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Title: Spellbinders

Author: Margaret Culkin Banning

Release date: December 22, 2023 [eBook #72473]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: George H. Doran Company

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPELLBINDERS ***





                             SPELLBINDERS

                        MARGARET CULKIN BANNING




                             SPELLBINDERS

                                  BY
                        MARGARET CULKIN BANNING
            AUTHOR OF “HALF LOAVES,” “THIS MARRYING,” ETC.


                               NEW YORK
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                           COPYRIGHT, 1922,
                      BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


        COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE METROPOLITAN PUBLICATIONS, INC.

                           SPELLBINDERS. II

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                             TO MY FATHER

                           WILLIAM E. CULKIN

                     WHO HAS TAUGHT ME OF POLITICS
                            AND PHILOSOPHY




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

I AT THE BROWNLEYS’                                                   11

II FREDA                                                              30

III ON THE STUMP                                                      36

IV CITY MICE                                                          45

V A HUSBAND                                                           64

VI MARGARET                                                           76

VII AN UGLY GLIMPSE                                                   87

VIII ADVENTURE                                                        97

IX WORK FOR FREDA                                                    108

X THE CLEAN WIND                                                     116

XI NEWSPAPER CUTS                                                    126

XII GREGORY LECTURES                                                 135

XIII LIFE ENTRUSTED                                                  141

XIV WHAT WAS TO BE EXPECTED                                          152

XV THE CONVENTION                                                    174

XVI MR. SABLE STARTS SOMETHING                                       188

XVII GAGE FINISHES IT                                                207

XVIII IN HOSPITAL                                                    220

XIX MENTAL SURGERY                                                   229

XX BARBARA BREAKS LOOSE                                              243

XXI WALTER’S SOLUTION                                                259

XXII THE MOURNERS                                                    272

XXIII RESPITE                                                        278




SPELLBINDERS




CHAPTER I

AT THE BRONWLEYS’


I

Gage Flandon put his wife’s fur cloak around her and stood back,
watching her as she took a final glance into the long mirror in the
hall.

“I’m quite excited,” she said. “Margaret always excites me and I do want
you to meet her. She really must come to stay with us, Gage.”

“If you like. I’m not so keen.”

“Afraid of strong-minded women?”

“It’s not their strong minds I’m afraid of, Helen.”

“Their alluring personalities?” She slipped an arm into his and led him
to the door.

“Not even that. Their horrible consciousness--self-consciousness. Their
nervousness. Their aggressiveness. Most of all, I hate the idea of their
effect on you.”

“You sound as if whole cohorts of strong-minded rapacious women were
storming the city instead of one old college friend of mine come to
bolster up the fortunes of your own political party.”

Flandon helped her into the automobile.

“You know what I mean,” he said briefly.

He stayed silent and Helen Flandon left him to it. But even in the
darkness of the car he could feel her excitement and his own irritation
at it bothered him. There was no reason, he told himself, to have
conceived this prejudice against this friend of Helen’s, this Margaret
Duffield. Except that he had heard so much about her. Except that she
was always being quoted to him, always writing clever letters to his
wife, producing exactly that same nervous excitement which characterized
her mood to-night. An unhealthy mood. He hated fake women, he told
himself angrily, and was angry at himself for his prejudice.

“It’s too bad to drag you out to meet her. But I couldn’t go to the
Brownleys’, of all places, alone, could I?”

“Of course not. I don’t mind coming. I want to see Brownley anyway. I
don’t mind meeting your friend, Helen. Probably I’ll like her. But I
don’t like to see you excited and disturbed as she always makes you.
Even in letters.”

“Nonsense.”

“No--quite true. You’re not real. You begin by wondering whether you’ve
kept up to the college standard of women again. You wonder if you’ve
gone to seed and begin worrying about it. You get different. Even to
me.”

“How foolish, Gage.”

Her voice was very sweet and she slipped along the seat of the car until
she was pressed close beside him. He turned her face up to his.

“I don’t care what the rest of the fool women do, Helen. But I do so
love you when you’re real--tangible--sweet.”

“I’m always real, about five pounds too tangible and invariably sweet.”

“You’re utterly unreliable, anyway. You promised me you’d keep clear of
this political stuff at least for a while. You quite agreed with me that
you were not the kind of person for it. Then along comes this Duffield
woman to stir up things and you forget everything you said to me and are
off in Mrs. Brownley’s train.”

“I’m not in anybody’s train, Gage.” Mrs. Flandon straightened up. “And I
don’t intend to be in anybody’s train. But it’s a different thing to
show decent interest in what other women are thinking and doing. Perhaps
you don’t want me to read the newspapers either.”

“I merely want you to be consistent. I don’t want you to be one of
these--”

“Fake women,” supplied his wife. “You repeat yourself badly, dear.”

Entering the Brownley drawing-room a few minutes after his wife, Gage
found no difficulty in picking out the object of his intended dislike.
She was standing beside Helen and looked at him straightly at his
entrance with a level glance such as used to be the prerogative of men
alone. He had only a moment to appraise her as he crossed the room.
Rather prettier--well, he had been warned of that, she had carried the
famous Daisy Chain in college,--cleverly dressed, like his own wife, but
a trifle more eccentric perhaps in what she was wearing. Not as
attractive as Helen--few women were that and they usually paled a little
beside her charm. A hard line about her mouth--no, he admitted that it
wasn’t hard--undeveloped perhaps. About Helen’s age--she looked it with
a certain fairness--about thirty-one or two.

She met him with the same directness with which she had regarded him,
giving him her hand with a charming smile which seemed to be
deliberately purged of coquetry and not quite friendly, he felt, though
that, he quickly told himself, must be the reflection of his own mood.

“And how do you find Helen?” he asked her.

“Very beautiful--very dangerous, as usual.”

“Dangerous?”

“Helen is always dangerous. She uses her power without directing it.”

He had a sense of relief. That was what he had been feeling for. That
was the trouble with Helen. But on that thought came quickly irritation
at the personal comment, at the divination of the woman he disapproved
of.

“It is sometimes a relief,” he said, “to find some woman who is not
deliberately directing her powers.”

“You make my idea crystallize into an ugly thought, Mr. Flandon. It’s
hardly fair.”

There she was, pulling him into heavy argument. He felt that he had been
awkward and that it was entirely her fault. He took refuge in the
commonplaces of gallantry.

“Ugly thoughts are impossible in some company. You’re quite mistaken in
my meaning.”

She smiled, a half amused smile which did not so much reject his
compliment as show him how impervious she was to such things.
Deliberately she turned to Helen who had been enveloped by the ponderous
conversation of the host. Mr. Brownley liked to talk to Helen and Helen
was giving him that absorbed attention which she usually gave to any
man. Gage and Margaret joined them, and as if she wondered at the
brevity of their initial exchange, Helen gave them a swift glance.

“Well,” she said, “have the feminist and the anti-feminist found peace
in each other?”

“She refuses to be complimented,” grinned Gage, rather sheepishly,
immensely grateful to Helen for making a joke of that momentary
antagonism.

“Have women given up their liking for compliments?” Mr. Brownley beamed
upon them beneficently, quite conscious of his ability to remain gallant
in his own drawing-room. “Not these women surely.”

Gage flushed a little. It was almost what he himself had said. It had
been his tone.

“We have been given so much more than compliments, Mr. Brownley,” said
Margaret Duffield, “that they seem a little tasteless after stronger
food.”

“Not tasteless to most of us. Perhaps to a few, like Margaret. But most
of us, men and women, will like them as long as we have that passion for
appearing to ourselves as we would like to be and not as we are.”

Over recovered ease of manner, Gage smiled at Helen. She had taken that
up neatly. She had penetration, not a doubt of it. Why did she try then
to subordinate herself to these other women, people like this Duffield
girl, these arrogant spinsters? He greeted his hostess, who came from
the library, where a group of people were already settled about the card
tables.

“Will you make a fourth with the Stantons and Emily Haight, please,
Gage? You like a good game and Emily can furnish it.”

Mrs. Brownley was a tall, elaborately marcelled woman of about fifty.
Handsome, people said, as they do say it of a woman who commands their
eyes even when the sex attraction has gone. She had the ease of a woman
whose social position is of long standing, the graciousness of one who
has nothing to gain and the slight aggressiveness of one who has much to
bestow. Gage liked her. He remembered distinctly the time of her reign
as one of the “younger matrons”--he had been a boy home from college
when, at thirty-five, Mrs. Brownley, successfully the mother of two
children, was dominating the gayety of the city’s social life. Just as
now--her hair gray and marcelled, and her dancing vivacity cleverly
changed into an eagerness of interest in “welfare work” or “civic
activity”--she released energies more in keeping with her age.

“I’ll go anywhere you want me to,” he said, “I’ll play checkers or
casino. I’ll do anything--except talk to feminist females.”

“Well, Emily’s surely no feminist--go along then--”

It was a very small party, a dinner of ten to which the Flandons had not
been able to come because of a late afternoon meeting at Gage’s office.
So he and Helen had come along later, informally, to meet the guest of
honor, now sitting with Helen on a divan, out of the range of the card
players.

“Have you begun operations yet?” Helen was asking.

“Oh, no. It’s a very vague job I have and you mustn’t expect too much. I
am not supposed to interfere with any local activities--just lend a hand
in getting new women interested, speaking a bit, that sort of thing,
rousing up women like you who ought to be something more than agreeable
dilettantes.”

“If I’m agreeable--” began Helen.

“I won’t be put off. You write that nonsense in your letters. Why aren’t
you interested in all this?”

“I truly am. Very noticeably. I’m secretary to this and treasurer to
that--all the women’s things in town. On boards of directors--no end.”

“And you care about them as much as your tone shows. Are you submerged
in your husband then?”

“He’d love to hear you say that. Love you for the suspicion and hate you
for the utterance. No--hardly submerged. He’s a very fascinating person
and I’d go almost any lengths--but hardly submerged. Where did you get
the word anyway? Ultra-modern for subjugated? Gage is good to me. Lets
me go and come, unchallenged--doesn’t read my letters--”

“Stop being an idiot. I’m not insinuating things against Gage. What I’m
trying to find out is what you are interested in.”

“I’m interested in so many things I couldn’t begin to tell you.
Psychoanalysis--novels--penny lunches--you--Mrs. Brownley’s career as a
politician--my beloved babies--isn’t that enough?”

“I’m not at all sure that it is enough.”

“Well, then you shall find me a new job and I’ll chuck the old ones.
Tell me about yourself. I hardly had a chance to hear the other day. So
the great Harriet Thompson sent you out to inspire the Middle West with
love of the Republican party? It’s hardly like you, Margaret, to be
campaigning for anything so shopworn as the Republican party.”

“I do that on the side. What I do primarily is to stir up people to
believe in women--especially women in women.”

“Then you don’t believe in the G. O. P.”

“I’m not a campaign speaker, Helen. I’m an organizer. Of course I think
I’d rather have the Republicans in than the Democrats for certain
obvious reasons but if you mean that I think the Republican candidate
will be a Messiah--I don’t. Gage is a Republican--how about you?”

“Half Republican--half Socialist.”

“The extent of your Socialism is probably a subscription to a couple of
magazines.”

“About.”

“You ought to focus on something, I think.”

“Go on. It does me good. After years of hearing mouthing nonsense,”
Helen spoke with sudden heat, “of hearing people say ‘How wonderful you
are, Mrs. Flandon’ and ‘How do you manage to do so much, Mrs. Flandon?’
and all sorts of blithering compliments, it’s wonderful to listen to
you. Though I’m not sure I could focus if I wanted to--at least for any
definite period. I do, for a while, and then I swing back to being very
desperately married or extremely interested in something else. You can’t
put Gage in a corner like some husbands, you know, Margaret.”

“I should imagine not.”

“Suppose,” said Mrs. Brownley, coming up to them, now that her other
guests were disposed of, “that we have a little talk while the others
are busy and plan our work a little. You don’t really mean to carry Miss
Duffield off, do you, Helen?”

“I must, Mrs. Brownley. I’ve been trying for years to get this young
woman to visit me and, now that she is in the city, I couldn’t let her
stay with any one else. I didn’t have any idea that she was going to be
the organizer sent by the Women’s Republican Committee.”

“I wouldn’t have been sent either, if Mrs. Thompson hadn’t been
dreadfully short of workers. But she was, and I know her very well and
though she knows I only go with her part way, I promised to do the best
I could to organize things for her and get the women interested, even if
I couldn’t speak in behalf of the party and its candidates. You see,
Mrs. Brownley, we’ve done so much organization for suffrage work among
women that it comes pretty naturally to us to do this other work, just
as it does to you.”

Mrs. Brownley nodded.

“You’ll be an immense help, Miss Duffield. What I had sketchily planned
was a series of small meetings in the city, lasting over a period of a
couple of weeks and then a big rally of all the women. You assure
yourself of your audience for the big meeting by working up the small
ones.”

“We must have some good speakers,” said Margaret, “I am sure the
National Committee will send us those from time to time.”

“The heavy work will be in the country districts.”

“I suppose so. The women there will have to be rounded up and we should
have some women of influence from the country districts to work with us.
Can you find some?”

“There are some,” answered Mrs. Brownley, “who’ve done a good deal of
club work. There’s a Mrs. Ellsmith and there’s a new district chairman
for the Federated Clubs who seems to be a bright little woman--a Mrs.
Eric Thorstad. She comes from Mohawk, about seventy miles out of the
city. It’s a Normal School town, quite a little center for the
surrounding villages. We might write to her.”

“We ought to see her,” answered Margaret, “it works better. The more
personal contact you get with the women now, the better. Why can’t we go
to Mohawk--is that what you called it?--and some of the surrounding
towns and do a little rounding up?”

“We could--very easily. Mr. Brownley would let us have the Etta--that’s
the special car on his railroad which runs through all that country.”

“I think it would be better not. That identifies us too much, if you
don’t mind my saying it, with the railroad. No--let’s take the regular
trains. And make this person come with us to do a little talking.” She
indicated Helen with a laugh.

“I’ll come,” said Helen, “of course.”

She sat back, as Margaret Duffield went on talking in her deft, sure
way, outlining the work to be done. It seemed to Helen that Margaret had
hardly changed in eight years. She had been just like this in college,
eager, competent, doing things for suffrage, talking feminism. Well, so
had Helen, herself. But something had changed her point of view subtly.
Was it being married, she wondered? She couldn’t rouse her enthusiasms
really over all this woman business any more. Was it laziness? Was it
lack of inspiration? Had she been making too many concessions to Gage’s
ideas? She must have Margaret at her house. She wanted to see her and
Gage in action. How they would row! She laughed a little to herself,
thinking of Gage. The warm little feeling crept over her that always
returned as she thought of him. How foolish Margaret was to miss all
that--living with a man. Suddenly she felt expanded, experienced. She
wanted to do something to show that all her discontents had vanished.
She had been nervous and dissatisfied since Margaret had come. Well, she
had come, and Helen had measured herself up beside her, fearful of
shrinkage in her own stature. What was it that to-night had reassured
her, made her feel that Margaret had not really gone beyond her, that
she was not really jealous of Margaret’s kind of life?

The others were still talking of projected trips into the country.
“Let’s go then,” said Helen, leaning forward, “and get them so stirred
up that we leave all the old farmers gasping. Let’s start a rebellion of
country women. Let’s get them thinking!”

Margaret stared at her.

“That sounds more like you!” she exclaimed.

“I’m full of energy,” said Helen, on her feet now. “Margaret, you must
come to my house within three days or I’ll send a policeman for you. And
now I’m going to break up Gage’s bridge game.”

She could break it up. Gage was immediately conscious of her. As she sat
beside him, pretending quiet and interest, he could feel that she was
neither quiet nor interested. He was pleased that she had broken away
from the Duffield girl to come to him. He wanted to acknowledge it. To
throw down his cards and put his arms about her. Since he couldn’t do
that he kept on thinking of it.

“You bring us bad luck, Mrs. Flandon,” said Gage’s partner, with a
flavor of tartness.

She rose again, laying her hand lightly on her husband’s shoulder.

“Driven away from the serious minded everywhere. If I go into the music
room and shut the door tightly, may I play?”

That she knew would disturb Gage too. And she couldn’t help disturbing
him. She would play the things that held especial meanings for him and
her. She would play the things which she had used to play in college for
Margaret on Sunday evenings, set her by the ears too, startle her out of
her seriousness as she had used to startle her. She would arouse in
Margaret some of those emotions which couldn’t be dead. She would find
out if she had those emotions still.

Then over the first notes she forgot what she meant to do. She was alone
with herself--she had forgotten the others. And because she had
forgotten, the things happened to the others as she had meant them to
happen. Gage, bidding deliberately to make his hand the dummy, left the
card table and outside the door of the music room found Margaret, also
listening. They took refuge in immediate conversation.

“So she keeps up her music,” said Margaret.

“Yes. She works several hours a day. And we have an excellent teacher
out here in the wilderness.”

With a formal excuse, he returned to his bridge game.


II

At midnight Mrs. Brownley broke up the bridge by summoning the players
to the dining room where there were iced drinks and sandwiches. Mrs.
Brownley did that sort of thing extremely well. Men used to say with
gratitude that she knew enough not to keep them up all night, and her
informal buffet suppers closed the evening comfortably for them. It was
a “young” crowd to-night--not young according to the standards of the
débutante Brownleys but people between thirty and forty. The Stantons,
whom everybody had everywhere because they were good company and
perfectly fitting in any group. Emily Haight, who had become ash-blond
and a little caustic with the decreasing possibilities of a good
marriage but whom every one conceded had a good mind, who “read
everything” and played a master hand of bridge. She had sat next to
Walter Carpenter at dinner, as she inevitably was placed when they were
in the same company, because they had known each other so well and long
and because it seemed to be in the back of people’s mind that steady
propinquity ought to produce results in emotion. He was quite the person
for Emily--about her age, well-to-do, popular, keen-minded. But to-night
at dinner he had devoted himself almost pointedly to Margaret Duffield.
They had rallied him afterwards at the card table about his sudden
interest in feminism and he had smiled his self-controlled smile and let
them have their joke. He had played cards with Jerrold Haynes, another
of Mrs. Brownley’s “intellectuals,” who had written a book once, and had
it published (though never another), and who managed to concoct, with
the help of Helen Flandon, almost all the clever remarks which were au
courant in their particular circle. He and Carpenter had tried to make
Margaret play bridge but she had told them that she couldn’t, reducing
them to a three-handed game which they were ready to abandon at twelve
o’clock.

Jerrold went as usual to Helen’s side. There was a friendship between
them which bathed in a kind of half-serious worship on his part and a
bantering comradeship on hers. They sat together in a corner of the
long, oak-paneled dining room and made conversation about the others,
conversation for the sake of clever words.

“Walter has made his way to the candle flame again. He seems to have
been captured,” said Jerrold.

Helen looked across the room curiously. Gage and Walter were both
talking to Margaret who was standing in a little glow of electric candle
light. Helen remembered that in college Margaret had done her hair that
same way, in a loose knot modeled after some sculptured Psyche.

“Don’t you think she is lovely?” she asked more in comment than
question.

“Do you mean beautiful?”

“Well--what do you think?”

“I don’t quite think of her as a woman.”

“Silly stuff--”

“No, truly. Most women you sense. They either try to use their sex to
allure or impress you or else they repress it for any one of a dozen
reasons. She--somehow seems to lack it.”

“It’s not so easy as that, Jerrold, you phrase-maker. I’ve known her a
long while and I have no idea whether she’s in love, has been in love,
yearns after or fights against it. You guess boldly, but probably not
well.”

“Maybe not. You must tell me if I am right and you find it out.”

There was a sound of motors in the drive outside, then high pitched
voices, and Mrs. Brownley went out into the hall.

“Isn’t this early for the youngsters?” asked Gage.

They all laughed but though the conversation went on as before, an
anticipation rested on them all. Against the background of the
chattering voices in the hall, they seemed a little subdued, waiting.

Allison Brownley pushed her escort in. He seemed to be reluctant but she
had her hands on his back and he came through the door, stumbling.

“We can come to the high brow party, can’t we?” cried Allison. “Can’t we
have some food? We’re perfectly starved and there wasn’t a table to be
had at the Rose Garden.”

“I knew you must have been driven out of everywhere to come home this
early,” called Gage, “though of course young men in the banking business
might benefit by somewhat earlier hours.”

