doctor!" Fred said, at last, panting.
"I'll go instantly!"
"No, the quickest way will be to take her to a doctor, not bring a doctor to her!"
"But if she is dead we ought not to move her! That's the law."
"Law? I don't care anything about the law! Life is what I'm thinking of! We don't know whether she's dead or not. Crank your car! I'll get some blankets—"
He hurried out, and she rushed up-stairs for blankets. She was folding them about Flora when he came in, the car chugging loudly at the door. Again, lifting and straining, they carried her out, and got her into the tonneau. Then Frederica saw the lamp down on the wharf, burning steadily in the mist.
"Put it out! Put it out! Hurry!" she commanded;and while he ran to do it she darted back to blow out the candles in the living-room and snap the lock of the front door—"never mind about taking the lamp into the house. Leave it on the porch!" she said. Then she got in the car and, sitting down, put an arm about the crumpling, sodden form. Zip, fearful of being left, jumped on the front seat, and glanced wonderingly back at his mistress.
"Fred," Howard said, agitatedly, "I think she's—dead."
"So do I; buthurry! Don't lose a minute!" Then, through the noise of the clutch, she screamed at him: "Doctor Emma Holt! In Laketon!" And the car jerked forward.
"But that's a woman doctor," he called, over his shoulder.
Just for a moment the habit of revolt asserted itself: "Why not?" Then, "Hurry! Hurry!"
Dr. Emma Holt was five miles away. "I felt," Howard Maitland used to say, afterward, "as if she were fifty miles away!"
The fog was so thick it was impossible to speed with safety, so they sped without it, and tore bumping along through the white smother. Twice he looked around, and saw Fred sitting there, rigid, with that face, open-mouthed, open-eyed, gray under its brown skin, wabbling, and dripping on her shoulder.
"She is magnificent!" he thought. "Icouldn't do it."
The second time he looked, some reflection from the lamps, gleaming in the fog, flickered on that set face, and it seemed as if the eyes closed, then opened again. The horror of it made his hand jerk on the wheel, and therewas a skid out of the ruts that frightened him into carefulness.
When he sprang out at the house of the "woman doctor," he dared not glance back into the tonneau. Hammering on the panels of the door, and keeping his thumb on the bell, he called up to an opening window on the second floor:
"Doctor! Hurry! A woman has got drowned! Hurry!"
"Where is she?" came a laconic voice from the window.
"Here! In my car! Hurry!"
The window slammed down; a minute later the electric lights were snapped on in the sleeping house, and hurrying feet came along the hall.
"Of course," Dr. Holt said, when it was plain that nothing more could be done, "you ought to have left her where she was."
"But we didn't know whether she was alive—" they excused themselves.
"Was there anything the matter with her?" the doctor said; she was beginning to think of the certificate she must make out. "Was she low-spirited?"
"She was dreadfully disappointed because she didn't get a letter she was expecting."
"Love-letter?"
"I don't know," Frederica said.
She and Howard had left the office, where the dead woman lay on the doctor's lounge, and were standing in the front hall, side by side, like two children who were being scolded. From above the hat-rack, a mounted stag's head watched them with faintly gleaming eyes. Dr. Holt, a woman with a strong, bad-tempered face, was plainly out of patience with them both.
"I've got to get the coroner," she said, frowning; "and it's nearly twelve o'clock." Then she asked a question that was like a little shock of electricity to the two who, in this last terrifying hour, had entirely forgotten themselves. "Did she have any love-affair?"
"Yes," Frederica said, in a low voice. ("He refused me.")
"Tell me, please," Dr. Holt persisted.
"She was—in love."
"I suppose she was all right? I mean, respectable?"
"Flora?" Fred said, with a recoil of anger, "of course she was respectable."
"That's what I thought. Man desert her? You spoke of a letter—perhaps she was hoping to hear from him?"
"No, he didn't exactly desert her. I mean, she thought somebody was in love with her, several times. But none of the men seemed—" Frederica's hands clutched together—"to want her. So she was unhappy."
"Oh," said the doctor. "Yes. I understand. Quite frequent in women of her age. She would have been all right if she hadn't been—respectable; or even if she'd got religion, good and hard. Religion," said Dr. Holt, writing rapidly in a memorandum-book, "is a safety-valve for the unmarried woman in the forties, whose work doesn't interest her."
"Flora was as good as anybody could be!" Fred said, hotly.
"Oh, I didn't mean any reflection on her character," said the doctor, kindly, "I merely meant that any woman who hasn't either work, or religion, or marriage, generally gets out of kilter, mentally. Of course," she meditated, tapping her chin with her fountain-pen, "you two must go to the coroner's with me."