The young man laughed awkwardly. He was a rather pale, small young man,
badly dwarfed by Gage’s unusual bulk and suggesting a consciousness of
it when he tried to draw Allison to the other end of the room. But she
preferred Gage for the moment. She was not a pretty girl though she made
that negligible. What was important about her was her vigor and her
insolent youngness. Her hair was cut just below her ears and curled
under in an outstanding shock and her scarlet evening dress and touches
of rouge made Margaret, as she stood beside her, seem paler, older,
without vigor. But she stood there only a moment, poised. Then the
others, six of them, had invaded the dining room. Giggling, spurting
into noisy laughter at unrevealed jokes, eating greedily, separating
from the older people as if nothing in common could be conceived among
them, they went to the farther end of the room, Allison with some
youthfully insolent remark hurled back at Gage.

The others seemed suddenly conscious that it was midnight--the time when
only extreme youth had a right to be enjoying itself. They took upon
themselves the preliminary airs of departure. But Helen, separating
herself from the group, went down the room to the young people.

They had settled into chairs and began to rise a little awkwardly but
she did not let them, sitting down herself on the arm of Allison’s chair
and bending to talk to them all. They burst into gales of laughter at
something she said. Gage and Jerrold watched her from the other end of
the room.

It was wonderful, thought Gage, how even beside those young faces, her
beauty stood out as more brilliant. How her hair shone under those soft
lights! How golden, mellow, she was in every gesture!

Jerrold, in need of some one to whom to comment, isolated Margaret.

“Watch your amazing friend,” he said, “those children made us feel old
and stiff muscled. See how she is showing us that they are raw and full
of angles.”

“Is it important?” asked Margaret.

“I suppose not. Except that it is a time when youth seems to be pretty
securely on the throne of things. And I like to see it get a jolt.”


III

All the way home, Gage had wanted to say something to his wife,
something in appreciation of her beauty, something to still somehow the
desire to express his love. As they stood for a moment in their hallway
he sought for but could not find the words. There was in him a
conflicting, a very definite enmity to her consciousness of her powers.
He did not want to increase it. It seemed to him that to have her know
her charm meant that she would lose it. He had seen her lose it so. When
he felt that she was deliberate--

“You were very charming to-night, dearest.”

“The first duty of a woman,” she laughed, “is to be charming, if she
can.”

There it was. She had set him back. He felt it cruelly. Why hadn’t she
simply turned and thanked him, given him the caress he was waiting for?
Why had she made it all what he suspected? She had planned every move.
Probably planning now--he became stubborn, thwarted, angry.

“I didn’t care much for your friend,” he said, lighting his cigarette.

“No? But you won’t mind my having her here.”

“Well, as you know, I’d much prefer not. I don’t think that sort of
woman a healthy influence.”

“And yet you know, Gage, I might be getting a little tired of merely
healthy influences. The change might set me up.”

She too was strangely angry. She had been thrilled all evening by the
thought of this home-coming. She had been saving up emotions to throw
her into Gage’s arms. She wanted to feel--to tell him she loved him. He
was making it impossible.

They stood there, longing for each other, yet on guard mentally, afraid
of the other’s thrust, the other’s mockery.

“Of course I can’t refuse to let you have any friend of yours here at
the house. Only if she comes, I do wish you’d excuse me as much as
possible. I do not want to be rude and I certainly shall be if she
involves me in these feminist arguments.”

“I don’t believe Margaret would argue with you, Gage.” She said it
lightly, her insinuation that he was beyond the pale of argument
flicking him with a little sting.

“Possibly not. However, I should not care to waste her time. And as I
said to you to-night I don’t like her effect on you.”

“I am not particularly under her influence, Gage. I have my own ideas.
What you probably mean is that you object to my doing the things which
are interesting women all over the world.”

“When have I ever objected to anything you’ve done?”

“I’ve done nothing, have I? Been secretary to a few small town clubs.
Kept house. Tended my babies. That’s all I’ve done except play the
piano.”

“Did that dissatisfy you as much as your tone implies?”

“It’s not enough to satisfy women now.”

He shrugged.

“Well--do anything you please, my dear. I certainly won’t stop you if
you run for office.”

She was very cold.

“You’re sneering at me, Gage.”

He tossed away his cigarette and came up to her where she stood, still
muffled in the cloak she had worn. She was fast in his embrace and it
gave her the moment of relief she had sought. She closed her eyes and
lay relaxed against his shoulder. And then came the creeping little
fear. He had managed her like that. He couldn’t respect her.

“Darling Helen--”

Her thought spoke.

“Margaret would never have let herself go off the point like this--”

“Oh, damn Margaret!” said Gage, letting her go, angrily.

Helen looked at him in disgust and went upstairs.

       *       *       *       *       *

It wasn’t, thought Gage, pacing up and down the living room, as if he
were a reactionary. Helen knew that. He had no objection to women doing
anything. He’d said so. He’d shown it. He’d put women on his local
Republican committee. And sized them up pretty well too, he told
himself. They worked well enough on certain things. Some of them had
good minds. But the issue with him and Helen had nothing to do with
granting women a concession here and there. That was all right. The
trouble was with this woman, these women who made Helen so restless, so
unsettled for no particular reason, with no particular object. He hated,
as he had said, the self-consciousness of it all. He hated this
self-conscious talk, this delving into emotions, this analysis of
psychical states and actions, this setting of sex against sex. It ate
into emotions. It had made women like that Margaret. He measured his
dislike of her, bitterly. Even on their wedding trip she had interfered.
He remembered the first flagging in Helen’s abandonment to her love for
him. That letter from Margaret, outwardly kind, he felt, outwardly all
right, but suggesting things had brought it about. Helen had shown it to
him.

“She’s afraid we’ll become commonplace married people,” she said, “but
we won’t, will we?”

There, at the start, it had begun. Discussion when there should have
been no discussion--feelings pried into. How he hated college women. It
should be prohibited somehow--these girls getting together and talking
about things. Forming these alliances. All along the line, for six
years, and this was the first time he’d even met her, this Margaret had
been held up to him. Margaret’s letters had come and with each of them
would sweep over Helen that fear that she was becoming dull--sliding
backward--those little reactions against him--those pull-backs. At the
time Bennett was born the same thing had happened. First the natural
beauty, then that fear of being swept under by “domesticity.” The way
they used the word as if it were a shame, a disgrace. He felt he had
never told Helen the half he felt about these things. And now that
rotten oath had put him in the wrong. He’d have to apologize. He’d have
to begin with an apology and there he would be put in the entire wrong
again. It wasn’t as if women didn’t have to be handled like children
anyhow. They did. What could you do with them when they got into moods
except coax them out of it? There was Helen upstairs now, probably
hating him--wishing she were free--envying that spinster friend of hers.

His thoughts took a sudden turn. She couldn’t quite wish that. Surely
she didn’t want not to be married to him. She’d never said anything like
that. He didn’t really think she had ever for a minute wished it. She
was crazy about Bennett and Peggy. She loved him too.

On that thought he went upstairs, his apology on his lips, his mind
tangled, but his need of peace with Helen very great.




CHAPTER II

FREDA


Freda met her father on the street three blocks from home. She saw him
coming, laden as usual with books, a package of papers from the
psychology class to correct--and the meat. The collar of his ulster was
turned up around his ears but Freda knew him even in the gathering
twilight, a block away. There was a dependency about Eric Thorstad’s
figure--about the meat--that was part of her life.

“Liver or veal?” she asked gayly, taking the fat package from under his
arm.

“It’s a secret.”

“Sausage,” she said, “I can tell by the feel and the smell.”

“Aren’t you late, Freda?”

“I went to the movies.”

“Again? I wish you wouldn’t go so often. What do you get out of them?”

“Thrills, father dear.”

“All unreal.”

She skipped into a stride that matched his.

“A thrill is a shiver of romance,” she declared, “it’s never unreal.”

“And what gives the shiver? The white sheet?”

“I’m open minded. Could be a well tailored garden, Nazimova’s gown, a
murder on a mountain.”

He laughed and they went along briskly until they came to the third in a
row of small yellow frame houses, and turned in at the scrap of cement
walk which led up to the porch.

In the kitchen Mrs. Thorstad turned from the stove to kiss them both.

“How was your meeting?” asked her husband.

A kind of glow came over Adeline Thorstad’s face.

“It was a lovely meeting. I am sure that it is significant that so many
women, even women like old Mrs. Reece will come to hear a talk on their
civic responsibilities. You should have managed to come, Freda.”

Freda put an arm about her mother’s shoulders.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “I’d have spoiled the circle of thought. I don’t
care whether women vote or not.”

She was six inches taller than her mother’s neat prettiness and at first
glance not nearly so attractive. Her rather coarse hair was too thick
and pulled back into a loose low knot and her features were heavier than
those of her mother’s, her skin less delicate. The neat pyramid of her
mother’s blond hair, her smooth, fair skin were almost as they had been
fifteen years before. But Freda showed more promise for fifteen years
hence. Her hair shaded from yellow to orange red, her eyes were deep
blue and her loose-hung, badly managed figure showed a broad
gracefulness that her mother’s lacked.

She had somehow taken the little qualities of her mother’s prettiness
and made them grander, so that she seemed to have been modeled from an
imperfect idea rather than a standard type. In her father was the
largeness of build which might have accounted for her, though not too
obviously for Mr. Thorstad stooped a little and days in the classroom
had drained his face of much natural color. Still he had carried over
from some ancestor a suggestion of power which he and his daughter
shared.

“Don’t talk like that, Freda. It’s so reactionary. Women nowadays--”

“I know. But I don’t especially approve of women nowadays,” teased
Freda. “I think that maybe we were a lot more interesting or delightful
or romantic as we were when we didn’t pretend to have brains.”

But her mother ignored her.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said. “Set the table and then I must tell you
my news.”

They were used to news from Mrs. Thorstad. She was full of the
indomitable energy that created little events and situations and exulted
in them. Victories in the intrigues of the district federated clubs,
small entanglements, intricate machinations were commonplaces to her
husband and daughter since Mrs. Thorstad had become district
vice-president.

So now when the sausage, flanked by its mound of mashed potatoes, came
sizzling to the table and Freda had satisfied her soul by putting three
sprays of red marsh-berries in a dull green bowl in the middle, they
looked forward to dinner with more anticipation than to Mrs. Thorstad’s
surprise. But she began impressively, and without delay.

“I think that this entrance of women into politics may alter the whole
course of our lives.”

Freda and her father exchanged a whimsical friendly glance in which no
disrespect blended.

“No doubt,” said Mr. Thorstad.

“If I were called to public office, think what a difference it would
make!”

“What difference?” asked Freda.

“Why--there’d be more money, more chances to better ourselves.”

Her husband seemed to shrink at the cheaply aspiring phrase, then
looked at her with something like the patience of one who refuses to be
hurt.

“So now you want to be the breadwinner too, my dear?”

Perhaps she took that for jocosity. She did not answer directly.

“I met Mrs. Brownley--the Mrs. Brownley--at a meeting not long ago. She
said she thought there would be a future for me.”

“No doubt,” said her husband, again.

He gazed into the sausage platter reflectively.

Twenty years ago, he might have remembered, Adeline Miller had thought
there was a future for him. She had intended to better herself through
him. She was teaching then in a little town and he was county
superintendent. They had met and been attracted and after a little she
had condoned the fact of his Swedish name and of the two parents who
spoke no English. She had exchanged the name of Miller for Thorstad,
soberly, definitely determined to better herself and profit by the
change.

Then there came Freda. Freda, who had stimulated them both as healthy
promising babies are likely to stimulate their parents. Thorstad had
become a High School instructor, then had left that position after eight
years to come as assistant to the professor of psychology in the Mohawk
State Normal School, at a slightly lower salary, but “bettering
himself.” Ten years ago, that was. He was head of his department now--at
three thousand a year. It was his natural height and he had attained
it--not a prospector in his work, but a good instructor always. It had
taken much labor to have come so far, nights of study, summers spent in
boarding houses near the University that he might get his degrees. And
Adeline had gone along her own path. During all these years in Mohawk
she had been busy too. First with little literary clubs, later with
civic councils, state federations, all the intricate machinery of
woman’s clubdom.

She had her rewards. Federation meetings in the cities, little speeches
which she made with increasing skill. She had been “speaking” for a long
time now. During the war she fortified her position with volunteer
speaking for Liberty Loans, War Saving Stamps. All this in the name of
“bettering others.” All this with that guiding impulse to “better
herself.”

Her husband made no demands on her time which interfered with any public
work. If it was necessary he could cook his own meals, make his own bed,
even do his own washing, and there had been times when he had done all
this for himself and Freda. Not that Mrs. Thorstad ever neglected her
family. The Family, like Democracy and the Cradle, were three strong
talking points always. She was a fair cook and a good housekeeper, a
little mechanical in her routine but always adequate. And when she was
away she always left a batch of bread and doughnuts and cookies. It was
never hard on Eric and he, unlike some men, was handy around the house.
He was handy with Freda too from the time he dressed her as a baby until
now. Now he was handy with her moods, with her incomprehensible
unwillingness to better herself by sharing in her mother’s plans.

Leaning a little toward her mother now, Freda brought the conversation
off generalities.

“But the news? We are all agog.”

“The news is that we are to have distinguished guests on Thursday. Mrs.
Brownley, Mrs. Gage Flandon, and Miss Margaret Duffield of New York are
making a tour of the country and they are to stop here for a day. I am
to arrange everything for them. There is no telling to what it may
lead.”

“They’re coming here?” Freda’s tone was disgusted. “A lot of women
spellbinders. Oh, Lord, save us. I’m going camping.”

“It is a great privilege,” said her mother, with a tight little motion
of her lips. “I shall need you, Freda.”




CHAPTER III

ON THE STUMP


I

St. Pierre was the big city of the state. Around it a host of little
towns, farming, manufacturing, farther away even mining, made it their
center and paid it tribute by mail-order and otherwise. It was one of
the Middle West cities at which every big theatrical star, every big
musical “attraction,” every well booked lecturer spent at least one
night. It boasted branch establishments of exclusive New York and
Chicago shops. It had its paragraph in the marriage, birth and death
section in Vogue. Altogether it was not at all to be ignored.

Harriet Thompson had known what she was doing when she sent Margaret
Duffield West to organize the women of the St. Pierre section in groups
which could be manipulated for the Republican party.

Margaret stayed with Mrs. Brownley for a few days and then spent a week
with Helen, during which time she found a pleasant room and bath which
she leased by the month, and to which she insisted on going.

Helen’s remonstrances had no effect.

“You’re foolish to think of such a thing as my camping on you. Why I may
be here for several months. No, I couldn’t. Besides we’ll have a really
better time if we don’t have to be guesting each other. And I get a
reasonable amount for expenses which really needn’t be added on to your
grocery bill. Gage has party expense enough.”

Gage was very cordial, particularly as he saw that her visit was not to
be indefinite. It hurried him perhaps into greater gallantry than he
might have otherwise shown. He did everything to be the obliging host
and to his surprise enjoyed himself immensely. Margaret was more than a
good talker. She gave him inside talk on some things that had happened
in Washington. She could discuss politicians with him. No one spoke of
the deteriorating influences of marriage and the home on women. Margaret
was delightful with the children. She did not hint at a desire to see
him psychoanalyzed. He found himself rather more coöperative than
antagonistic and on the day of Margaret’s definite removal to her new
room he was even sorry.

Helen found the new room most attractive. It was a one-room and bath
apartment, so-called, furnished rather badly but with a great deal of
air and light.

“It feels like college,” she said, sinking down on a cretonne covered
couch bed. “Atrocious furniture but so delightfully independent. What
fun it must be to feel so solidly on your own, Margaret.”

“Not always fun, but satisfying,” said Margaret, making a few passes at
straightening furniture.

Helen sighed faintly and then lost the sigh in a little laugh.

“I’m actually afraid to ask you some things,” she admitted, “I’m afraid
of what you’ll say. Would you really sooner not be married?”

“I think so. Emotional moments of course. On the whole I think I’d
rather not be.”

“But you didn’t always feel that way.”

“No--not six years ago.”

“Then was there a man you wanted?”

“There were several men. But I didn’t want them hard enough or they
didn’t want me simultaneously.”

“Where are they now?”

“God knows--quarreling with their wives, perhaps.”

“And you don’t care?”

“Truly--not a bit.” Margaret’s eyes were level and quite frank. “It’s
all dreadful nonsense, this magazine story stuff about the spinsters
with their secret yearnings covered up all the time. I’m going to do
something to prick that bubble before I die. Of course the conceit of
married people is endless but at least spinsters have a right to as much
dignity as bachelors.”

“All right,” said Helen, “I’ll respect you. I know I’m going home and
that you aren’t following me with wistful eyes wishing you could caress
my babies. Is that it? You comb your hair without a qualm and go down to
dinner.”

“Exactly. Only before you go I want you to promise to go with us on this
trip to the country towns. We’ll be gone three days only. Gage can spare
you.”

“I don’t quite see what use I’d be.”

“I do. I want you to talk to them and charm them. I can organize. Mrs.
Brownley can give them Republican gospel. What I want you to do is to
give them a little of the charm of being a Republican. Borrow some of
Gage’s arguments and use your own manner in giving them and the result
will be what I want.”

“Don’t I seem rather superfluous?”

“We couldn’t do it without you. Mrs. Brownley for name--you for
charm--and I’ll do the rest of the work.”

Helen looked at her watch.

“Gage will beat me,” she declared, “I’m late for dinner again.”


II

The train bumped along for several hours. Mrs. Brownley read, her book
adjusted at a proper distance from her leveled eye-glasses. Helen and
Margaret fell into one of those interminable conversations on what was
worth while a woman’s doing. They were unexcited, but at Mohawk, Mrs.
Thorstad arrived thirty minutes early at the railroad station, with Mrs.
Watson’s car, which she had commandeered. Mrs. Watson had also offered
lunch but at the last minute her Hilda had become sick and thrown her
into such confusion that Mrs. Thorstad, brightly rising to the occasion,
had taken lunch upon herself and even now Freda was putting a pan of
scalloped potatoes into the oven and anxiously testing the baking ham.

It had fallen naturally to Mrs. Thorstad to arrange the meeting in
Mohawk, Mrs. Brownley writing her that she need not consider it a
partisan meeting, that its object was merely educative, to explain to
the women what the Republican party meant. And Mrs. Thorstad had few
scruples about using her influence to get as large a group together for
the meeting as she could. To have these three celebrities for a whole
day had been a matter of absorbing thought to her. They were to have a
luncheon at her home, then to have an afternoon meeting at the Library
and a further meeting in the evening. Mrs. Thorstad knew she could get a
crowd out. She always could.

Freda had not minded getting lunch. She didn’t mind cooking, especially
when they could lay themselves out in expense as was considered proper
to-day. But she hated meeting these strange, serious-minded women. She
had looked in the glass at herself and decided several times that she
was altogether out of place. She had tried to bribe her mother into
pretending she was a servant. But that was in vain. So Freda had put on
the black taffeta dress which she had made from a Vogue pattern and was
hoping they had missed their train.

Coming to the kitchen door her mother called her and she went in
reluctantly. Then she saw Helen and her face lit up with interest. Her
mother had said Mrs. Flandon was nice looking but she had pictured some
earnest looking youngish woman. This--this picture of soft gray fur and
dull gold hair! She was like a magazine cover. She was what Freda had
thought existed but what she couldn’t prove. And it was proven.

Speeding on the heels of her delight came shyness. She shook hands
awkwardly, trying to back out immediately. But Helen did not let her go
at once.

“We are a lot of trouble, I’m afraid, Miss Thorstad.”

“Oh, no you’re not. It’s not a bit of trouble. I’ll have lunch ready
soon, but it will be very simple,” said Freda.

Her voice, thought Freda, is like her clothes. It’s luxurious.

The lunch was ready soon and to the visitors it was very pleasant as
they went into the little dining-room. It was so small that the chairs
on one side had to be careful not to back up against the sideboard. The
rug was worn to thinness but the straight curtains at the windows, which
did not shut out the sun, were daffodil yellow and on the table the
little pottery bowl with three blossoming daffodils picked out the same
note of defiant sunlight again. Helen looked around her appreciatively.