In the next hour and a half, of driving about to find the coroner, then the undertaker, then arranging what wasto be done with the body, the "two" had no time for the self-consciousness that the doctor's words had rekindled—except for just one moment: they had come back to Dr. Holt's house, and again were standing in the entry, below the deer's head. In the office, the coroner was questioning Dr. Holt. The office door was ajar.
"This man, Maitland; do you know anything about him? Is he all right? Of course, you never can tell—"
At that, they couldn't help looking at each other, with a flash of what might have been, under other conditions, amusement.
"Why, he's Howard Maitland!" they heard Dr. Holt say; "you know? The Maitland Iron Works!"
"Oh!" the coroner apologized, "I didn't get on to that! 'Course he's all right."
Then Dr. Holt: "It appears the poor woman tried to get married, but she couldn't find a husband. So she killed herself."
This time the two in the hall did not look at each other. Fred stared up at the stag's glistening eyes. Howard buckled and unbuckled his driving-gauntlets. For the rest of her life, Frederica never saw a mounted deer's head without a stab of remembrance.
It was nearly four o'clock in the morning when everything was attended to and Howard turned his car homeward. "Do sit in front with me, Fred," he said; "youcan'tsit back there in the tonneau."
"All right," she said, absently, and, getting in, pulled Zippy on to her lap. As she sat down, she suddenly realized that Howard's request implied that he felt anembarrassment for her which she was not feeling for herself. She began to feel it soon enough! Embarrassment flowed in upon them both. Howard talked about Flora—then fell silent: ("She 'tried to get married'!") Then Fred talked about her—and fell silent. ("He needn't worry;Iwon't drown myself!")
The ride into town was forever! The bleary October dawn had whitened in the mist like a dead face, before they drew up at 15 Payton Street, and for the last ten miles they did not exchange a word. Fred was thinking, dazedly, of Flora; but every now and then would come the stab: "He refused me."
Howard was thinking only of Fred. "Stunning!" he was saying to himself. "She's not a girl! She's a man—no, I don't know any man who would have done what she did.Icouldn't have, anyway. I take off my hat to courage like that!"
Not a girl? Fred, not a girl?...
When at last that dreadful night was over, and he had left the terrified Payton household, Frederica—the wonderful, the superwoman (superman, even, compared with Howard himself!), Frederica had, in a flash, been something less than superwoman; she had been pitifully, stupidly, incredibly feminine.
It was six o'clock in the morning when he closed Mrs. Payton's front door behind him and went out to get in his car—giving a shuddering glance at that pool of water on the floor of the tonneau. Just as he was throwing in his clutch he heard the door open again, and Fred calledto him. He went back, quickly; she was standing on the top step, haggard, ugly, dripping wet; a lock of hair had blown across her cheek, which was twitching painfully. She put out her hand to him, in a blind sort of gesture, but she did not look at him.
"I just wanted—to say," she said, and paused, for the jangle of the mules' bells and the clatter of a passing car drowned her voice;—"I wanted to—to say," she began again, with a gasp, "don't—" she stopped, with a sobbing laugh; "don't—tell Laura."
Don't tell!
Oh, she was a girl all right!—so Howard's thoughts ran as he drove home in the mist that had thickened into rain; Fred was a girl—a trembling, ignorant, frightened feminine creature! Suppose she did support a dead woman in her arms during that dreadful ride in the fog; suppose she did stand by, promptly obedient to the doctor's orders in that frantic time of endeavor in the office; suppose she had decided, quietly and wisely, exactly what was to be done, when it was plain that Flora's poor, melancholy little life had flown; suppose the coroner did say that he had never seen such nerve; suppose all those things—yet she had said those two pitiful words: "Don't tell." Yes, Fred Payton was a "girl"!
"You can talk all you want to about the 'new woman,'" Howard said, "I guess human nature doesn't change much...."
It changes so little, that at that revealing instant on the Paytons' front steps, with the light of the Egyptianmaid's globe streaming out into the rain, he had wanted to put his arms around Freddy and kiss her! Who knows but what, if there had not been all those weeks of rocking about on the mud flats, listening to the eternal dry rustle of the blowing palms, dredging for shells, and bothering about Jack McKnight, he might not, then and there, in spite of the wonderfulness of her, and because of the weakness of her, have fallen in love with old Freddy? As it was, when she said that piteous, feminine thing, the tears had stung in his eyes; he wrung her hand, stammering out: "Never!Why, I—you—" But the door closed in his face, and he went back to climb into his motor and go off to his own house.