Freda served them quietly, slipping into her own chair, nearest the door
to the kitchen, only after the dishes were all in place and every one
eating. She took her own plate from her mother absently. The others were
talking. She listened to them, the throaty, assured voice of Mrs.
Brownley, Miss Duffield’s clear, definite tones and the voice of Mrs.
Flandon, with a note of laughter in it always, as if she mocked at the
things she said. Yet always with light laughter.

“Are you interested in all this political business?” asked Mrs. Flandon
of her, suddenly.

“No,” said Freda, “Not especially. But mother is, so I hear a great deal
of it.”

Her mother laughed a little reprovingly.

“Freda has been too busy to give these things time and thought.”

“How are you busy? At home?”

She let her mother answer that.

“Freda graduated from the Normal last year. We hoped there would be a
teaching opening here for her but as there wasn’t, we persuaded her to
stay home with us and take a little special work at the Normal.”

Helen kept her eyes on the girl’s face. Keenly sensitive to beauty as
she was, she had felt that it was the girl rather than the mother who
created the atmosphere of this house with which she felt in sympathy.
She wanted to talk to her. As the meal progressed she kept her talking,
drew her out little by little, and confidence began to come back to
Freda’s face and frankness to her tongue.

“She’s beautiful,” thought Helen, “such a stunning creature.”

But it was later that she got the key to Freda.

They were in the living room and she picked up some of the books on the
table. They interested her. It was a kind of reading which showed some
taste and contemporary interest. There was the last thin little
gray-brown “Poetry,” there was “The Tree of Heaven,” “Miss Lulu Bett,”
Louis Untermeyer’s poems. Those must be Freda’s. There was also what you
might expect of Mrs. Thorstad. Side by side lay the “Education of Henry
Adams” and “The Economic Consequences of the Peace.”

“Of course the mother reads those,” thought Helen, “after she’s sure
they’re so much discussed that they’re not dangerous any longer. But
the mother never reads ‘Poetry.’”

“Your daughter likes poetry?” she asked Mrs. Thorstad.

“She reads a great deal of it. I wish I could make her like more solid
things. But of course she’s young.”

Mrs. Flandon went out to the kitchen where Freda was vigorously clearing
up.

“You’re doing all the work,” she protested.

“Very sketchily,” confessed Freda, “I can cook better than I clear up,
mother tells me.”

“That may be a virtue,” said Helen. She stood leaning against the door,
watching Freda.

“Who reads poetry with you?”

“Father--sometimes. Oh, you mustn’t think because you see some things
I’m reading that I’m that sort. I’m not at all. I’m really not clever
especially. I just like things. All kinds of things.”

“But what kinds?”

“Just so they are alive, that’s all I care. So I scatter--awfully. I
can’t get very much worked up about women in politics. It seems to me as
if women were wasting a lot of time sometimes.”

“You are like me--a natural born dilettante.”

“Are you that?” asked Freda. Her shyness had gone. Here was some one to
whom she could talk.

“I’m afraid I am. I like things just as you do--if they’re alive. It’s a
bad way to be. It’s hard to concentrate because some new beautiful thing
or emotion keeps dragging you off and destroys your continuity. And in
this world of earnest women--”

“You criticize yourself. You feel that you don’t measure up to the women
who do things. I know. But don’t you think, Mrs. Flandon, that
something’s being lost somewhere? Aren’t women losing--oh, the quality
that made poets write such things about them--I don’t know, it’s partly
physical--they aren’t relaxed--”

She stood, pouring her words out in unfinished phrases as if trying
desperately to make a confession or ask her questions before anything
interrupted, her face lit up with eagerness, its fine, unfinished beauty
diffused with half-felt desires. As she stopped, Helen let her stop,
only nodding.

“I know what you mean. You’re right. It’s all mixed up. It’s what is
puzzling the men too. We must talk, my dear.”

Helen was quite honest about that. She meant to talk with Freda. But
there was no time that afternoon. In the Library club-room, crowded with
women who had come at Mrs. Thorstad’s bidding for a “fresh inspiration,”
Helen found her hands full. She gave her talk, toning it up a bit
because she saw that Freda was expecting things of her and so wandering
off the point a little. But the charm that Margaret wanted was in action
and Margaret, quickly sensing the possibilities of Mrs. Thorstad’s town,
settled down to some thorough organization work.

It was after the meeting that night that Helen saw Freda again. And then
not in the hall. She had noticed the girl slip out after her own talk,
as Mrs. Brownley rose to “address” the meeting, and wondered where she
was going. To her discomfiture she had found that she was billeted on
Mrs. Watson for the night as befitted their respective social dignities,
and that Margaret was to spend the night at the Thorstad house.

But it was from Mrs. Watson’s spare room window that she saw Freda.

The skating rink, a square of land, flooded with water and frozen, lay
below. As she went to pull down the shade in her bed-room window--she
had escaped from Mrs. Watson as promptly as possible--Helen’s eyes fell
on the skaters, skimming swiftly about under arc lights which,
flickering bright and then dim, made the scene beautiful. And then she
saw Freda. She was wearing the red tam-o’-shanter which Mrs. Flandon had
already seen and a short red mackinaw and as she flashed past under the
light, it was unmistakably she--not alone. There was a young man with
her.

Helen watched her come and go, hands crossed with her partner, watched
the swing of her graceful body as it swayed so easily towards the man’s
and was in perfect tune with it.

“That’s one way you get the alive and beautiful, is it?” thought Helen.

Then, after a little, by some signal, the rink was declared closed. The
skaters, at the sides of the rink, sat on little benches and took off
their skates. The young man knelt beside Freda and loosened the straps,
a pretty bit of gallantry in the moonlight.

He had her arm. They were going home, walking a little more close to
each other than was necessary, looking up, bending down. Helen could
almost feel what they were feeling, excitement, vigor, intimacy. A
little shiver went over her as she pulled down the shade at last and
looked around at the walls with their brown scrolls and mottoed
injunction to

    “Sleep sweetly in this quiet room,
     Oh, thou, whoe’er thou art.”




CHAPTER IV

CITY MICE


I

The dismay of the young Brownleys was as great as that of Freda. But
their indomitable mothers won.

“But, mother,” cried Allison Brownley, “you don’t mean you’d ask
that--that little Swede girl here to the house? For a month? Why, I
should think you’d see how impossible that is. We can’t treat her as a
servant, can we?”

“No,” said Mrs. Brownley, “you can’t--not at all. She’s a very clever
girl--Normal School graduate.”

Allison sank on a divan, her short skirts shorter than ever in her
abandonment, her face a picture of horrified dismay.

“Normal School--you know what they are! Pimples and plaid skirts two
inches from the ground,--China silk white waists. Oh, mother dear, it’s
very sweet of you to think of her, but it couldn’t be done. What would
we do with her? Why, the days are just full! All kinds of things planned
now that Easter’s over. We couldn’t take her about, and we couldn’t
leave her at home. The Brownley girls and their little Swede friend!
Mother, I _do_ think you ought to keep politics out of the home.”

Barbara joined in now. That was always her policy. To let Allie state
the case and get excited over it and then to go after her mother
reasonably if her mother didn’t give in. She was a more languorous type
than Allie. “Bed-room eyes” one of the boys had said, at the height of
his puppy wit.

“If you had to ask them, mother, Lent would have been the time. It just
can’t be managed now. As a matter of fact I’ve practically asked Delia
Underwood to spend three weeks here.” That was a lie and she knew her
mother would know it, but it gave her mother a graceful way out of the
difficulty.

But unfortunately Mrs. Brownley did not seem to be looking for
loop-holes. She sat serenely at her desk, her eye-glasses poised upon
the bills she was auditing.

“I think you will like Miss Thorstad,” she answered, ignoring all the
protests. “You see it’s really quite important for me to have her here.
The mother is a very clever little woman and with a possible political
future. Miss Duffield thinks very highly of her. While we are doing this
active campaign work she will be invaluable here in the city. She’s a
good organizer--and she’s a plain woman. She can handle plain women,
Miss Duffield insists, better than we can. I wish you girls would
understand that there is a great deal involved in this campaign. If we
stand well out here it will be important for the district--in
Washington.”

“Yes, mother--but why the daughter?”

“For the simple reason that Mrs. Thorstad said she didn’t like to leave
her at home alone. It put me in the position of having to ask her. She
is, as I remember, a pretty well-appearing girl. Mrs. Flandon, whom you
admire so much, Allie, was immensely taken with her. At any rate, they
have been asked, they will accept and they arrive next week.”

Allie looked dark.

“Well, mother,” she said, with a fair imitation of her mother’s tone,
“if you expect me to give up everything for the sake of this little
Swede, you’re mistaken. The men will just howl when they see her.”

“Cheer up, Allie,” said Barbara, “they may fall in love with her.
Brunhilde, you know--and all of that. I think it’s a shame, mother.”

The girls looked at each other. They weren’t ordinarily allies, but this
mess was one they both would have to worry over. Their mother rose.

“Of course, girls,” she said, “it is an inconvenience. But it’s a good
thing to do. It means more than you may guess. Be nice to Miss Thorstad
and you’ll not be sorry. It might mean that platinum bracelet for you,
Barbara, and for Allie--”

“Mother,” exclaimed Allie, “if I’m an angel to your little Swede would
you let me have a new runabout--a Pierce, painted any color I like?”

Her mother merely smiled at her but Allie knew her claim was good. She
turned to her sister as her mother left the room.

“She’s going to do it, Bobbie, and we might just as well get something
out of it. I’ll tell the girls I’m getting my new car that way and
they’ll all help. We’ll give little Miss Olson the time of her life.”

“You get more out of it than I do, I notice.” Barbara was inspecting
herself in the mirror of her vanity case from which she allowed nothing
except sleep to separate her.

“That’s all right, Bob. I’ll do most of the heavy work, I’ll bet.”

“I shan’t be able to do much, I’ll tell you that. Miss Burns wants me
for fittings every day next week and I’ve a lot of dates, for evenings.”

“Ted’s giving you quite a rush, isn’t he darling? Do you think he’s
landed this time or is it just that it’s your turn?”

Barbara did not blush. She looked straight at her sister, her slim face
disgusted.

“Pretty raw, aren’t you? As a matter of fact I think he could be landed
if I had the slightest desire to do it. I’m not at all sure that I want
him.”

Allie grinned.

“That’s all right. That’s what they all say, all the ones he gives a
rush and leaves lamenting. I am sort of surprised that you’d fall for
him so hard. Even if he is the ideal lover, every one who isn’t
cross-eyed knows how he does it. I’d like a little more originality,
myself.”

“I tell you this, Allie. That man has been misunderstood. Because he’s
so rich and good looking every one’s chased after him and then when he
was decently civil they’ve taken advantage of him by spreading stories
about his flirtations. He’s told me some things about girls--”

“Dirty cad,” said Allie, cheerfully.

“All right, if you want to be insulting, I won’t talk to you.”

“Well, tell me what he said. I won’t think about his being a dirty cad
until afterwards.”

What humor there was was lost on Barbara.

“I don’t care to talk any more about him.”

Barbara looked at her watch to conclude matters.

“And by the way, Allie, mother said I could use the limousine. I’ve got
a lot of things to do and I’ll need Chester all afternoon. Mrs. Watts is
taking mother to the Morley reception and I’m calling for her. She said
you could have the electric.”

“My God!” said Allie. “Why doesn’t she offer me a hearse? Thanks, I’d
sooner take old 1898 out again. And think about that Pierce I’m going to
earn.”

She was out of the room in a minute, flying up the stairs, some
grotesque words to a dance tune floating behind her. The Packard
runabout, “old 1898,” was humming down the garage drive half an hour
later. Stopping at two houses impressive as her own, she regaled the
girls who were her friends with accounts of the “Swedish invasion.” It
was a good story, especially with the promise of the reward tacked on
the end.


II

But it was three days before Freda had capitulated. Her first reaction
had been an angry shame at her mother’s inclusion of her in her own
invitation. She had simply flatly refused to go. A little later it was
possible to regard the business with some humor, and the shame had lost
its sting. She had never known those people anyhow--never would know
them--it didn’t matter what they thought. When she saw that the matter
was not ended and sensed the depth of determination in her mother’s mind
that her daughter should go with her to the Brownley’s she tried to be
more definite even than before in her refusal. Her mother did not seem
to hear her. She insisted on keeping the subject open, never admitting
for a minute that it was or could be closed. She dwelt endlessly on the
advantages of the visit--on the fact that the chance for Freda had come
at last.

“Chance!” stormed Freda, “why it isn’t a chance to do anything except
sponge on a few rich people whom I’ve never seen before in my life. You
don’t really suppose, mother, that I’d go down there and let those
Brownley girls make my life miserable. You don’t seem to realize,
mother, that those two Brownleys are a very gay lot. They must be about
my age--the older one anyway. Why, I wouldn’t think of it. What on earth
would I do? What on earth would I wear? What would I say? What on earth
would I be there anyhow? I’m no politician. I’m not helping Mrs.
Brownley strengthen her fences or anything. If you ask me, mother, I
wouldn’t think of going if I were you. Don’t you know she’s just making
a play to the gallery by having you? Probably bragging about her great
sense of democracy! Why, mother!”

“You don’t seem to realize,”--Mrs. Thorstad always began that way by
assuming that you had missed her point, a point which was and always
would be in accord with Right Living and Democracy and the Family and
the Home, “that these social distinctions are of no value in my
estimation. In this great country--”

Freda led her mother away from the brink of oratory.

“Look here,” she said, “if they aren’t a lot more important than we
are--if you don’t think they are--what is this wonderful chance you are
talking about?”

Just at what point Freda gave in, just at what point she felt that the
possibilities of her trip outweighed its impossibilities she did not
know. It was certain that the young Brownleys gave way to no noisier
public mockery of the proposed visit than did Freda. She was even a
little shrill. She told everybody how she “hated it,” how she was going
along to the homes of the idle rich to chaperon her mother, that she was
“breaking into high society,” that she was gathering material for a book
on “how the other half lives,” that she would probably be mistaken for a
housemaid and asked to dust the bed-rooms, that mother was trying to
“marry her off,” that she “didn’t have an idea what to wear.” She talked
to almost every one she met, somewhat unnecessarily, somewhat defiantly,
as if determined to let any one know about her reasons for going, as if
defending herself against any accusations concerning her motive in
making such a visit, perhaps making sure that no later discomfiture on
her own part could be made more severe by any suspicion of pleasurable
anticipation.

She planned her clothes for St. Pierre with mocking but intense
deliberation. A dark blue tricotine dress--she bought that at the
ladies’ specialty shop and taking it home ripped off all the trimming
substituting the flattest and darkest of braid. That was safe, she knew.
She might not be startling but she would be inoffensive, she told her
mother. There was a dress made by Miss Peterson, who sewed by the day,
from a remnant of bronze georgette, and half shamefacedly Freda came
home one night with a piece of flame colored satin and made it herself
into a gown which hung from the shoulders very straightly and was caught
at the waist with silver cord (from the drapery department). And there
was an evening dress at which Freda scoffed but she and Miss Peterson
spent some fascinated hours over it, making pale green taffetas and
tulle fit her lovely shoulders.

“Though what I’m getting these clothes for is a mystery to me,” grumbled
Freda. “They probably won’t even ask me to go out. Probably suggest that
I eat with the servants.”

Yet she tried on the evening dress in the privacy of her room parading
before her bureau mirror, which could not be induced to show both halves
of her at once. And as she looked in the glass there came back the
reflection of a girl a little flushed, excited, eager, as if in spite of
all her mockery there was a dream that she would conquer unknown people
and things--a hope that wonders were about to happen.

Never was there a trace of that before her mother. Having agreed to go,
Freda was, on the whole, complaisant, but on principle unenthusiastic.

Her father gave her two hundred dollars the night before she went away.
Mrs. Thorstad was at a neighbor’s house and the gift was made in her
absence without comment on that fact. Freda, whose idea of a sizable
check for her spending money was five dollars and of an exceptionally
large one, ten, gasped.

“But what do I need this for?”

“You’ll find ways, my dear. It’s--for some of the little things which
these other young ladies may have and you may lack. To put you at ease.”

“Yes, but it’s too much, father dear. For three or four weeks. You can’t
possibly afford it.”

“Oh, yes, my dear. Only try to be happy, won’t you? Remember that it’s
always worth while to learn and that there are very few people in the
world who aren’t friendly by nature.”

That thought carried Freda through the next twenty-four hours, beginning
with worry when she got on the train as to whether they were expecting
her after all, through a flurry of excitement at the sense of “city” in
St. Pierre, the luxury of the limousine which had been sent to meet
them, through the embarrassment of hearing her mother begin to orate in
a mild fashion on the beauty of Mrs. Brownley’s home and the “real home
spirit” which she felt in it. Freda felt sure that such conversation was
not only out of place but bad taste anyway. She was divided between a
desire to carry the visit off properly, showing the Brownleys that she
was not gauche and stupid, and an impulse to stalk through the days
coldly, showing her disdain for mere material things and the
impossibility of impressing her. Yet the deep softness of the hall rugs,
the broad noiseless stair carpets, the glimpses through doorways into
long quiet rooms seemingly full of softly upholstered furniture, lamps
with wonderfully colored shades, pictures which had deep rich colors
like the colors in the rugs, made her eyes shine, her color heighten.

Mrs. Brownley met them at the house and took them to their rooms
herself. Mrs. Thorstad had a big pleasant room in a wing of the house
given up to guest chambers and Freda’s was a small one connected with
it.

“My daughters are looking forward so much to meeting you,” Mrs. Brownley
said easily to Freda. “They are out just now, but when you come down for
dinner they will be home. We usually dine at seven, Mrs. Thorstad. It
isn’t at all necessary to dress.”

“She is nice, isn’t she?” said Freda, as the door closed after their
hostess, “maybe it won’t be so bad. Anyway, all experience is good. Glad
I remember that much Nietzsche. It often helps.”

Mrs. Thorstad put her trim little hat on the closet shelf and began to
unpack her suit-case. Freda explored the bath.

“It’s like a movie,” she came back to say, “I feel just like the second
reel when the heroine is seduced by luxury into giving herself--”

“Freda!”

“Truly I do. She always takes a look into the closet at rows of clothes
and closes the door virtuously, gazes rapturously at the chaise longue
all lumpy with pillows and stiffens herself. But she never can resist
the look into the bath room--monogramed towels, scented soap, bath
salts. I know just exactly how the poor girls feel. Certain kinds of
baths are for cleanliness--others make a lady out of a sow’s ear--you
know.”

“Why are you wearing that dress?” asked her mother, rousing from her nap
fifteen minutes later. “I was going down in my waist and skirt.”

“Mother--you can’t. That wasn’t what she meant by not dressing. She
meant not evening dress. You’ll have to put on your blue silk.”

“I wanted to save that for afternoon affairs.”

“You won’t wear it out to-night. Come, mother, I’ll hook you up.”

They were down at five minutes before seven. Barbara was not visible but
Allie and her mother and father waited for them in the drawing-room.
Crossing the threshold of that room seemed to take all Freda’s courage.
If her mother had not been so absorbed in thinking of the way she meant
to interest Mr. Brownley in her career, she would have heard the quick
little catch of breath in Freda’s throat as she came through the velvet
curtains behind her. She did see the quickened interest on Allie’s face
and Mrs. Brownley’s measured glance of approval at Freda. Freda had been
right. The Brownleys were dressed for dinner, quite elaborately it
seemed to her. She made no note of the discrimination in evening
clothes, that Mrs. Brownley’s velvet dress was high at the neck and Mr.
Brownley’s tie black instead of white. Allie came forward with her rough
and tumble welcome, shaking hands casually with Mrs. Thorstad and
frankly admiring Freda. Allie herself had dressed in a hurry and was
noticeable chiefly for the high spots of rouge on each cheek.

“Sorry I wasn’t home when you came. I had to go to a luncheon and then
to the theater. Couldn’t get out of it. It was a party for a friend of
mine who is to be married and I’m in the bridal party, you see. She’s an
awfully nice girl--marrying the most awful lemon you ever saw.”

Freda knew all about that marriage. It had been heralded even in Mohawk.
Gratia Allen and Peter Ward. But she gave no sign of knowing about it.

“Isn’t it funny,” she answered, getting Allie’s note with amazing
accuracy, “how often that happens? The nicest girls get the queerest
men.”

“Not enough decent men to go around any more.”

So it was all right until Barbara came in. A little party gathered in
the meantime--the Gage Flandons, and Margaret Duffield with Walter
Carpenter. Margaret was beginning to be asked as a dinner companion for
Walter fairly often now. And as a concession to the young people Mrs.
Brownley had asked three young men, Ted Smillie and the Bates boys, who
traveled in pairs, Allie always said. They were all there when Barbara
came in. Obviously she had some one, either the unknown guest or her
friend Ted, in mind when she dressed, for she was perfectly done.
Smoothly marcelled hair, black lace dress carrying out the latest
vagaries in fashion, black slippers with jeweled buckles. As she gave
her hand to Freda with the smile which held a faint hint of
condescension, Freda bent her knuckles to hide the nail she had torn
yesterday closing the trunk. She felt over dressed, obvious, a splash of
ugly color. Ted had been talking to her but by a simple assumption that
Freda could have nothing of interest to say, Barbara took up the thread
of talk with him, speaking of incidents, people that were unknown to
Freda. The Bates boys were talking to Allie. Freda stood alone for a
moment--an interminable awkward moment, in which no one seemed to notice
her. Then Gage Flandon crossed to her side and she gave him a smile
which made him her friend at once, a smile of utter gratitude without a
trace of pose.

“How nice of you,” she said, simply, “to come to talk to me. I feel so
strange.”

“My wife says you’ve never met any of us before. No wonder.”

“It isn’t just that. I’m a little afraid I’m here without much reason.
Mother brought me but I’m not a political woman and I’m not”--with a
rueful little glance at Barbara--“a society girl at all. I’m afraid I’ll
be in everybody’s way.”

She said it without any coquetry and it came out clearly so--as the
plain little worry it was. Gage, who had found himself a little touched
by the obvious situation of the girl felt further attracted by her
frankness. She seemed an unspoiled, handsome person. That was what Helen
had told him, but he had grown so used to sophistication and measured
innocence that he had not expected anything from the daughter of this
little political speaker. He had come to size up Mrs. Thorstad, for her
name had been presented as a possibility in a discussion with some of
his own friends as they went over the matter of recognizing women in the
political field. As Mrs. Thorstad gave her hand to him he had seen what
he came to see. She had brains. She had the politician’s smile. She
could be used--and doubtless managed as far as was necessary. But the
daughter was different. He liked that dress she was wearing. It showed
her slimness, suppleness, but it didn’t make her indecent like that lace
thing on Bob Brownley.

“I often feel like that,” he answered her, “I’m not much of a society
person either and I can’t keep up with these wonderful women we’re
seeing everywhere. Women with a lot of brains frighten me.”

Idle talk, with his real, little prejudice back it, which Freda by
accident uncovered immediately. She was talking against time so he would
not leave her unguarded, and it was chance that she pleased him so much.

“Women have a lot of brains now,” she said, “in politics and--society
too, I suppose. But I wonder if we weren’t more attractive when we
weren’t quite so brilliant. I don’t mean when we had huge families and
did the washing and made the butter. I mean when we were more romantic
and not quite so--”

She stumbled a little. She was conscious of being historically at sea,
vague in her definition of romance. But she had said that several times
before and it came easily to her tongue. She stopped, feeling awkward
and then amazed at Mr. Flandon’s enthusiasm.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed, “that’s what I miss. Women have stopped being
romantic. They’ve done worse. They’ve penetrated our souls and dug out
the romance and analyzed it among themselves.”

But she could not answer. Some one announced dinner and Freda moved with
the rest to get her first enchanted sight of the Brownley dining table
with its wedge wood vases full of roses and narcissus, its shining
perfection of detail.

She was near her hostess’ end of the table, Mr. Flandon at her left and
one of the Bates boys at her right. Mrs. Brownley had wanted to talk to
Gage and had decided, as she placed the cards, that Freda would take as
little of his attention as any one present. She started in after the
consommé to find out what Gage thought about the Republican committee.
It was most unsatisfactory for he seemed to be absorbed in telling
something to Miss Thorstad and gave answers to his hostess as if his
mind were on something else. As for Gage, he was talking more animatedly
than he had talked to any woman in years, thought his wife, watching
him.

“What heresy is my husband pouring into your ears, Miss Thorstad?” she
asked, leaning forward.

Freda blushed a little as the attention turned to her.

“He is telling me the arguments I’ve been wanting to hear--against being
a perfectly modern woman.”

“Proselytizing!” said Margaret. “Wait a bit, Miss Thorstad. Let me get
the other ear after dinner.”

“Freda likes to tease,” explained her mother to their host.

Barbara looked a little disdainful, making some remark _sotto voce_ to
Ted. But he was not listening. Freda had, in the rise of her spirits,
given him a smile across the table, the kind of come-there smile she
gave David Grant of Mohawk when she wanted to skate with him or dance
with him--a smile of perfectly frank allure. He returned it with
interest.

Helen did not follow up her remark. It had been scattered in the
comments. Gage caught her eye and she gave him a look which said, “I
told you there was something in that girl.” Gage immediately wanted to
leave the table and tell Helen all about it. But Mrs. Brownley wanted to
know something again. He turned to her.

It was fairly easy for Freda after all, in spite of Barbara, whose
measuring eyes made her nervous whenever they were turned on her. She
had a difficult time concealing the broken finger-nail and she was not
at all sure whether to lift the finger bowl off the fruit plate with the
lace doily or to leave the doily. Otherwise there were no great
difficulties. There was a bad moment after dinner when it became clear
to her that there was some altercation among the young people which
concerned her. She could not guess what it was, but she saw Allie and
Barbara in heated conclave. Then, with a little toss of her head, Allie
came to her.

“We thought that you and I and Fred and Tony would go down to the
Majestic. We had six tickets but Bob seems to think she and Ted have
another date.”

And then Ted ruined things. He turned from where he and Tony Bates were
smoking by the mantelpiece and strolled over to Freda.

“We’re going to the Majestic--and I’m going to sit next to you,” he
announced.


III

The Majestic was a vaudeville house, presenting its seven acts weekly
for the delectation of its patrons, servant girls, business men,
impecunious boys in the gallery, suburbanites, shop girls with their
young men, traveling men, idle people, parties of young people like the
Brownley girls, one of those heterogeneous crowds that a dollar and a
half price for a best seat can bring in America. When the young
Brownleys arrived, the acrobatic act which led the bill was over and the
two poorest comedians, put on near the beginning of the bill before the
audience grew too wearily critical, were doing a buck and wing dance to
the accompaniment of some quite ununderstandable words.

With a great deal of noise and mysterious laughter the late arrivals
became seated finally, taking their places with the lack of
consideration for the people behind them which was characteristic of
their arrogance, making audible and derogatory comments about the act on
the stage and curiously enough not seeming to anger any one. The girls
with their fur coats, hatless, well dressed hair, the sleek dinner
coated young men interested the people around them far more than they
bothered them by their noisiness.

They left during the last act and before the moving picture of “Current
Events,” all six of them getting into the Bates’ sedan and speeding at
forty miles an hour out to the Roadside Inn which was kept open only
until midnight.

The Roadside Inn was a brown mockery of Elizabethan architecture, about
thirty miles out of the city on a good road. The door opened invitingly
on a long low room full of chintz-covered chairs and wicker tables and
at this time of year there was always a good open fire to welcome any
comers. Back of that a dining room and, parallel with the two, a long
dance room, where three enforcedly gay negroes pounded out melodies in
jungle time hour after hour every evening. Upstairs there were half a
dozen small bed rooms for transient automobilists who wanted to stay in
the country for some reason or other or whose cars had broken down.

The place was on the fence between decency and shadowy repute. It was
frequented by people of all kinds, people who were respectable and
people suspected of not being so. The landlady ignored any distinctions.
She had made the place into a well-paying institution, had put its
decoration into the hands of a good architect with whom she always
quarreled about his charges and she asked no questions if her customers
paid their bills. Probably she saw no difference between those of her
guests who were of one kind and those of another. They all danced in
much the same manner, were equally noisy, equally critical of the
extremely good food and that was as far as her contact or comment went.
If the food had not been so good, the place would have suffered in
patronage, but that was unfailing. The cook was ready now at five
minutes’ notice to concoct chicken a la king and make coffee for the
Brownley party and as they came back from the dance room after having
tried out the floor and the music, their supper was ready.

Freda had not acquitted herself badly there either. Without having all
the tricks of the Brownleys, she had a grace and sense of rhythm which
helped her to adapt herself. Besides she had the first dance with Ted.
He held her close, hardly looking at her. That was his way in dancing.

“You must be very gay in Mohawk,” said Barbara when they were all at the
table in the dining room again.

The edge of her malice was lost on Freda.

“No--not at all. Why?”

“You seem very experienced.”

A little glimmer of amusement came into Freda’s eyes.

“Well--not first hand experience. We read--we go to moving pictures.”

“I suppose lots of people are picking up ideas from the moving
pictures,” Barbara commented carelessly.

One of the Bates boys was drawing something from his pocket. Barbara
looked at it indifferently, Allie with a frown of annoyance.

“Didn’t I tell you, Tony, to cut that stuff out?”

“We’ll all be cutting it out soon enough,” said Tony. “Won’t be any.
This is all right. Tapped father’s supply. A taste for every one and a
swallow for me.”

He was a sallow thin young person whom the sight of his own flask seemed
to have waked into sudden joviality.

“I don’t want any,” said Allie. “Don’t waste it.”

Then as Tony Bates ignored her protest, she drained her glass
accustomedly.

Barbara took her highball without a change of expression or color. Freda
tried to refuse but they laughed at her.

“Come. You came to the city to have a good time.”

She felt that she couldn’t refuse without seeming prudish. She has a
fear of what the liquor might do to her, a desire to do what the rest
did.

Her head felt a little light, but that was all, and that only for a
moment. It wasn’t unpleasant.

They all finished the flask. They danced again, Freda with Tony Bates,
Barbara with Ted. Then Ted sought Freda again. He danced as he had the
first time but he held her even closer, more firmly, making his position
into an embrace, and yet dancing perfectly. From over one of the young
men’s shoulders, Barbara saw it. Her face did not show any feeling.

On the way home the embracing was a little promiscuous. Allie, dull from
the liquor, lay sprawling against Tony’s rather indifferent shoulder.
Bob let the other Bates boy paw her lazily and Freda found herself
rather absorbed in keeping Ted from going to lengths which she felt were
hardly justified even by three or four highballs.

It was when they were home again after the young men had left that Freda
felt the dislike of the other girl. It was as if Barbara had been
waiting for the young men to go to make Freda uncomfortable.

“I hope Ted didn’t embarrass you, Miss Thorstad?’

“Embarrass me?”

“Ted is such a scandalous flirt that he is apt, I think, to embarrass
people who aren’t used to him. I always keep him at a distance because
he talks about girls most awfully.”

“Oh, does he?”

“I’m glad he didn’t bother you. Don’t let him think you like him. He
makes the most terrific game of people who let themselves in for it.”

“Lots of people do let themselves in for it too,” said Allie with
meaning.

Barbara steered away from the dangers of that subject.

“I hope you’re going to enjoy yourself, Miss Thorstad. There are no end
of things going on.”

“You mustn’t bother about me,” said Freda, “I’m afraid that I am going
to be a burden.”

Barbara let a minute pass, a minute of insult.

“No--not at all.”

“Nonsense,” said Allie, “everybody’ll be crazy about you. You dance
stunningly and the Bateses and Ted were nutty about you. You don’t have
to worry.”

Freda said good night and left them. She went slowly up the staircase,
thinking what fun it would be to climb that staircase every night, to go
down it by natural right, to belong to it.

The sense of Barbara’s dislike pervaded everything else. She felt that
she must have made a fool of herself with that young fellow. He must
have thought her a dreadful idiot. Ah, well, the first evening was over
and she’d had some experience. She had been at a dinner where there was
an entrée, she had used a fish fork, she had danced at a roadhouse. She
laughed at herself a little.

“I’ve been draining the fleshpots of Egypt,” she said, sitting on the
bottom of her mother’s bed. Her mother’s prim little braids of hair
against the pillow were silhouetted in the moonlight.

“You were very nice to-night,” said her mother practically. “Mrs.
Flandon wants us both to go there for dinner Thursday night.”

“I like Mr. Flandon a lot.”

“Very little idealism,” commented Mrs. Thorstad, wisely.




CHAPTER V

A HUSBAND


I

Yet something was hurting Gage Flandon. He had tried to decide that he
was not getting enough exercise, that he was smoking too much, not
sleeping enough. But petty reforms in those things did not help him. He
felt surging through him, strange restlessness, curious probing
dissatisfactions. He was angry at himself because he was in such a
state; he was morbidly angry with his wife because she could not assuage
what he was feeling nor share it with him.

Everywhere he was baffled by his passion for Helen. After six years of
married life, after they had been through birth, parenthood together,
surely this state was neurotic. Affection, yes, that was proper. But not
this constant sense of her, this desire to absorb her, own her
completely and segregate her completely. He knew the feeling had been
growing on him lately since her friend had come to the city, but his
resentment was not against Margaret. It was directed against his wife
and that he could not reason this into justice gnawed at him.

He was spending a great deal of time thinking about what was wrong with
women. He would hit upon a phrase, a clever sentence that solved
everything. And then he was back where he had begun. He could resolve
nothing in phrases. He and Helen would discuss feminism, masculinism,
sex, endlessly, and always end as antagonists--or as lovers, hiding from
their own antagonism. But they could not leave the subjects alone. They
tossed them back and forth, wearily, impatiently. Always over the love
for each other which they could not deny, hung this cloud of discussion,
making every caress suspected of a motive, a “reaction.”

When Gage had been sent at twelve years of age to a boys’ military
preparatory school, it had been definitely done to “harden him.” He was
a dreamy little boy, not in the least delicate, but with a roving
imagination, a tendency to say “queer things” which had not suited his
healthy perfectly grown body, his father felt. Some one had suspected
him of having hidden artistic abilities. His parents were intelligent
people and they tried that out. He was given instructions in music on
the piano and the violin. Nothing came of them but ridges on the piano
where he had kicked it in his impatience at being able to draw no
melodies from it. With infinite patience they tried to see if he had
talent for drawing. He had none. So, having exhausted their researches
for artistic talent, his parents decided that there was a flaw in his
make-up which a few years contact with “more manly boys” might correct.
They prided themselves on the result. He succumbed utterly to all the
conventions of what makes a manly boy and came home true to form.

In college the quirk came out again once in a while. But Gage never
became markedly queer. Impossible for an all-American half-back to do
that. And he never mixed with the “queer ones.” What eccentricities he
had, what flights of imagination he took were strictly on his own.

In due course he was admitted to the bar and on the heels of that came
Helen. Those who saw him in his pursuit of Helen said that he seemed
possessed. For once his imagination had found an outlet. For once all
those desires which rose above his daily life and his usual companions
had found a channel through which they could pour themselves. Eager for
life as Helen was, full of dreams, independences, fresh from her years
at college, she could not help being swept under by the torrent of
desire and worship that he became. They soared away together--they lost
themselves in marriage, in the marvel of child creation.

The war came. Gage met it gravely, a little less spread-eagle than most
of his friends. He had a year in France and came back with a fallen
enthusiasm. He never talked about that. He had plunged into money
making. The small fortune his father had given him on his marriage had
been absorbed in starting a home and Helen had nothing of her own. They
needed a great deal of money and Gage got it, trampling into politics,
into business, practicing law well all the time. He was now thirty-eight
and had accumulated a remarkable store of influence and power. Very
close to the Congressman from his district, keen and far sighted, as
honest in keeping promises as he was ruthless in dealing with political
obstructionists, he was recognized as the key man to his very important
district. He knew politics as he knew law but he built no ideals on it.
It was perhaps his very thorough knowledge of the deviousness of its
methods which made him reluctant to have Helen meddle with it. For
although he had accepted the suffrage of women as a political phenomenon
which had to be taken in hand and dealt with, he had no belief that the
old game would change much.

He nearly always looked his full age. His face was one of those into
which deep lines come early, well modeled, but with no fineness of
detail. And his large built body, always carelessly dressed, was the
same. Yet there were times, Helen knew, when his eyes became plaintive
and wondering and he looked as the little boy who was sent away to be
“hardened” must have looked. Only he was learning to cover those times
with a scowl.

He was finding that he could not quiet all the mental nightmares he had
with his love for Helen. Because that love itself was infested by this
strange new “woman problem.” What securities of opinion had been
swept away by study, by war, what questions in him were left
unsatisfied--those things were hidden in him. He had clung to love and
faith in marriage. And now that stronghold was being attacked. He was
hearing people who called it all fake, all false psychology. And he did
not know how much Helen believed these people. He felt her restlessness
in horror. He saw no direction in which she might go away from him where
she would not meet destruction, where false, incomplete ideas would not
ruin her. It was making him a reactionary.

For, because he had no solution himself, he was forced to fall back on
negations. He denied everything, sank back into an idealism of the past.

“I liked that girl,” he said to his wife about Freda, “no fake.”

“None,” answered Helen. “I hoped you’d like her, Gage.”

“She says that the trouble with women is that they’ve lost the spirit of
romance and that they’ve dug the romance out of men’s souls too.”

It was what he himself had said but it was easier to put to Helen in
that way.

“Young thing--full of phrases.” His wife laughed lightly.

It was the night on which Freda and her mother were to dine with them.
Gage, dressed before his wife, had dropped in to watch her. He loved to
see her do her hair. She seemed exquisitely beautiful to him when she
deftly parted and coiled the loose masses of it--more than
beautiful--exquisitely woman. He loved to see the woman quality in her,
not to awaken passion or desire but for the sense of wonder it gave
him. He loved to cherish her.

“We’re all full of phrases,” he said, a little hurt already. “But she
has something behind her phrases. She’s unspoiled yet by ideas.”

“She’s full of ideas. You should see the things that young modern reads.
She’s without experience--without dogmas yet. But she’ll acquire those.
At present she’s looking for beauty. You might show it to her, she may
find it in Margaret; perhaps she’ll find it in her canting little
mother.”

“She would find it in you if you’d let her see you.”

“Do you think I’m anything to copy? You seem dissatisfied so often,
Gage.”

“Don’t, Helen.” He came over to where she sat and bent to lay his cheek
against her hair. Her hand caressed his cheek and his eyes closed.

She wanted to ask him what would happen to them if they could not bury
argument in a caress but she knew the torch that would be to his anger.
He felt her lack of response.

“I’m not dissatisfied with you. I’m dissatisfied because I can’t have
you completely to myself. I’m dissatisfied because you can’t sit beside
me, above and indifferent to a host of silly men and women parading
false ideas.”

“I’m not so sure they are false. I can’t get your conviction about
everything modern. I want to try things out.”

“But, Helen, it’s not your game. Look--since Margaret came you’ve been
dabbling in this--that--politics, clubs, what not. You are bored with
me.”

“Impossible, darling. But you really mustn’t expect the good,
old-fashioned, clinging vine stuff from me. I’m not any good at it. Now
please hurry down, dear, and see if there are cigars and cigarettes,
will you? And you’ll have to have your cocktail alone because if I had
one before Mrs. Thorstad she’d think I was a Scarlet Woman.”

There was nothing for Gage to do but go with that familiar sense of
failure.

After he had gone, Helen’s face lost some of its lightness and she sat
looking at herself in the glass. Without admiration--without
calculation. She was wondering how much of love was sex--wondering how
she could fortify herself against the passing of the charms of
sex--wondering why Gage had such a frantic dislike of women like
Margaret who hadn’t succumbed to sex--wondering if that was the reason.
She thought of the pretty Thorstad child. Gage liked her. That too might
be a manifestation of vague unadmitted desire. She shivered a little.
Such thoughts made her very cold. Then with a conscience smitten glance
at her little porcelain clock she slipped into her dress and rang for
the maid to hook it.

The nurse maid came and entertained Helen, as she helped her, with an
account of the afternoon she had spent with Bennett and Peggy. Peggy had
learned to count up to ten and Bennett was trying to imitate her. Helen
wished she had heard them. She hated to miss any bit of the development
of her fascinating children. It was a feeling that Margaret had told her
she had better steel herself against.


II

It was a wonderful evening for Freda. In the thoroughly friendly
atmosphere she expanded. She made it wonderful for Gage too. He had the
sense of an atmosphere freed from all censoriousness of analysis. Freda
was drinking in impressions, finding her way by feeling alone. He basked
in the warm worshipful admiration she gave his wife.