That was at six o'clock; it was nine before Mr. and Mrs. Childs—summoned, to Billy-boy's great annoyance, while he was shaving—reached No. 15. They found Mrs. Holmes there ahead of them, and met Mr. Weston on the door-step.
In the parlor, watched by Andy Payton's sightless eyes, the court sat upon Freddy—for, of course, the whole distressing affair was her fault—she had dragged poor, crazy Flora out to that shocking camp! "I said last spring it was perfec' nonsense," Mr. Childs vociferated—"a girl, renting a bungalow! Why did you allow it, Ellen?"
"My dear William! I was perfectly helpless. Girls do anything nowadays. When I was a young lady—"
"Mygirl doesn't do 'anything,'" Laura's father said; "as for Freddy, the newspapers will ring with it! Pleasant for me. My niece, alone with that Maitland fellow! I've always distrusted him. Going off to dig shells—aman with his income! That showed there's something queer about him. And Fred alone with him in that bungalow mixed up with a murder!"
Mrs. Holmes screamed.
"Well, suicide. Same thing. It will all come out," said Billy-boy, standing up with his back to the fire and puffing; "Bessie is really sick at the scandal."
"Oh, now, Father, I—"
"He's got to marry her," said Mrs. Holmes.
"She helped Mr. Maitland carry Flora out of the water," Mrs. Payton was explaining; "he told me about it. He said she was very brave, but I know she got her feet wet; and I always tell her there's no surer way to take cold than to get your feet wet. And poor Flora! She hasn't any relations, as far as I can find out; so whom can I notify? When I went to housekeeping, servants always came from somewhere, and if they got sick you knew where to send them. I don't want to be unkind, but, really, it was very inconsiderate in Flora. I suppose she never thought how hard it would be for Freddy—"
"Where is Fred, at this moment?" Mr. Weston interrupted.
"Well, she means to be kind, I'm sure," Mrs. Payton said, "but I do wish she wasn't so extreme! She has actually gone to the undertaking place—you know they sent Flora in this morning to Colby's—with some roses. American Beauties, and you know how much they cost at this season! She wanted to put them on the coffin herself, and—"
"Oh,dostop talking about such unpleasant things!" Mrs. Holmes said.
"Well, I merely meant that it is unnecessary. As I say, Flora has no relatives, so no one will ever know of the attention. It's just another wild thing for Freddy to do."
"Possibly Flora will know it," Mr. Weston said; "at least, wouldn't the Reverend Tait say so?"
"Oh," Mrs. Holmes said, frowning, "we are not speaking of religion. Flora was just a servant." Even Mr. Childs winced at that, and for once Arthur Weston's face was candid.
"I supposethatwill get into the newspapers, too," said Mrs. Holmes—"'A young society girl puts roses' ... and all the rest of the horrid vulgarity of it."
"I don't think human kindness is ever vulgar," Mr. Weston said, "and I am sure there will be no improper publicity. Maitland and I have been to all the newspaper offices."
"Alone, at midnight, in an auto!" Mrs. Holmes lamented.
"Death is an impeccable chaperon," Weston said. ("Thatwill shut her up!" he thought, and it did, for a while.)
"To think of such a thing happening to one of my servants," Mrs. Payton bewailed herself; "and I was always so considerate of them!"
Mrs. Holmes said there was too much consideration for servants, anyhow. "Let them work! There isn't one of them that will dust the legs of a piano unless you standover her! Of course, I'm sorry for Flora; I only wish I wasn't so sensitive! But she did starch her table linen too much, Ellen; you can't deny that."
"Who is going to pay the funeral expenses?" Mr. Childs said. "Does the city do that, Weston, or is it up to Ellen?"
"Oh, Mrs. Payton has no responsibilities about Death—only Life," said Arthur Weston, grimly.
"Of course I will attend to all that!" Flora's employer said; "anyhow, her wages for the last month are not due until next week. But, of course, I shall do everything that is proper."
"Well," William Childs said, "I must be moving along. I was going to work out a new Baconian cipher this morning, but, of course, this wretched business has knocked my mind into a cocked hat! Come, Bessie. Bessie's perfectly sick over the whole thing. She has her Bridge Club this afternoon, and this awful affair has completely upset her. Good-by, Nelly; let me know if there is anything I can do," and he hustled Mrs. Childs—who kept insisting, mildly, that she was so sorry for poor, dear Freddy—out of the room. At the door, he paused to call back: "This new cipher doesn't leave the Shakespearians a leg to stand on!"