They left early and Gage drove them home, leaving Freda at her hostess’
door with a promise to give her a real drive some day and an admonition
not to fall in love with any young wastrel. Part of their bantering
conversation had been about Freda’s falling in love and how completely
she was to do it.

“I’ll let you look him over if you will, Mr. Flandon.”

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll see if he’s the right sort.”

He had told Helen he was going to drop in at the club for a few minutes
and see if he could find a man he wanted to see. But the object of his
search was not to be seen and Gage was about to leave the lounge when
Walter Carpenter called him. Carpenter lived at the club. He was
stretched in one of the long soft chairs before the fire, his back to
the rest of the room. Gage stopped beside him.

“How’s everything?”

“So-so.”

Walter offered a cigar, and indicated a chair.

“No--I think I’ll go on home,” said Gage, taking the cigar.

“Better smoke it here.”

For all his casualness it was clear that Walter wanted company. Gage
dropped into the nearby chair and they talked for a few minutes, without
focusing on anything. Then Walter began.

“Wonderful girl, that Vassar friend of Helen’s.”

“Margaret Duffield? Think so?”

“I’ve never seen a girl I liked as much,” said Walter.

He said it in the cool, dispassionate way that he said most things,
without any embarrassment. Embarrassments of all sorts had been sloughed
off during the fifteen years of Walter’s business and social
achievements. Gage looked at him frowningly.

“You don’t mean you’re serious--you?”

“Why not--I?” repeated Carpenter, grinning imperturably.

He didn’t look serious or at least impassioned, Gage might have said.
His long figure was stretched out comfortably. It was slightly thickened
about the waist, and his sleek hair was thinning as his waist was
thickening. His calm, well-shaven face was as good looking as that of a
well-kept, well-fed man of thirty-seven is apt to be. It was losing the
sharpness and the vitality of youth but it did not yet have the
permanent contours of its middle age. And it bore all the signs of
healthy living and living that was not only for the sake of satisfying
his appetites.

“Why--it never occurred to me,” said Gage, puffing a little harder at
his cigar.

“That I might get married?”

“I don’t know. I rather thought that if you married you’d pick a
different sort of a girl.”

“I might have done that a long time ago. I’ve seen enough sorts. No--I
never have seen one before who really--”

He paused reflectively, unaccustomed in the language of emotion.

“She’s a fine looking girl.” Gage felt he must pay some tribute.

“She is fine looking. She has a face that you can’t forget--not for a
minute.”

“But,” said Gage, “you must know that she’s the rankest kind of a
woman’s righter--a feminist.”

“What’s a feminist?” asked Walter calmly.

“Damned if I know. It means anything any woman wants it to mean. It’s
driven everybody to incoherence. But what I mean is that that kind of
woman doesn’t make any concessions to--sex.”

They lifted the conversation away from Margaret into a generalization.
Both of them wanted to talk about her but it couldn’t be done with her
as an openly acknowledged example.

“Well,” answered Carpenter, “perhaps that was coming to us. Perhaps we
were expecting women to make too many concessions to sex. There are a
lot of uncultivated qualities in women you know. They can’t devote all
their time to our meals and our children.”

“I don’t object to their devoting their time to anything they like. I do
object to their scattering themselves, wearing themselves out on a lot
of damned nonsense. Let them vote. Granted we’ve got to have a few
female political hacks like this Thorstad woman. It won’t hurt her any.
It’s all right for Mrs. Brownley--and that type of wise old girl--to
play at politics. But for a woman--a young woman who ought to be finding
out all the things in life that belong to her, who ought to be--letting
herself go naturally--being a woman--for her to go in for a
spellbinder’s career is depressing and worse.”

Walter smiled quizzically.

“Haven’t women always been just that, spellbinders? Isn’t that the job
we gave them long ago? Haven’t women been spellbinders for thousands of
years?”

“God knows they have,” said Gage.

He was silent for a moment, recollecting his argument, then plunged on.

“It was all right when it was instinctive and natural but now it’s so
damned self-conscious. They’re picking all their instincts to pieces,
reading Freud on sex, analyzing every honest caress, worrying about
being submerged in homes and husbands. It’s wrecking, I tell you,
Walter. It’s spoiling their grain. And I’ll tell you another thing.
It’s the women’s colleges that start it all. If I had my way I’d burn
the things to the ground. They start all the trouble.”

Walter broke the silence again.

“The reason I wanted to talk to you was because some of the difficulties
you suggest were simmering in my own mind. And it always seemed to me
that you and Helen got away with the whole business so well. You’ve had
children--you’ve managed to keep everything--haven’t you worked it out
for yourself anyway?”

“You can’t work it out,” said Gage, impatiently, “by just having
children. It doesn’t end the chapter.”

“It’s a difficult time.”

“It’s a rotten time. You know I can’t help feeling, Walter, that the
women of this generation are potentially all that they claim to be
actually. It isn’t that I’d deny them any chance. But to let them be
guided by fakirs or by their own inexperience will land them in a
worse mess than ever. Look at some of them who have achieved
prominence-pictures in the New York Times anyway. Their very pictures
show they are neurasthenic. Look at the books written about them that
they feed on. Books which won’t allow a single natural normal impulse or
fact of sex to go unanalyzed. Books which question every duty. Books
which are merely tracts in favor of barrenness. Books written almost
always by people who live abnormally. After a diet of that, can any
woman live with a man wholesomely--can she keep her mind clear and
fine?”

Walter shook his head--then laughed.

“Well--what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m not going to do a damned thing but growl about it, I suppose. As a
matter of fact I don’t care what most women do. But when I see the
fakirs lay their hands on Helen--Helen, who is about as perfect a
woman--” he stopped abruptly, and then went on. “I’m not a very good
person to talk to on this woman question. I’m balled up, you see. I only
know that the trend is dangerous. They got their inch of political
equality. Now they want an ell. They don’t want to be women any longer.”

“It’s all interesting,” answered Walter. “Of course, it’s difficult not
to think in terms of one’s own experiences. Now I never have seen a
woman like Miss Duffield. Of course I haven’t an idea that she’ll have
me. But personally I’d be quite willing to trust to her terms if she
did. I’ve never seen a woman of more essential honesty.”

They were disinclined to talk further. Gage, after a few trivialities,
left Walter to his dream, conscious that what he had said had produced
no disturbance or real question in the other’s mind. It was easy for one
to transcend generalities with the wonderful possibilities of any
particular case, Gage knew. He’d done it himself.


III

Unconsciously as he went toward his home, he was doing it again. He had
never lost the magic of going home to his wife. Entering the still hall,
where the single lamp cast tiny pools of light through the crystal
chandelier, he was pervaded by her presence. Somewhere, awake or asleep,
above that stairway, was Helen. The gentle fact of it put him at peace.

Her door was closed and he went softly past it to his own room. Then, in
a dressing gown, he settled himself in an easy chair by a reading lamp,
no book before him, cherishing that mental quiet which surrounded him.

Down the hall he heard her door open quietly and her footfall on the
soft rug. She had heard him come in and was come to say good night.
With a quick motion he turned out the light beside him and waited.

“Asleep, Gage?” She spoke softly, not to awaken him, if he were asleep.

“No--resting--here by the window.”

She found her way to him and he gathered her up in his arms.

“You wonderful bundle of relaxation! Have you any idea how I love you
like this?”

“Do you know, Gage, I think that for all our bad moments that we are
really happier than most people?”

“There’s no one in the world, dear, as happy as I am at this moment.”

“And it isn’t just because I’m--”

He bent his head to her, stifling her sentence.

“You mustn’t talk--don’t say it. It isn’t because of anything. It just
is.”

“I know. And when it is--it swallows up the times when it isn’t.”

“Hush, sweetheart. Let’s not--talk. Let’s just rest.”

He felt her grow even easier in his arms. All the instinct for poetry in
him, starved, without vehicle, sought to dominate the relentlessness of
her mind, working, working in its tangles of thought. The meaning of his
inexpressible love for her must come through his arms, must be
compelling, tender. They sat together in the big chair enfolded in
peace. And the same little secret thought ran from one to the other,
comforting them. This is the best.




CHAPTER VI

MARGARET


I

Margaret made the faintest little grimace of dismay at the long
florist’s box for which she had just signed the receipt presented by the
messenger. It wasn’t a grimace of displeasure but a puzzled look as if
the particular calculation involved was an unresolved doubt. Then she
cut the pale green string and lifted the flowers out.

There were flowers for every corner, fresia, daffodils,
narcissus--everything that the florist’s windows were blooming with
during this second week of May. She touched them with delight, sorted
them, placed them in every bit of crockery she could find. But Mrs.
Thorstad sat in a chair drawn up before the mission oak table in
Margaret’s little rented apartment and waited. She was impatient that
the flowers should have come at a moment when their discussion hinged on
a crisis. And as if her respect for Margaret had fallen a little, she
eyed the display without appreciation. Margaret talked, as she placed
the flowers, however, as if she could separate her mental reactions from
her esthetic.

“Well,” she said, “you saw the way the thing went. It was absolutely cut
and dried. I knew there was no chance of getting a woman elected as one
of the regular delegates to the National Convention. Pratt and Abbott
were the slate from the beginning. Every one knew Gage Flandon wanted
them and every one knew that meant they were Joyce’s choice if Flandon
wanted them. I had talked to Mr. Flandon about it but he wouldn’t tell
me anything really revealing. Except that the slate was made up and
while they were very glad to have the women as voters that it might be
better to wait another four years before they gave them a chance to sit
in at a National Convention. He didn’t intend to have a woman and
especially he didn’t intend to have one because he knew there was some
agitation to send his own wife.”

“That was what the mistake was, I think, Miss Duffield. I think another
candidate might have done better.”

“But they never even mentioned any woman,” exclaimed Margaret. Then as
if she got the other woman’s meaning, she gave her a searching look.

Mrs. Thorstad talked blandly on. Margaret finished her work of beauty
and came back to the table, tapping the surface of it with her regained
pencil.

“What we must propose is a woman with a national ideal, a woman
thoroughly interested in the district, conversant with its needs and
with a democratic personality.”

Thus definitely did Mrs. Thorstad outline what she believed to be her
virtues, but Margaret did not seem to understand them as solely hers.

“Helen Flandon combines all those things.”

“Personally,” broke in the other woman, “I have always admired Mrs.
Flandon immensely. But I have always felt that her interest in all these
matters was perhaps a little transitory. That is no reflection on her,
of course” (Margaret nodded acquiescence) “but a woman with so many
domestic duties and with so much society life must necessarily not be
able to give her whole mind to the work.”

“She’d give her whole mind if she got interested enough and I think she
is nearly interested enough now. Helen Flandon is big material, Mrs.
Thorstad. She has the genius of leadership. It’s a bit banked with
ashes just now but it could be fanned into flame.”

“Won’t the fact that she is Gage Flandon’s wife work against her?”

“Not materially, I think. Of course that’s one thing that bothers Gage.
He thinks he’ll be accused of using influence to get his wife in. Told
me the thing was impossible on that account. Let him be accused of it.
It doesn’t matter. Her name will please the men. They’ll think they’re
pleasing Flandon by letting her in and that’s of course a thing he can’t
deny.”

Mrs. Thorstad apparently did not get all the subtleties of those
statements. A settled darkness had come over her face--a kind of clouded
vision.

Margaret went blithely on.

She talked easily, wisely, giving the wounded hopes of Mrs. Thorstad a
chance to get over their first bleeding, giving her a chance to get her
hopes fixed a little on that political future which, although she was
apparently not to be made delegate at large, still loomed ahead. She
suggested that Mrs. Thorstad should surely be at the Convention in some
capacity. And she went on, telling of the Washington leaders, the
section leaders, of the general plans for work and education in politics
among women. Then she spoke of Freda.

“Is she going to stay here after all? I do hope so.”

“Well, I go home to-morrow. Mrs. Flandon has been interested in Freda’s
staying. She thought there must be things Freda could do here and Freda
wants to stay. Freda doesn’t typewrite but at the Republican
headquarters there may be a place for her. Mr. Flandon has promised to
speak to the chairman about taking Freda on as secretary. At first
there’d be only a certain small amount of correspondence but later they
say they could put her in the campaign headquarters. I must go back to
Mohawk. Freda stays for a day or so at Mrs. Brownley’s--then if she
takes this position, Mrs. Flandon will help her find a place to live.
It’s extremely kind of all of you to be so interested in Freda.”

“She’s a very wonderful young person. I only hope she gets more
interested in us.”

“She has all the irresponsibility of youth,” said her mother,
sententiously.

“Oh, by the way,” said Margaret, “I promised to lend your Freda a book.
Here it is.” She took a book from the table and gave it to Mrs. Thorstad
who eyed it a little questioningly.

“It’s very stimulating if not altogether sound,” said Margaret.

“So much of our literature is that.” The older woman compressed her lips
a little. “Not that I am not a Modern. But we are a little inclined to
lose sight of the fact that our fathers and mothers--”

This time her little platform manner was interrupted by the ringing of
the house phone. Margaret spoke into it, briefly.

“Why, yes, I’m nearly ready. I didn’t realize it was so late. No, indeed
not. Come in and wait for me.”

“Don’t hurry, Mrs. Thorstad,” she added, hanging up the receiver. “Mr.
Carpenter can wait.”

But Mrs. Thorstad did hurry. And as she went out she met Walter
Carpenter going in. She gave him her reserved little bow.

The two Thorstads were still at the Brownley house. The visit had turned
out so much better than Freda had feared that two weeks had slipped away
quickly for her while her mother was working and planning and making
speeches to small clubs and circles along the lines her hostess
desired. Freda was out with Allison Brownley on this particular
afternoon and the two guest rooms were empty as Mrs. Thorstad entered
them.

She sat down in a straight chair (the habit of relaxing had long since
failed her) and fell into thought, idly turning the pages of the book
she had borrowed from Miss Duffield. A letter slipped out and fell to
the floor. It had no envelope and as Mrs. Thorstad picked it up she read
clearly the scrawl of writing in black, heavy masculine characters
across the back of the page. It was a love letter to Margaret signed
with a black sprawling male signature, “Gregory.” So Mrs. Thorstad would
phrase it with a little repression of her lips. There were words of
passion--there was a flavor of intimacy--

She read no more than that back page. Then, holding the letter as if it
offended her, she placed it in one of Mrs. Brownley’s envelopes and
addressed it to Margaret.


II

“Did I drive away a visitor?” asked Walter.

“No--she was through with me. You’re rather a relief.”

Margaret could smile with the most complete friendliness of any woman he
had ever seen, thought her visitor. She lifted her head and smiled
straight at you. There were no evasions in her way of showing that she
was glad to see you. She didn’t hold her gladness as a prize, but made
you a straight gift of it. He liked the dress she was wearing--a fawn
colored cloth dress that outlined the straight lines of her figure--he
liked the way her hair grew away from its boyish side parting with a
little curve here and there.

“I think I am a little early,” he said, looking at his watch, “but I
thought since I was through at the office I’d come up, and you might be
willing to come out for a ride before we dine. It’s just five o’clock.”

“That sounds very nice. Sit down and amuse yourself while I get my hat.”

He obeyed, finding a book which did not seem to interest him at all but
which gave him a chance to turn pages while she put on her hat and piled
the papers on her desk. She turned to him as she was doing that.

“You spoil me.”

“I’d like to spoil you.”

“Spoil me by treating me like a human being--forgetting that I’m a woman
and that you’ve been taught to flatter women.”

“If I do that I can’t remind you that I’m a man and it might be I’d like
you to think of that.”

It was very light. Their tones were the perfectly controlled tones of
those who have emotions thoroughly in check. But the note of seriousness
was there and they were both too wise to pretend that it wasn’t.

“I’m quite ready to go,” said Margaret.

He helped her with her cloak and they went down the stairway. Once in
the car, with Margaret bundled in robes he turned to the boulevards and
they fell into talk again. They liked to talk to each other. They
elucidated things between them. They liked the calmness of each other’s
reactions, the sense of mutual control they had as they held a subject
poised on their reflections, as they explored the sensitive delicacy of
some thought. Politics, people, books--but always their talk strayed
back to men and women. As if in that kind of talk they got most pleasure
from each other, as if the subject were inexhaustible.

Walter had told Margaret a great deal about himself and she had
listened with interest. Then little by little under that cloak of the
impersonal she had told him something of herself, her interest in women.
“Not that I idealize them. I don’t. But they are far more interesting
than any work--their problems are the biggest in the world.”

“Are you looking for still further concessions?”

“You mustn’t use that word. We’re looking for the truth in the
situation. You think because we vote that the game’s up, don’t you? It’s
not. If women are ever going to be--women, Mr. Carpenter, they’ve got to
develop all the qualities they’ve been letting rot and decay for
hundreds of years. A few women have preserved the strength all women
should have. But most of them--Do you dream that most of them have an
idea of doing any real work--want any real work? Do you think they’re
going to give up their security of support without a struggle? They
don’t want independence in the majority of cases. They want certain
rules relaxed for their convenience. But do you think that basically
they want to give up their claim developed through ages as a ‘weaker
sex’?”

She stopped, at the little smile in his eyes. “You think I’m as
oratorical as Mrs. Thorstad, don’t you?”

“I do not, but I was thinking that it was time we had some dinner.”

They stopped at one of the hotels and maneuvered their way through a
crowded, ornate dining-room to a little table on the side of the room,
Walter bowing gravely to a great many people as they went along.

“You’re a very solid citizen, aren’t you?” asked Margaret.

“I like solid citizens,” he answered, “are they too on your list of
obnoxious people and things?”

“Of course they are not.”

“I was a little worried after that list began developing. I don’t want
to be on the list of people you don’t like.”

But it was not until they had finished dinner and were drinking coffee
that he developed that thought.

“I wonder if you know how hard you women are making things for men,” he
said, not abruptly but as if stating his brief.

“Perhaps it was too easy before.”

“Perhaps. But you make it so difficult--you stand so aggressively
strong--so independent of us that we can’t find a thing with which to
recommend ourselves. You don’t want our protection--our support--you
mistrust our motives.”

“I told you this afternoon that I thought most women did cling to
protection and support.”

“Not the women we may want. You don’t want the things I have to offer.”

His tones had hardly raised. In her first moment of embarrassment
Margaret fumbled for words but he went on in that same quiet tone.

“I thought it was as well to be frank with you. I couldn’t see that I
would gain anything by conventionalities of courtship. And I’m a little
old to indulge in certain forms of wooing anyhow. I have never seen any
woman I wanted to marry so much. I like your mind. And I mention it
first because it is the thing which matters least. I like more than that
the way you smile. I would always have the greatest enjoyment from you
as a woman of intellect. But the real reason I want you to marry me is
because you are a woman of flesh and blood--and all that that means.”

She had flushed a little and as he ended in that controlled way, though
for all his control he could not conceal the huskiness in his voice, she
leaned forward a little to him, as if in sympathy. But she did not
speak. Her eyes fell away from his.

“I care for you just as all men have a way of caring for women,
Margaret--I love you very much.”

“I’m a very poor person to love,” she answered, slowly.

“You’re a wonderful person to love. Do you think you could care for
me--ever? After you’d trained me a bit?”

“I like you to talk to--to be with as much as any one I’ve ever known,”
she said at last. “We’ve had a great deal of sympathy for each other. Of
course I guessed you liked me. I rather hoped you wouldn’t love me.
Because”--and curiously enough her voice dropped as if in shame, almost
to a whisper--“I’m so cold, Walter. I don’t feel things like most
women.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Walter, rising abruptly.

But he was unlucky. At the very door they were hailed by a passing
automobile and discovered the Flandons, Jerrold Haynes and three other
people, had seen them. They were invited to come along to the theater
where there were a couple of vacant seats in the boxes the Flandons had
taken. It seemed ridiculous to refuse. The play was conspicuously good,
it was too cold a night for driving and they all knew that Margaret had
no home to which they were going. So, unwillingly, Walter found himself
made part of the larger group. For the rest of the evening he heard
Margaret arguing with Gage, whom Walter noted, seemed very bitter on the
matter of his wife’s discussed entry into politics. He heard Helen say,
suddenly and very quietly, after some rather blustering declaration of
Gage’s, “If the women want me, I shall go, Gage.” Walter was conscious
that there seemed an altercation beneath the surface, that the geniality
of relation between Helen and Gage was lessened. For a few minutes he
thought Helen was flirting rather badly with that ass of a Jerrold
Haynes.