Mrs. Holmes and Mr. Weston lingered, Mrs. Holmes declaring that William Childs ought to learn to speak distinctly—"he mumbles terribly"—and Weston, silent and rather wan, walking up and down, waiting for Frederica's return.
When they heard the key in the front door, the twoladies stopped talking; it was Arthur Weston who went into the hall to take Fred's hand and help her off with her coat. She hung her hat up beside her father's and gave her old friend a grim look.
"Has Billy-boy put on the black cap yet? Or does grandmother demand that Howard shall 'make an honest woman' of me before the sun sets? I know what you've been up against!"
"You are perfectly exhausted," he said, tenderly; "go up-stairs; I'll fight it out."
"No," she said, briefly.
She went into the parlor, looked at her grandmother, shrugged her shoulders, and girded herself for battle: "I'll tell you the whole story. Poor Flora has been suffering, probably for a year or more, the doctor says, from some mental deterioration. She was restless and unhappy. Of course, we knew that, because she did her work badly—which inconvenienced us. As far as she was concerned, it didn't trouble us. She was restless, because she wanted to be married and settle down. And nobody wanted her; which seemed to us just—funny. But when you come to think of it, it isn't very funny not to be wanted.... When she couldn't marry, she tried to get interested in something—music, or anything. She wanted todosomething."
"Do something? Well, I could have giv—"
"I tried to make things better for her," Fred went on, heavily, "but I suppose I didn't try hard enough. Well, anyhow, she saw I was in love with Howard—" a little shock ran through her hearers; she paused, and looked atthem, faintly surprised; "why, you knew I was in love with him, didn't you? He isn't with me; not in the least. And Flora's young man wasn't in love with her. He promised to write to her, and he didn't. And that upset her a good deal. But I think the thing that really hit her hardest was to see how I felt, and how happy I was. I—I slopped over, I suppose, a good deal. It was a sort of last straw to Flora to see me so happy; it made her—well, envious, I suppose. Poor old Flora! she needn't have been."
She stopped and put her hand across her eyes, rubbing them wearily. "I tell you these details merely to explain why I didn't get on to the fact sooner that she had gone out of the house—I was so absorbed in Howard. The doordidslam, but just at that moment I was ... saying something to him. So I didn't really notice. Then, afterward, he and I talked and talked, until it was time for him to go home; and then we discovered—" She caught her breath and was silent for a moment.
Her mother was quite overcome. "So distressing for you, dear!"
Mrs. Holmes began to collect her gloves and bags.
"Poor Flora!" Fred said, unsteadily. "She was so unhappy. Oh—how unhappy women are!"
"That's because they are fools," said Mrs. Holmes.
"Oh, yes; we're fools, all right," Frederica said, somberly. Then she told them of that ride in the fog with the dead woman: "We had done everything we knew how, and we couldn't make her breathe; so I told Howard we must take her into Laketon, so we got her into theauto, and I held her—" There was a shuddering gasp from Mrs. Holmes; she was trying to get away, taking a backward step toward the door, then pausing, then taking another step. The horror of the thing gripped her. Weston saw her face growing gray under its powder. But still she listened, straining forward to hear distinctly.
Frederica was telling them of those terrible twenty minutes in the car, of the hour in the doctor's office, of the search for the coroner, of the drive to the undertaker's—then, suddenly, a curious thing happened: Mrs. Holmes, her face rigid, her false teeth faintly chattering, came up to her granddaughter and tapped her sharply on the shoulder.
"I could have done it, too, when I was a girl," she said, harshly; "but"—her voice broke into a whisper—"not now. I would be afraid, now." Then loudly, "I'm proud of you!You are no fool."
Frederica gave her an astonished look: "Why, grandmother!" It was as if a stranger had spoken to her—but a stranger who might be a friend.
The next instant Mrs. Holmes was herself again. "It's all too horrid," she said.
"The body," Fred said, "will be brought here this morning"—she glanced at her watch; "it ought to be here now."
Mrs. Holmes instantly walked out of the room.
"The funeral will be here to-morrow. I suppose Anne will know some of her friends whom we can notify?" She sighed, and again rubbed her hand over her eyes; then looked at Arthur Weston and smiled. "Howard is allright," she said; "don't make any mistake aboutthat! Mother, I'm going up-stairs to lie down."
She went out into the hall, stopped to open the front door for her departing grandmother, then whistled to Zip, and they heard her drag her tired young feet up-stairs.
Arthur Weston's eyes were full of tears.