As he took Margaret home she talked at length of sending Helen to the
Convention.

“You’ve shelved me, haven’t you?” he asked as they entered the tiny
apartment so fragrant with his flowers.

“I didn’t mean to. Come in and we’ll talk about you.”

“About you and me.” He came in, readily.

“I didn’t understand that was what you wanted.”

She did not let him touch her and in the isolation of her room he could
not persist. For a while he sat silent and she told him about herself
and her lack of feeling. She had fine, clear, experienced phrases to
tell of it. Yet she was conscious of making no impression.

“I’ve passed the marrying time,” she said.

“Why?”

“It involves things which have passed me by--that I no longer need.”

“You mean--children?”

“No--I haven’t a lot of sentimental yearnings about them. But of course
I would like to have children. There’s an instinct to do one’s duty by
the race, in every woman.”

He actually laughed.

“You chilled young woman. Well--what then has passed by you?”

She did not tell him. Perhaps there were no words, no definite thoughts
in her own mind. She must have been full of strange inhibitions.
Analysis crowded so close on the heels of feeling with her that she
never could have the one without the other. All her study, her watching
of men, all her study and analysis of women had made her mind a
laboratory with her own emotions for victims of analysis.

Gregory had told her that in that sprawlingly written letter, now in
the post office, being sent back to her from Mrs. Thorstad.

Gregory held her thought for a moment. Then she looked at Walter with
fresh appreciation. She liked to be with Walter. He didn’t oppress her.
His mind met hers without pushing. She felt protected in his
companionship from that rude forcing of emotion which had been so hard
on her.

He was going now. At the door he held her hand.

“I could be very good to you,” he said, quietly. “Let me try.”




CHAPTER VII

AN UGLY GLIMPSE


I

Mrs. Thorstad went back to Mohawk a few days later, leaving behind her a
trail of increased prestige and carrying with her many assurances of
appreciation which she could cogitate at her leisure. Her husband met
her at the station, quietly, graciously pleased as he always was at a
home-coming.

“So Freda stayed for a while,” he said, as they went down the street his
arm hanging heavy with her suit-case.

“Yes. It will be nice for her. Pleasant young girls, Mrs. Brownley’s
girls, although they haven’t a great deal of mentality. Freda attracted
quite a little attention. Miss Duffield is very anxious for her to stay
in St. Pierre but of course Miss Duffield is an outsider and cannot
exert any influence. Mrs. Flandon had some very sensible suggestions.
They were going to see if there was a chance for Freda to get a place as
secretary to the general Republican district committee and later do some
work for the campaign committee. She can’t typewrite and that’s a
drawback but they thought they might get around that. She’ll know in a
day or so. It needs the consent of the chairman and he’s out of the
city. But he’ll probably do just what Mrs. Flandon asks.”

“In the meantime Freda stays at Mrs. Brownley’s?”

“Yes, and if she stays for a definite work, Mrs. Flandon will find her a
place to live.”

“The Flandons are nice people?”

“Oh, yes, a worldly sort, but very good. Mrs. Flandon is to be made
delegate at large from the state if they can manage it.”

“That’s good stuff.”

“She’s hardly the person for it,” said Mrs. Thorstad. “As a matter of
fact I am convinced that if this visiting organizer, Miss Duffield, who
after all is in a most anomalous position, had not urged it (she is an
intimate friend of Mrs. Flandon’s)--well, if she had not interfered I
might have been made the delegate at large myself. As it is, I’ll have
to try to get the Federated clubs to send me. I ought to be there. It’s
important for the future. I should have been the candidate for delegate
at large.”

Her husband whistled and shifted the bag to his other arm.

“I’m very glad you were saved that grave responsibility, Addie,” he
said, with his unfailing tact.

“Yes--there is that side, of course. But this Miss Duffield is a person
who’ll bear watching. I never can see the point in sending these
unsettled young women about the country organizing. They’re dangerous in
some ways. Now I happen to know that Miss Duffield is the sort of young
woman who receives men in her rooms--it’s only one room and there’s a
bed in it even if it has a cretonne cover--”

“Addie--Addie--!”

“But that’s not all. At the same time she does receive men in her
room--of course it may be all right and just a modern way--but she also
gets passionate, very suspicious letters from other men.”

Mr. Thorstad frowned. But they reached the house just then and in the
business of entering and commenting on his housekeeping Mrs. Thorstad
let the matter drop. She flew about efficiently and her husband sat back
in his armchair and watched her. There was no doubt of his gladness at
her return. His pleasant gray eyes were contented, a little sad perhaps,
but contented.

“Freda isn’t involved with any young men?” he asked.

“No--they tease her about young Smillie--that’s H. T. Smillie, First
National Bank, you know, but she says that’s just nonsense.”


II

Yet it was that very night after the Thorstads had gone to bed and were
sleeping in the pale light of a quiet moonlit sky, that Freda was forced
to admit that it wasn’t nonsense.

All along she had hated staying without her mother, who after all was
her reason for being here. She had to do it, however, or else abandon
the chance of getting the job as secretary to the committee. Freda
herself was a little homesick under all her excitement but, steadying
her, there had come letters from her father which urged her to make the
most of any opportunities which might come to her, which bade her make
suitable and wise friends and learn as much as she could.

One or two of the young men Freda met stood out, as being more
interesting than the others. Ted Smillie, because he was so attracted to
her from the first, had more or less intrigued her. Barbara’s obvious
dislike of the situation had forced both Ted and Freda into somewhat
closer acquaintanceship than would have naturally developed, but they
both worked against Barbara’s interference. There was in Ted, for all
his amorousness, a real feeling for health and beauty. That drew him to
Freda and her to him and there was enough in the glamour of being
chosen by the most competed-for man as worthy of attention, to make
Freda feel rather strongly in his favor. If he had been rude to her, as
he might have been to the country guest of the Brownley’s, she would
have seen him more clearly, seen his weakness, his impressionability,
read the laziness of his mind, seen the signs of self-indulgence which
were already beginning to show on his handsome face. She would have seen
him as too “soft” of mind and body. But he was frankly at her feet and
it would have taken an older head than Freda’s to analyze too clearly
past that during those first few weeks.

It was not the first attention she had had, of course. There were always
young men who were ready to be nice to Freda in Mohawk. But much as they
had liked her they had not, as she would have said, “made love to her.”
Ted did that. In his own way, he was good at it and Freda was collecting
experiences and naïve in spite of her power to get a perspective on her
own situation. He had singled Freda out as capable of giving him a
fresher thrill than any of the girls of his own “crowd.” And he had
ended by being pushed a little more than he expected by his own
emotions. The prospect of Freda’s return to Mohawk had annoyed him. He
had felt that if she went now, it would be an incomplete experience. He
wanted more than he had had. Freda had been pleasant, had been more than
pleasant, been frank enough in showing how much she liked him. But he
was used to more abandonment in the girls he knew--more freedom of
caresses. He wasn’t quite sure how far he wanted to go and of course he
had no intention of marrying anybody, certainly not Freda. But he was
unsatisfied.

Mr. and Mrs. Brownley had gone to Chicago the day after Mrs. Thorstad
had gone home and the three girls were alone in the house with the
servants. There had been a gay party at a hotel ballroom and at one
o’clock the three girls had left the hotel with their escorts. Ted had
his small car and Freda had wanted him to take Barbara home. But Barbara
had demurred, strangely enough. She was going in the big car with the
others, she said.

Barbara had been making life hard for Freda all day. Wherever they had
been she had managed to make Freda miserable. When the older Brownleys
were home, and when her mother was with her, Freda had never been so
completely at Barbara’s mercy as she was to-day. Allie, her usual ally,
had suddenly fallen away too. The fact was that Allie, having pressed
her mother for the purchase of the new runabout, had been put off on the
ground that her father said it was too expensive and on the further
ground that Freda’s visit was not over and that anyway Mrs. Brownley had
made no definite promise. Allie was disgruntled and the enthusiasm she
had had for Freda having run its brief course, like most of Allie’s
enthusiasms, she was willing to lend some slight support to Barbara’s
evident ennui with their guest. All through luncheon Barbara had
engineered an extremely rude conversation about things and places which
were entirely foreign to Freda. Not once had she let her guest slip into
the conversation. She had misled Freda deliberately into wearing her
flame colored satin dress to a very informal afternoon affair and
appeared herself, like every one else, in the most simple suit, making
Freda feel foolishly over dressed. It was a little thing but it pricked
Freda. At dinner she had asked some people to come in whom she knew
would follow her lead and they had again left Freda high and dry on the
conversational sands. It had not been a pleasant day and even as they
danced, she and Ted, that evening, Freda felt Barbara’s eyes rather
scornfully on her and guessed at the little tide of innuendo that was
being set in motion. She knew Barbara’s ways by this time. She could not
stand it another day, she vowed. In the morning she would see Mrs.
Flandon or go to a hotel or back to Mohawk.

It was clear that the others had not arrived when they drove up under
the Brownley porte-cochère where a single light was burning. Freda did
not want Ted to come in. She wanted to make her escape to bed before
Barbara might arrive and make her a further target. Besides it was clear
that Ted had been drinking and that he was most amorous. But he was
insistent. The others would be along in a minute and he wanted to see
one of the boys, he said.

They went into the long drawing-room. A single standing lamp was lit
beside a big divan and at Freda’s gesture as if she would turn on more,
Ted caught her hand.

“Quite enough light,” he said. “Come sit down.”

His methods were not as subtle as usual and they frightened Freda. But
she thought it wiser not to quarrel with him and sat down obediently
beside him on the divan--much too close for her taste.

“You aren’t really going away, are you, Freda?”

“I can’t stay forever. My welcome’s wearing a little thin.”

She tried to pull away from that encircling arm but he would not have
it. His strength had surprised her before, and she had not before minded
his demonstrations. To-night she felt them as different, vaguely
repellent.

“Please don’t, Ted.”

“I’m crazy about you, Freda. I’ve never seen a girl like you. There
aren’t any girls like you. Never have been any. I never knew what it
meant to be in love before.”

And all the time that arm tighter, heavier. His face seemed to Freda to
thicken. She discovered that she hated it. Abruptly she wrenched herself
free. But he followed her and unfortunately she had gone to an even
darker corner.

He pulled her to him and kissed her. It was the first time he had done
it and it seemed to exhilarate him.

There followed one of the worst half hours of Freda’s life. She kept
wondering what had happened to the others. She was conscious of herself
growing disheveled. She realized that he was in earnest, that he was
excited past his own control.

In desperation she cried at him--

“But I don’t care for you at all.”

“That makes it more interesting to a man,” said Ted, gallantly. “Anyway,
I’ll never give up.”

“And,” thought Freda, suddenly, with directness, “he hasn’t said one
word about marrying.” With a kind of vague desire to sound the situation
fully, she said--

“Do you really want me to marry you?”

The drinking that Ted had done had not improved his keenness of wit. He
laughed.

“I think you could almost make me do that,” he answered, “but what’s the
use of marrying? What we want is love--you know. I sized you up at the
start. Freda--you wonderful girl--let me tell you--”

What he told her, the outlines of his plan, struck Freda with impersonal
clearness. She had an odd sense of watching the scene from the outside,
as an observer who jeered at her a little for being implicated. Similar
scenes she had read about ran through her mind. She thought of Ann
Veronica and Mr. Ramage. “He hasn’t gone quite far enough for me to
actually fight him,” she thought--and then--“I ought to ring for a
servant or something--that’s what’s always done. I’m being insulted. I
ought to either faint or beat him. I’m interested. Isn’t it shocking!”

Above all these almost subconscious thoughts her mind dealt with
practicalities. She wondered where the others were. She must get out of
the house early in the morning. She wondered if Ted would keep this up
even if the others came in.

She tried to get to the door but her movement towards escape roused him
further. It had evidently never entered his head that she really meant
to rebuff him. He caught her in his arms.

“So you see, beautiful, how easy the whole thing will be--”

He was growing noisy and she realized that she did not want the servants
to hear. After all it wasn’t her house. She saw that they had been alone
for an hour. It was past two. And then to her immense relief she heard
the limousine outside.

“The others are here,” she said to him.

“Damn the others,” he said mumblingly, and, without apology, forced
himself into his overcoat. In the hall he seemed to recover himself.
Perhaps his sense of social convention struggled and overcame his
amorousness temporarily. He went out, past the entering girls, vaguely
speaking rather at them than to them.

Nothing of what happened after that seemed quite real to Freda. She was
fairly worn out from her trying day and hour of struggle and
embarrassment. As she stood for a minute by a long window trying to
collect her thoughts, she heard the girls at the door and it flashed
through her mind to ease the disgust from her own mind by telling the
whole business. She knew how frankly these girls talked of such things
among themselves.

They came in, Barbara leading. With a quick, sharp movement Barbara
turned on all the lights and as if in a spotlight the disarrayed parts
of the room seemed to stand out, the rug in which Ted’s foot had caught
and which he had kicked aside, the several chairs at unfamiliar angles,
the divan all tossed, with pillows crushed--most of all Freda herself,
hair somewhat disheveled, cheeks angrily flushed. Allie looked a little
queer as she gazed around. Barbara, after one scornful glance, never
took her eyes off Freda.

“So you brought him here?”

“Brought him? Ted? Where were the rest of you?”

“You knew where we were. We said where we were going. We waited and
waited at the Hebley’s. Every one was wondering where you’d gone. You
and Ted Smillie--at two o’clock. But I didn’t really think you’d have
the audacity to make my mother’s house the scene of your--”

The awful thing, thought Freda, is that she doesn’t believe that. But
she’s going to pretend she believes it and it’s just as bad as if she
did. Some one had let her in for this. It looks exactly as if--she
looked around and the color swept her face again.

“You shameless girl!” Barbara went viciously on. “If my mother was here
you wouldn’t dare have done it. To think that we have to stay in the
same house--to think--come Allie--”

But Freda was roused, infuriated. The scorn of her own position, a
position which allowed her to be insulted by such a person, rose above
all else. She flung her cloak around her.

“I wouldn’t stay in your house another night,” she cried, “if I have to
sleep on a park bench all night.”

The front door closed after her. As she reached the sidewalk she heard
the door open again, her name called cautiously, heard the latch
slipped. They were leaving the door open. As if she would go back--

She went through the streets swiftly.




CHAPTER VIII

ADVENTURE


I

All the time, under that motivating anger and determination not to go
back, ran the two threads of thought--one quickly sifting the
practicalities of a situation for a bare headed young girl in the
streets of a city at two o’clock in the morning, the other analyzing,
jeering at the melodrama of her position.

“It’s a warm night,” she thought, “I’ll probably get nothing but a
terrific cold in my head if I do sit in Lincoln Park all night. That
young devil! She planned all that. She deliberately didn’t tell Ted they
were not coming straight home. There’s no way of proving it. I’d like to
bring her to her knees. I’ll probably meet some fool policeman. How it
will embarrass mother if this gets about. It’s an ugly mess if I don’t
do things right. Nice ending to this visit. I knew the whole thing was
bound to be disastrous. It was all a fake trip. That girl hated me from
the start. As if I wanted that young fool.”

She was walking in the direction of the park, past the long iron fences,
the smooth sloping terraces which characterized the Brownley part of the
city. The street was absolutely quiet. Street lamps seemed very bright
as she passed them. Here and there a light gleamed in a house, a night
light behind an iron grilled door. Her footsteps seemed to resound with
disastrous noise. She felt the sound of her walking was a disturbance of
the peace, an affront to the quiet of everything about her. She
hurried, trying to feel as if she were called out by illness, imagining
what she would say if accosted, a little cooler of anger and beginning
to be enthralled and intrigued by her own adventure.

Angry as she was, there was a thrill in the circumstances. She was sure
she would not go back to the Brownley house and that resolve was backed
perhaps by her interest in what might happen--what adventure might be
awaiting her. Quite fearless and untroubled by any physical nervousness,
her only anxiety was that she was not quite sure of how to meet any
eventuality. But the night was hers. For a few hours she was thrown upon
its mercy, and it exhilarated her, as if she had been released from
annoying restraints. In her rush from the Brownley house she had
satisfied a host of petty feelings which had been accumulating for
weeks. It was as if she had broken through a horde of petty conventions
which had been gaining a hold on her. She felt more herself than she had
yet felt in the city. As she went along she almost forgot Barbara.

The park was still. The iron benches had long ago been deserted by even
the last of the romantic couples. The policeman had evidently left the
park for the night. Freda sat on a bench under a tree and tucked her
feet under her to keep warm.

“Good thing mother insisted on an interlining in this coat,” she said to
herself.

She heard the clock in Trinity High School sound half past two, after
what seemed a long time. She was already chilled and cramped. Then she
heard a sound of voices and looked up to see two men on the far side of
the park, half a block away. It made her a little apprehensive. She
suddenly felt a little unable to cope with two of them. Two had no
romantic possibilities. If it had been one wanderer--

Hurriedly getting up, she slipped through the shadows and cleared the
park, thankful that her coat was dark.

“Well, then, I must walk,” she said, trying to reassure herself by her
own voice. Her feet were very cold and a little damp in their thin
slippers. They hurt.

For a minute she considered going to Mrs. Flandon’s house. But she
abandoned that idea. Mrs. Flandon wasn’t the sort of person she wanted
to know about all this. She’d think she was such a fool. It might hurt
her chances of getting that place. Did she want that place, she queried
and kept her mind fixed on that for a little, sliding into a dream of
what she might do and how she might confound Barbara Brownley.

By this time her walking had become fairly aimless. She had come through
the residence district where she had been living, into a street of tall
apartment houses. Here and there in the windows of these buildings
lights still gleamed. Freda tried to amuse herself by wondering what was
happening there, tried to forget her painful feet. Then she met her
second adventurer.

He was walking very fast, his head up, and he rounded a corner so
abruptly that she had no time to avoid him. As if he had hardly sensed
her presence he passed her, then she heard his steps cease to resound
and knew he was turning to look at her. He did more, he followed her. In
a few strides he had caught up with her and Freda, turning her head,
gave him a look meant to be fraught with dignity but which turned out to
be only very angry. The man laughed.

“Oh, all right,” he said, “if you look like that, maybe there is
something I can do for you. I wasn’t sure of what sort of person you
were. But I see now.”

His voice was rich and clear and pleasant. Freda could not see what he
looked like but she could tell he was young, and he did not sound
dangerous.

“Please don’t bother me,” she said, “I’m just--out for a walk.”

“I hope you’re near home,” he answered.

Freda couldn’t resist it.

“I’m just exactly a hundred and thirty-nine miles from home.”

He tried to see her closely but her head was down.

“No, you’re not crazy,” he commented, “so there must be a story or a
mystery to you. Can I walk home with you--the hundred and thirty-nine
miles?”

“It’s too far--and I’m really better alone.”

“Please. I’m not in the least dangerous and I don’t want to annoy you.
But you must admit that a young woman at three o’clock in the morning
ought to let somebody accompany her on such prodigious walks. I’m out
for one myself. I’d enjoy it.”

He talked like an Englishman--or an Irishman, thought Freda. And why
shouldn’t she talk to him. It was all too ridiculous anyway. But rather
exciting.

“I’m in a very silly mess,” she told him, “and I haven’t any place to go
to-night.”

“And you wish I’d mind my own business?”

“No--but there’s nothing you can do. I’m not in the least a tragedy. In
the morning I can straighten things out. I haven’t committed any murders
or anything like that. But I said I wouldn’t go back to-night, and I
won’t.”

The young man considered.

“Is it by any chance a husband to whom you made that statement?”

“Oh, no,” Freda laughed. “It wasn’t a husband or even a father. It was
just a girl.”

“Well, you’re a bit thinly clad to carry out your high resolve.”

She shivered.

“Nights are longer than I thought.”

“Oh, you’re right there,” said he, “nights can stretch themselves out to
infinity. However, we must shorten this one for you. I’d just as soon do
it by conversation but your slippers--don’t you think you’d better go
back--for this one night?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Well, I approve of high resolves myself. I’m used to them and seeing
people offer themselves up on their altar. There’s no real reason why
you should give in on any position you took, just because the sun is on
the other side of the world. Could you tell me a bit more, maybe? If
names mean anything to you at this hour of the night, mine’s Gregory
Macmillan. I don’t live here. I’m staying at some hotel or other and I
came here on business--that’s what you always say in the States, isn’t
it, when you give an account of yourself?”

“You’re English.”

“Oh, God forbid,” he cried, “English! You insult me--but you don’t mean
to. No--Irish, Irish, Irish--I should have said it first and have been
spared that accusation.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what your accent was. I see now. It was stupid
of me.”

He laughed at her. “It’s no matter. You’re a very young woman, aren’t
you? I can tell from your voice. Well, you don’t want to wander further
with an Irish adventurer, do you?”

“I can’t help myself.”

“Let’s get down to facts. You quarreled.”

“Hardly that. I tell you it’s a silly business. A drunk young man--a
vicious girl who chanced to be my hostess said things. So I walked out
of her house. I can’t go back without crawling back, can I?”

“No--you can’t go back if you’d have to crawl. But where else can you
go? Haven’t you some friend--some intimate?”

“No--I can’t disturb families at this hour--and I only know people here
a little.”

“Isn’t there perhaps some single lady? Some unmarried woman to whom you
could turn? At this hour of the night it may be easier, you know, than
at dawn. And you’re dressed for the evening. Of course we might go back
to my hotel. Let’s see--a motor accident might do. No--that would
involve things. You’re sure you don’t know some discreet spinster?”

She thought.

“I’ve only been here three weeks. Only perhaps Miss Duffield--?”

He started.

“You don’t mean Margaret Duffield? You know her? Why, of course, she’s
the very one. Do you mean her?”

“And you know her too?”

“Know her? I have been talking with her until an hour ago. You mystic
child, of course you’d know Margaret. Come, let’s go to her and she’ll
tell me about you--and I’ll get a chance to see her again to-night
even--and perhaps, with you in charge, she’ll want to see me.”

Freda was enchanted. Her feet were forgotten. Barbara was forgotten. The
night, the delicious hour, the stranger who was chivalric and mysterious
and knew Margaret Duffield,--all of it was rounding out a perfect
adventure. She laughed in sheer delight.

“Isn’t it marvelous?” she asked, “this meeting you--you knowing the only
person I could go to, isn’t it curious and like a well-made dream?”

He took her by the arm, holding her up a little as they crossed the
cobbled street.

“Life at its best is only a well-made dream,” he answered.

In all her life Freda had never met any one who dared to talk like that.

It was three o’clock but the light in Margaret’s apartment still burned.
Little lines of it streamed out from the curtain edges. At sight of the
light Gregory stopped.

“Lucky it’s on the ground floor,” he said, “she can let us in without
any of the others hearing us tramp by.”

Freda hung back a little.

“It’s rather an outrageous thing to do. I wonder if I should.”

“Nonsense. Anyway, you’ve no choice. I’m bringing my refugee here
myself.”

They tiptoed into the little hallway and rang her bell--then went over
by her door. It was characteristic of Margaret that she did not call,
“Who’s there?” from behind the door. She opened her door a little and
looked out.

“It’s I,” said Gregory, softly, “and a distressed lady, whom you know.
Can we come in?”

The door opened wider and Margaret put out her hand as Freda shrunk back
a little.

“Why, Freda--where did you come from?” Margaret looked at Gregory, but
he waited for Freda to tell her own story, perhaps not knowing how much
she wanted to tell.

In the light again, Freda had blushed scarlet and then turned pale, her
cheeks wonderfully waxen and lustrous from the night air. Under her eyes
there were circles of fatigue and her hair had clung to her head, damp
from moisture. She looked at Margaret and seemed to remember that her
adventure had begun in disaster.

“I’m so sorry to bother you like this--I’m so sorry. But he said I’d
better.”

Again Margaret exchanged glances with Gregory. Gregory was looking at
Margaret now as if he were conscious of the picture she made in the blue
Grecian negligée which suited that slim, straight figure so well. But if
she noticed his glance, she was impatient of it.

“Of course it’s no question of bother--but what is it?”

Freda had made no move to drop her cloak. She held it close around her
as she stood against the inside of the door.

She told them as much as she could.

“I couldn’t go back.”

The eyes of her hearers were angry.

“Of course you couldn’t,” said Margaret, simply. “And you can perfectly
well spend the night here. In the morning I’ll send for your clothes.”

She drew Freda, who was shivering now, over on the couch, then turned to
Gregory.

“Good night, Gregory--again. You bring adventure with you.”

There was a smile in her eyes which he seemed to answer by a look in his
own. Then he looked past her to Freda.

“Good night, little wanderer. I’ll see you to-morrow.”

Freda saw him fully now. He was tall and thin and ugly. His dark eyes
seemed to flash from caverns above his high cheekbones. But he had a
wide Irish mouth and it smiled very tenderly at them both as he softly
went out.

Freda would not take Margaret’s little couch bed for herself so Margaret
had to improvise a bed on the floor for her guest, a bed of blankets and
coats and Freda slept in Margaret’s warm bath robe. Oddly, she slept far
better than did Margaret, who, for a long while, held herself stiffly on
one side that her turning might not disturb Freda.


II

They both wakened early. Freda found the taste of stale adventure in her
mind a little flat and disagreeable. There were a number of things to be
done. Margaret telephoned briefly to the Brownley house, left word with
a servant that Miss Thorstad had spent the night with her.

“I’ll go up there after we have some breakfast,” she said to Freda, “and
get you some clothes. Then I think you’d better stay here with me. I’ll
ask the landlady to put an extra cot in here and we can be comfortable
for a few days. And please don’t talk of inconvenience”--she forestalled
Freda’s objections with her smile--“I’ll love to have company. If you
stay in town we’ll see if you can’t get a place of your own in the
building here. Lots of apartments have a vacant room to let.”

She was preparing breakfast with Freda’s help and the younger girl’s
spirits were rising steadily even though the thought of an interview
with Barbara remained dragging. It was great fun for Freda--the freedom
of this tiny apartment with its bed already made into a daytime couch,
the eggs cooking over a little electric grill on the table and the table
set with a scanty supply of dishes--two tall glasses of milk, rolls and
marmalade.

“It’s so nice, living like this,” she exclaimed.

Margaret laughed.

“Then the Brownley luxury hasn’t quite seduced you?”

“I was excited by it. I’m afraid it did seduce me temporarily. But for
the last week something’s been wrong with me. And this was it. I wanted
to get out of the machinery. They leave you alone and all that--but it’s
so ordered--so planned. Everything’s planned from the menus to the
social life. They try to do novel things by standing on their heads
sometimes in their own grooves--at least the girls do--but really they
get no freshness or freedom, do they?”

“I should say that particular crowd didn’t. Of course you mustn’t
confound all wealthy people with them. They’re better than some but a
great deal less interesting than the best of the wealthy. And of course
just because their life doesn’t happen to appeal to your temperament--or
mine--”

“Are you always so perfectly balanced?” asked Freda, so admiringly as to
escape impertinence.

“I wish I were ever balanced,” answered Margaret. “And now suppose you
tell me a little more about what happened so I’ll be sure how I had
better take things up with the Brownley girls.”

Freda had been thinking.

“It really began with me,” she said. “Ted Smillie was Barbara’s man and
I was flattered when he noticed me. And of course I liked him--then--so
I let it go on and she hated me for that.”

“Stop me if I pry--but do you care for the young man now?”

“Oh--no!” cried Freda. “I’m just mortally ashamed of myself for letting
myself in as much as I did.”

“Everybody does.”

Margaret’s remark brought other ideas into Freda’s mind. She remembered
Gregory Macmillan and his apparent intimacy with Margaret. But she asked
nothing, going on, under Margaret’s questioning, with her tale of the
night before, and as they came to the part of Gregory’s intervention,
Margaret vouchsafed no information.

An hour later, she came back from the Brownley house, with Freda’s
suitcase beside her in a taxi.

“You did give them a bad night,” she said to Freda, “Bob Brownley looks
a wreck. It appears that later they went out to search the park--scared
stiff for you. And you had gone. They saw some men and were terrified.”

“Are they very angry?”

“Barbara tried to stay on her high horse. Said that although it was
possible she had misunderstood the situation it looked very compromising
and she thought it her duty in her mother’s absence--. Of course, she
said, she was sorry that matters had developed as they had. Poor Allie’d
evidently been thinking you’d been sewed up in a bag and dropped in the
river. They both want to let the thing drop quickly and I said they
could say that you were staying with me for the remainder of your visit.
I also told Barbara a few home truths about herself, and advised her to
be very careful what she said to her mother or I might take it up with
her parents.”

“All this trouble for me!” cried Freda. “I am ashamed!”

“Nonsense. But I must go along quickly now. I’ve a meeting. Your trunk
will be along sometime this morning. Put it wherever you like and the
landlady will send the janitor up with a cot. And--by the way--if
Gregory Macmillan drops in, tell him I’m engaged for lunch, will you?
You might have lunch with him, if you don’t mind.”

“I feel aghast at meeting him.”

“Don’t let any lack of conventions bother you with Gregory. The lack of
them is the best recommendation in his eyes. He’s a wild Irish poet.
I’ll tell you about him to-night. I think you’ll like him, Freda. He’s
the kindest person I know--and as truthful as his imagination will let
him be.”

“What is he in St. Pierre for?”

“Oh, ask him--” said Margaret, departing.




CHAPTER IX

WORK FOR FREDA


I

It was on that morning that Gage Flandon made his last appeal to his
wife not to let herself be named as a candidate for Chicago at the State
Convention. He had been somewhat grim since the district convention. As
Margaret had realized would happen, certain men had approached him,
thinking to please him by sounding the rumor about sending his wife to
the National Convention. Many of them felt and Gage knew they felt that
he had started, or arranged to have started, a rumor that his wife would
be a candidate and that he meant to capitalize the entrance of women
into politics by placing his own wife at the head of the woman’s group
in the State. It was a natural enough conclusion and its very
naturalness made Gage burn with a slow, violent anger that was becoming
an obsession. It began of course with the revolt against that suspicion
of baseness that he could capitalize the position of his wife--that he
could use a relation, which was to him so sacred, to strengthen his own
position. Yet, when these men came with their flattery he could not cry
down Helen without seeming to insult her. There was only one way, he
saw, and that was for Helen herself to withdraw. If she did not, it was
clear that she would be sent.

So he had besought and seemed to always beseech her with the wrong
arguments. He knew he had said trite things, things about women staying
out of politics, the unsuitability of her nature for such things, but
he had felt their triteness infused with such painful conviction in his
own mind that it continually amazed him to see how little response he
awoke in her.

She had said to him, “You exaggerate it so, Gage. Why make such a
mountain out of a molehole? I’m not going to neglect you or the
children. I’ll probably not be elected anyhow. But why not regard it as
a privilege and an honor and let me try?”

“But why do you want to try?”

She looked as if she too were trying vainly to make him understand.

“I’d like to do something myself, Gage--something as myself.”

“You were content without politics two months ago.”

“I’ve changed--why begrudge me my enthusiasm?”

“Because I can’t bear to see you a waster like the rest of the women.
Because you’re so different. Everything about you is true and sound,
dear, and when you start deliberately using yourself for political
effect, don’t you see how you become untrue? There’s nothing in it, I
tell you. The whole thing’s cut and dried. There’s no big issue. If the
women want to send some one, let them choose some other figurehead!”

He had not meant it so but of course he seemed disparaging her.

“Perhaps,” she said rather frigidly, “perhaps I’ll not be such a
figurehead as you think.”

“But I didn’t mean to say that to hurt you.”

“I’m not sure what you do mean. It seems to me we’re actually childish.
You’ve chosen, quite deliberately, to be a reactionary in all this
woman’s progress movement. I’m sorry. But there is a loyalty one has to
women, Gage, beside the loyalty one has to a husband and I really
cannot share your prejudice against progress, as it applies to women.”

The unexpressed things in Gage’s mind fairly tore at him.

“If you really had one sensible objection, Gage--”

“There’s just one objection,” he said, doggedly, “you desecrate
yourself. Not by entering politics particularly. But by using yourself
that way. You mutilate your sex.”

She did not get angry. But she put one hand on his shoulder and they
looked at each other helplessly.

“Don’t you see,” said Helen, “that I want, like these other women, to
once in a while do something that’s clean of sex? That’s just
me--without sex?”

His eyes grew very hard. She struck almost mortally at the very thing he
loved most. And he moved away, as if to remove himself definitely.

“I’m sorry you feel so. It’s a pleasant remark for a man’s wife to fling
at him.”

Irony was so unusual in Gage that Helen stood looking after him after he
went out of the room. Her mind ached with the struggle, ached from the
assertion of this new determination of hers. Never had she wanted so to
give him comfort and be comforted herself. She saw the weeks
ahead--weeks of estrangement--possibly a permanent estrangement. Yet she
knew she would go on. It wasn’t just wanting to go on. She had to go on.
There was a principle involved even if he could not see it. Clearer and
clearer she had seen her necessity in these past two weeks. She had to
waken her own individuality. She had to live to herself alone for a
little. She had to begin to build defences against sex.

Gage was right. Margaret had sown the seed in his wife. Helen had not
watched her for nothing. She had seen the way that Margaret made no
concessions to herself as a woman, fiercely as she was working for the
establishment of woman’s position. It seemed paradoxical but there it
was. If you were truly to work for woman’s welfare you had to abandon
all the cushions of woman’s protected position, thought Helen--you
couldn’t rest back on either wifehood or motherhood. You couldn’t be
lazy. You had to make yourself fully yourself.

Here was her chance. She hadn’t wanted it but they had insisted. The
women wanted her to go to Chicago--not because she was Mrs. Flandon but
because she was Helen Flandon, herself. A little quiver of delight ran
through Helen as she thought of it. She would see it through. Gage would
surely not persist in his feeling. Surely he would change. He would be
glad when she proved more than just his wife.

She had a strange feeling of having doffed all the years which had
passed since she had left college, a feeling of youth and energy which
had often dominated her then but which had changed in the seven years of
her marriage. Since her marriage she had walked only with Gage and the
children--shared life with them very completely. Now it was not that she
cared less for them (she kept making that very clear to herself) but
there was none the less a new independence and new vigor about her. She
felt with them but she felt without them too.

It hurt her that Gage should feel so injured. But her exhilaration was
greater even than the hurt, because she could not sound the depths of
her husband’s suffering.

Gage went out of the house with no more words. He managed to focus his
mind on the work of the day which was before him but the basic feeling
of pain and anger persisted.

In the middle of the morning Helen called him, reminding him of his
promise to see if Freda Thorstad could be placed. She ignored, as she
had a way of doing, any difference between them.

“Are you going to drag that child in too?” he asked, ungraciously, and
then conscious of his unfairness for he knew quite well that the object
was to place Freda so she could earn her own living, he capitulated.

“Drummond gets back this afternoon. Send Miss Thorstad in about four and
I’ll take her to see him.”

“You’re a dear, Gage,” Helen rang off.

Gage tried to figure out whether something had been put over him or not.
There he let it go and sat in at the club with a chosen crowd before
lunch. It pleased him immensely to see Harry Harris stuck for the lunch.
He kidded him, his great laugh rising and falling.


II

At four Freda came and at her, “You’re sure I’m not too early, Mr.
Flandon?” Gage felt further ashamed of his ungraciousness. Freda was a
little pale, after her difficult night, and it made her rather more
attractive than ever to Gage. He thought she might be worrying over the
chance of getting the new work and was eager to make it easy for her.

“So you want to get into politics like all the rest?” he asked, but
smilingly.

“I want some work to do,” said Freda, “I’d just as soon do anything
else. But I really will have to work or go back to Mohawk and there
isn’t anything for me to do in Mohawk. I don’t much care what I do, to
tell you the truth, Mr. Flandon, so it is work. And I’ve a theory that I
might be better at washing windows than doing anything else.”

“This isn’t much of a job, you know.”

“Probably it’s all I could handle. I’m really a little nervous. Will
they ask for all kinds of qualifications?”

“There’s no ‘they’ There’s only one man and I think all he is looking
for is some one who is discreet and pleasant and can do ordinary
secretarial work.”

“I’m going to learn typewriting evenings,” said Freda.

It was so pleasant to be free from controversial conversation, or from
conversation which glossed over controversy that Gage found himself
feeling much warmer and more cheerful than he had for days. Together
they walked over to the office of the man who had the district
chairmanship. Mr. Drummond was embarrassed. Clearly he was embarrassed
by the necessity of refusing a favor Flandon asked. But he was put to
it.

They left the office and at the street corner Freda stopped and held out
her hand.

“Pretty lucky for them that young Whitelaw got there first, I fancy.”

“Have you something else in mind?”

“I’ll try to find something. Maybe I can get a place as somebody’s
companion. Or maybe Miss Duffield will know--”

A tight little line came around Gage’s mouth. He didn’t want Margaret
Duffield running this girl. His dislike was becoming an obsession.

“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you’d like to come into my office. I
could use another clerk, as a matter of fact. I’m away a great deal and
I find that since my assistant has been handling more law work he is too
busy to do things around the office--handling clients, sorting
correspondence and such things. The ordinary stenographer just messes up
everything except a sheet of carbon paper, and the last good one I had
got married, of course. There wouldn’t be much in it--maybe sixty a
month, say--but if you’d like to try--”

Freda looked at him straightly.

“If you’re just trying to find a job for me, I’d rather not, Mr.
Flandon.”

He liked that, and gave her back honesty.

“Of course I would like to see you fixed. I thought this other thing
would work out better. But in all seriousness I could use another clerk
in my office and I’ve been wondering whom I could get. What do you say
to trying it for a month--”

“Let me try it for two weeks and then if I fail, fire me then. Only
you’ll surely fire me if I don’t earn my money?”

“Surely.”


III

Gage went home that night more cheerful than he had been for some time.
He had a mischievous sensation of having rescued a brand from Margaret
Duffield. At dinner Helen asked him if he had attended to Freda’s case.

“Drummond had other arrangements already.”

“What a shame,” she said, “I wonder where we can place that girl. She is
too good to go back and do nothing in Mohawk. And she really wants to
earn money badly.”

“I placed her,” said Gage, hugging his mischief to himself.

“You did? Where?”

“I took her into my office.”

Helen looked at him in surprise.

“You know that she can’t typewrite?”

“I know. But I can use her. She has a good head and--a nice influence. I
think I’ll like to have her around. Since she has to work she’d be
better there than grubbing in politics.”

“As if your office wasn’t full of politics!”

“Well they’re not Duffield-politics.”

“Whatever you mean by that is obscure,” said Helen, “but don’t eat the
child’s head off, will you?”




CHAPTER X

THE CLEAN WIND


Freda felt that night that all her dreams, all her vague anticipations
of doing were suddenly translated into activity and reality. In the
strangest way in the world, it seemed to her, so naïve was she about the
obscure ways of most things, she had a room of her own and a job in St.
Pierre. Margaret Duffield had smiled a little at the news of her job but
at Freda’s quick challenge as to whether she were really imposing on Mr.
Flandon, Margaret insisted that she merely found Gage himself humorous.
She did not say why that was so. Together she and Freda went to see the
landlady about a room for Freda. There was one, it appeared, in an
apartment on the third floor. Freda could have it, if she took it at
once, and so it was arranged.

It was a plain little room with one window, long and thin like the shape
of the room, furnished sparsely and without grace, but Freda stood in
the midst of it with her head high and a look of wondering delight in
her eyes, fingering her door key.

Later she went down to Margaret’s apartment to carry up her suitcase.
She found Gregory there. He had not come for lunch as Margaret had
warned her. Seeing him now more clearly than she had the night before,
Freda saw how cadaverous his face was, how little color there was in his
cheeks. She thought he looked almost ill.

They did not hear her come in. Gregory was sitting with his eyes on
Margaret, telling her something and she was listening in a protesting
way. It occurred to Freda that of course they were in love. She had
suspected it vaguely from their attitude. Now she was sure.

She coughed and they looked up.

“It’s my damsel in distress,” said Gregory, rising, “did everything
clear up? Is the ogress destroyed?”

“If she is, poor Miss Duffield had to do it.”

“She wouldn’t mind. She likes cruelties. She’s the most cruel person--”

“Hush, Gregory, don’t reveal all my soul on the spot.”

“Cruel--and over modest. As if a soul isn’t always better revealed--”

“You can go as far as you like later. Just now you might carry Freda’s
suitcase upstairs.”

He took the suitcase and followed them, entering Freda’s little room
which he seemed to fill and crowd.

“So this is where you take refuge from the ogress?”

“It’s more than a refuge--it’s a tower of independence.”

He looked at her appreciatively.

“We’ll agree on many things.”

Margaret asked Freda to come down with them and she went, a little
reluctantly wondering if she were not crowding their kindness. But
Gregory insisted as well as Margaret.

Margaret sat beside a vase of roses on her table and Gregory and Freda
faced her, sitting on the couch-bed. The roses were yellow,
pink--delicate, aloof, like Margaret herself and she made a lovely
picture. Gregory’s eyes rested on her a little wearily as if he had
failed to find what he sought for in the picture. He was silent at
first--then, deftly, Margaret drew him out little by little about the
Irish Republic, and he became different, a man on fire with an idea.
Fascinated, stirred, Freda watched him, broke into eager questioning
here and there and was answered as eagerly. They were hot in discussion
when Walter Carpenter came.

There was a moment of embarrassment as if each of the men studied the
other to find out his purpose. Then Margaret spoke lightly.

“Do you want to hear about the Irish question from an expert, Walter?”

“Is Mr. Macmillan an expert?”

“He’s to lecture about it on Friday night.”

“It’s a dangerous subject for a lecture.”

“It’s a dangerous subject to live with,” answered Gregory a little
defiantly.

“Are you a Sinn Feiner, Macmillan?”

“I’m an Irish Republican.”

There was a dignity in his tone which made Walter feel his
half-bantering tone ill judged. He changed at once.

“We’re very ignorant of the whole question over here,” he said, “all we
have to judge from is partisan literature. We never get both sides.”

“There is only one side fit to be heard.”

Freda gave a little gasp of joy at that statement. It brushed away all
the conventions of polite discussion in its unequivocal clearness of
conviction.

“I was sure of it,” she said.

Gregory turned and smiled at her. The four of them stood, as they had
stood to greet Walter, Margaret by the side of her last guest, looking
somehow fitting there, Gregory and Freda together as if in alliance
against the others. Then conversation, civilities enveloped them all
again. But the alliances remained. Freda made no secret of her
admiration for Gregory. The openness of his mind, the way his
convictions flashed through the talk seemed to her to demand an answer
as fair. Her mind leapt to meet his.

Gregory Macmillan was Irish born, of a stock which was not pure Irish
for his mother was an Englishwoman. It had been her people who were
responsible for Gregory’s education, his public school and early Oxford
life. But in his later years at Oxford his restlessness and discontents
had become extreme. Ireland with its tangle of desires, its heating
patriotism, heating on the old altars already holy with martyrs, had
captured his imagination and ambition. He had gone to Ireland and
interested himself entirely in the study of Celtic literature and the
Celtic language, living in Connacht and helping edit a Gaelic Weekly.
Then had come the war, and conflict for Gregory. The fight for Irish
freedom, try as he did to make it his only end, had become smaller
beside the great world confusion and, conquering his revulsion at
fighting with English forces he had enlisted.

Before the war Gregory’s verse had had much favorable comment. He came
out of the war to find himself notable among the younger poets,
acclaimed even in the United States. It seemed preposterous to him. The
machinations of the Irish Republican party absorbed him. Intrigue,
plotting, all the melodrama, all the tragedy of the Sinn Fein policy was
known to him, fostered by him. He had been in prison and after his
release had fallen ill. They had sent him to convalesce in Wales. It was
while he was there that there had come an offer from an American lecture
bureau to go on tour in the States telling of Irish literature and
reading his own verse. He laughed at the idea but others who heard the
offer had not laughed. He was to come to the States, lecture on poetry
and incidentally see and talk to various important Americans who might
have Irish sympathies. The Republic needed friends.

He came reluctantly and yet, once in New York, he had found so many
young literati to welcome him, to give him sympathy and hearing if not
counsel that his spirits had risen. And he had met Margaret Duffield and
drawn by her mental beauty, her curious cold virginity, he had fallen in
love with her and told her he loved her. For a few ardent weeks he wooed
her, she explaining away his love, denying it. Then she had come West
and he had sought his lecture bureau, making them include a lecture in
this city which held her. He had come and found her colder, more aloof
than ever, and now sitting in this room of hers he found a quiet,
controlled, cultivated, middle-aged man who seemed to be on terms of
easy and intimate friendship such as he had not attained.

After a little they divided their conversation. Margaret wanted to talk
to Walter about some complication in local politics--something affecting
Helen’s election. And Freda wanted to hear Gregory talk.

He told her about Ireland, of the men and women who plotted secretly and
constantly to throw off every yoke of sovereignty. He told of the beauty
of the Gaelic tongue, translating a phrase or two for her--talked of the
Irish poets and his friends and she responded, finding use now for all
the thoughts that had filled her mind, the poems she had read and loved.
The light in his deep set eyes grew brighter as he looked at the face
turned to his, meeting his own enthusiasm so unquestioningly. Once he
looked at Margaret curiously. She was deep in her discussion and with a
glimmer of a smile in his eyes he turned again to Freda.

At eleven he took her to her room. They went up the stairs to the door
of her apartment.

“Shall I see you between now and Friday night?”

“I’m going to work to-morrow.” Freda came back to that thought with a
jolt. “I don’t know.”

“To-morrow night? Just remember that I’m alone here--I don’t know any
one but you and Miss Duffield and I don’t want the people in charge of
my lecture to lay hands on me until it’s necessary. You’ve no idea what
they do to visiting lecturers in the provinces?”

“But hasn’t Miss Duffield plans for you?”

“I hoped she might have. But she’s busy, as you see.” His tone had many
implications. “So I really am lonely and you made me feel warm and
welcome to-night. You aren’t full of foolish ideas about friendships
that progress like flights of stairs--step by step, are you?”

“Friendships are--or they aren’t,” said Freda.

“And this one is, I hope?”

They heard a sigh within the apartment as if a weary soul on the other
side of the partition were at the end of its patience. Gregory held out
his hand and turned to go.

But Freda could not let him go. She was swept by a sense of the cruel
loneliness of this strange beautiful soul, in a country he did not know,
pursuing a woman he did not win. She felt unbearably pent up.

Catching his hand in both of hers, she held it against her breast,
lifted her face to his and suddenly surprisingly kissed him. And,
turning, she marched into her room with her cheeks aflame and her head
held high. Groping for the unfamiliar switch she turned on her light and
began mechanically to undress. It seemed to her that she was walking in
one of her own storied imaginings. So many things had happened in the
last twenty-four hours which she had often dreamed would happen to her.
Adventures, romantic moments, meetings of strange intimate congeniality
like this with Gregory Macmillan. She thought of him as Gregory.

Gregory went down the stairs quickly, pausing at Margaret’s door to say
good night. The other man was leaving too and they walked together as
far as Gregory’s hotel. They were a little constrained and kept their
conversation on the most general of subjects. Gregory was absent minded
in his comments but as he entered the hotel lobby he was smiling a
little, the immensely cheered smile of the person who has found what he
thought was lost.

Freda reported for work at the office of Sable and Flandon at half past
eight the next morning. She had not been sure at what time a lawyer’s
office began operations and thought it best to be early so she had to
wait a full hour before Mr. Flandon came in. The offices were a large,
well-furnished suite of rooms. There were three young lawyers in the
office, associated with Mr. Sable and Mr. Flandon, and three
stenographers, in addition to a young woman, with an air of attainment,
who had a desk in Mr. Sable’s office and was known as Mr. Sable’s
personal secretary. Freda got some idea of the organization, watching
the girls come in and take up their work. She became a little dubious as
to where she could fit into this extremely well-oiled machinery and
wondering more and more as to the quixotic whim which had made Mr.
Flandon employ her, was almost ready to get up and go out when Gage came
in.

He saw her in a minute and showed no surprise. Instead he seemed to be
anxious to cover up any ambiguity in the position by making it very
clear what her duties were to be. He introduced her to the rest of the
office force as my “personal secretary” at which the Miss Brewster who
held a like position in Mr. Sable’s employ lifted her eyebrows a little.
She was given a desk in a little ante-room outside of Gage’s own office
and Gage, with a stenographer who had done most of his work, went over
her duties. She was to relieve the stenographer of all the sorting of
his correspondence, take all his telephone messages, familiarize herself
with all of his affairs and interests in so far as she could do so by
consulting current files and be ready to relieve him of any routine
business she could, correcting and signing his letters as soon as
possible.

At five o’clock she hurried back to her little room to find a letter in
her mail box. It was from her father and at the sight of it she was
saddened by the sense of separation between them. Every word in it,
counsel, affection, humor breathed his love and thought for her. She was
still poring over it when Gregory came to take her to dinner, and forgot
to be embarrassed about the night before.

Gregory had never intended to be embarrassed evidently. He considered
that they were on a footing of delightful intimacy. His voice had more
exuberance in it to-night than she had previously heard. As they went
past Margaret’s door they looked up at her transom. It was dark.

“I hoped she was coming with us,” said Freda.

“She doesn’t want to come with me,” answered Gregory, “and that has hurt
me for a long time, it seems to me, although perhaps it is only weeks.
But it may be just as well. For I could never make her happy.”

“Would it be so hard?”

“I could never make any woman happy,” said Gregory with extraordinary
violence. “Happiness is a state of sloth. But I could live through
ecstasy and through pain with some one who was not afraid. For this
serene stagnancy which seems to be the end-all of most people, I’m no
good. I couldn’t do it, that’s all.”

His head was in the air and he looked, thought Freda, as if he would be
extremely likely to forget about any woman or anything else and go
sailing off in some fantasy of his own, at any time. She remembered him
as he had been, despondent, when she had first met him, last night full
of blazing enthusiasms, to-night blithely independent. It delighted
her. She had never before met a person who adjusted to no routine.

“Let’s walk in peace and watch the clouds and I’ll tell you what an old
Irish poet said of them.”

He could see her chin lift as she listened.

“To have in your mind such a wealth of beauty--what it must mean--to
feel that things do not starve within you for lack of utterance--” Her
voice was blurred into appreciations.

“Why let them starve?” asked Gregory.

“Perhaps because practical meat-and-drink body needs always claim the
nourishment the things of your mind need--and you let the mind go
hungry.”

“That’s it--that’s what people do--but you won’t. I hear it in your
voice--see it in your face. The things in you are too vital to be
starved. You can cripple them but you can’t kill them.”

“I do not know.”

“You must set yourself free.”

Freda smiled ruefully.

“That’s what women are always talking about and what they mean is a
washing machine.”

“That’s no freedom--that’s just being given the run of the prison. Don’t
you see that what I mean is to keep yourself free from all the petty
desires--the little peeping conventions--free for the great desires and
pains that will rush through you some day? You have to be strong to do
that. You can put up wind breaks for emotion so easily. And you don’t
want them.”

“It means being very fearless.”

“I have never yet met anything worth fearing except cowardice.”

He stopped. They were in the middle of some sidewalk, neither of them
noticed where.

“Why did you kiss me last night?”

“I wanted to. I’ve not been sorry,” answered Freda. “By all the rules
I’ve learned I ought to be abashed, but you don’t live by rules, so why
waste them on you?”

Her smile was faintly tremulous. His strange, unfamiliar eyes looked
into hers and rested there.

“And we won’t have to spend time talking about love,” he said, half to
himself, “we shan’t wear it threadbare with trying to test its fabric.
It comes like the wind--like God.”

Again they breasted the wind and her hand was fast in his. It was a
clean, cool clasp. Freda felt oddly that she had saved her soul, that
she had met an ultimate.




CHAPTER XI

NEWSPAPER CUTS


I

The State Convention was imminent. In the vast barrenness of the
Auditorium rows upon rows of ticketed chairs were filling up with
delegates, sectional banners waved in the various parts of the big hall,
flags made the background for the speakers, chairs and table.

“The machinery for creating a government is in progress,” said Margaret,
“what do you think of it?”

Helen shook her head.

“Inadequate. When you think why they have come, how they have come, what
destinies they hold in their hands. Would women do it better I wonder,
Margaret?”

“Women are more serious. Perhaps. Anyway we must try it. If we don’t
like that machinery we’ll have to invent another kind.”

“Funny male gathering. Think they all have their women--and their
feeling towards their own women must influence their feeling towards all
of us. Their own women to treat cruelly or kindly--or possessively.”

“They’re on the last lap of their possession,” answered Margaret.

The gallery was filling with women, reporters, spectators with one
interest or another. The men were taking their places, formality
settling on the assembly. The temporary chairman was on the platform,
welcoming them, bowing grandiloquently with a compliment that was
inevitable to the ladies in the gallery. Nominations for a chairman
were in order. The temporary chairman retained his place as he had
expected. The committees on credentials, resolutions, organization,
retired and the delegation heard with some restlessness further
exhortation as to the duties which lay before them and the splendor of
opportunity awaiting the party in the immediate future.

The platform was read. Cheers, a little too well organized and not too
freely spontaneous, punctuated it. The women listened to it attentively,
Margaret frowning now and then at some of its clauses.

It was a long task. On its consummation the convention adjourned for
lunch.

It was mid-afternoon before the business of electing the delegates at
large to the National Convention had been reached. Helen felt her face
grow hot and her heart go a little faster even while she mocked at
herself for those signs of nervousness. Margaret watched as if her
finger was on the pulse of a patient.

Hedley’s name went through nomination as every one had expected. Then
Jensen was on his feet.

He was good. The women admitted that after his first words. He dwelt
upon the fact of suffrage, on the practical differences it made in the
electorate. He spoke of the recognition of women as a privilege. Then
with a reference which Helen had feared must come he spoke of the one
woman whose name is “familiar to us through the fine party loyalty of
her husband” and who is herself “the unspoken choice of hundreds and
thousands of women of this State” as their delegate. Helen heard her
name come forth unfamiliarly, heard the burst of clapping, faced the
barricade of glances with a smile.

There was little doubt about it from the start. What opposition there
was must have decided it unsafe to show its teeth. An hour later a
discomfited man, pushed off the party slate by a woman, edged his way
out of the back of the gallery and the woman was surrounded by a group
of men and women, all anxious to be early in their congratulations, some
from sheer enthusiasm, others from motives more questionable.

“And where is Gage passing the cigars?” asked one man jocularly.

Helen looked around as if in surprise that he was not there.

“He isn’t here, is he?”

She knew he wasn’t. She had known he wouldn’t come, even while she could
not quite kill the hope that he would.

At the door were photographers, even a moving picture man waiting for
the new woman delegates. Margaret dropped Helen’s hand and Helen, on
Mrs. Brownley’s arm, moved past the range of picture-takers with an air
of complete composure. In a moment she was in her car and moving out of
sight. Margaret turned to walk back to her own apartment, complete
satisfaction on her face.


II

Helen entered the house quietly and leaving her gloves and wrap on the
hall bench, went into the kitchen to see how things were going there.
There was a pleasant air of competence about it. The maids were busy and
the dinner in active preparation. Upstairs the nurse had the children.
She played with them a little, a warm sense of satisfaction at her
heart. It was so absurd to choose--to fake a choice. This other work,
this other business could be done without sacrificing anything. Gage was
absurd. She was no less a mother, not a bit less good a housewife
because she was a delegate to the Republican Convention. It took a bit
of management, that was all. If she was treating Gage badly she would
feel different.

But there was a guilty feeling which she could not control. He was
unhappy and she the cause. They had been too close for that not to hurt.

At seven o’clock, a little late for dinner, came Gage, a guarded
courtesy in his manner. He asked her pardon for not dressing and handed
her a sheaf of evening papers. She was thankful that they had been
issued too early to contain the news of her triumph. It postponed
certain altercations. She thought suddenly of her barrage of
photographers and of what she had completely forgotten, Gage’s
tremendous dislike of having her picture in the papers.

“I can’t bear the thought of your picture tossed about the
country--looked at casually for an hour and then used as old newspapers
are used--to wrap a package--line a stair-rug--heaven knows what!”

Of course it had appeared occasionally for all of that but Helen had
made the occasions infrequent. She had always liked that prejudice of
his. As she looked at him to-night she thought he looked tired. There
were strained lines around his eyes, and he was very silent.

She said several little things and then, because avoidance of the big
topic seemed impossible, joined him in his silence. He looked at her at
last, smiling a little. It was not the smile of a rancorous man but
rather a hurt smile, a forced smile of one who is going to go through
pain wearing it.

“I have been congratulated all the way home on your account, Helen. It
seems to have been a landslide for you.”

“There was hardly any opposition.” It was meager but she could not go on
without seeming to run into a forbidden or aching subject.

There they had to stop. Helen had a vision of the closed topics between
them, a sudden horror of this cleavage. Suppose he didn’t see that he
was foolish, that she was not treating him badly, that she must lay up
something for herself as a person against the day when he himself might
weary of her as a woman. Fiercely she recast her arguments in her own
mind. Yet there was that tired look in his eyes. You can fight rancor
but not weariness.

“How is Miss Thorstad getting on?”

“Fine. It was a great hunch. You know she actually saves me a lot of
thinking. It shows that a girl with wits is worth half a dozen expert
stenographers. She has an air about her that is dignified and calm and
yet she’s not a stick.”

“I imagine there’s a volcanic soul under that rather calm exterior.”

“Perhaps.”

“Gage, you look tired.”

He made a visible effort to rouse himself.

“Tired? Why, no, dear. Not especially.”

“What are we to do to-night?”

“I have some work to-night.”

She looked somewhat baffled as the door closed after him a half hour
later. Then going to the telephone she called Margaret. Margaret was not
at home. Helen read for an hour and went to bed early.

Gage had meant to work. But he was not working. He was fighting on
through a cloud of bitterness and of thoughts which he knew were not
wholly unreasonable. He was sitting at his littered desk, all the
paraphernalia of work strewn about him and a picture of Helen on his
desk confronting him, accenting his trouble. There she was. He had only
to close his eyes and he saw her even more clearly, breaking through the
clouded doubts of his mind as she had done in the first days of his
marriage--clearness, peace, the one real beauty in the world, the one
real truth in the world--Helen--love. And she had said she wanted to be
“clean of sex!” He scowled at the thought but it danced before him
defiling his memories. It would not go! From those early days, those
days of the “hardening process” there had persisted always in Gage
secret faith, fading now to a hope, flaring now to a conviction that sex
was clean, was beautiful until some other agency defiled it. He
remembered still his tortured adolescent mind revolving around the
problems of the mysteries of birth, stirring him to wonder and the
leering clandestine ugly talk which seemed an ugly wrapping around the
wonder. He had always thought that his son would have no such tortures.
His own proven conviction would carry the boy through all doubts. Now he
seemed cast back in the mire of his own old doubts. Had Helen always
felt defiled? Had all their life been a hideous mixture of shame and
complacencies and hidden revulsions? Had they really conquered nothing?
Or was there nothing to conquer? Was he over-fastidious, unmanly? Was
the necessary thing to blunt once more, this time permanently, these
illusions of his--to go home to Helen and play the part of the demanding
husband, demanding concession in return for concession? Laugh at her
whims, her fads, quarrel with her if necessary. If she must run to her
conventions, let her go. And let him coarsen his feeling so it was
willing to take what was left of her.

He wiped his forehead impatiently. It was damp and that sign of his
intensity shamed him. He had learned that the revealing of emotion was
man’s shame, to be hidden at all costs. Helen had given him a final
lesson in that. Angrily he flung himself into his work, concentrating
actually with his will for hours, mastering the intricacies of the
question on which he must give an opinion in the morning. When he had
done his notes lay ready. He cleaned up the litter of papers, a little
frown on his face and looked at his watch. Nearly midnight. He must go
home.

All the practical machinery of locking up, starting the car, steering,
driving into the garage, locking the garage, turning out the lights in
the library. Nothing was different from other nights. He was a man in
his own house. But over the formalism of his actions and his deliberate
definiteness of conscious thought his mind was in battle. He was trying
to kill the part of him that cried out against going to his wife in such
a mood. He was trying deliberately to kill it with a blunt edged thought
which read “Be a man--not a neurasthenic.” He cursed himself under his
breath. He was no damned temperamental actor to carry on like this
(Always, always, that choking necessity for repressing these
feelings, concealing the fact of feeling). A married man--seven
years--rights--duties--nature--foolish whims--but above that persisted
the almost tortured cry of his spirit, struggling with the hotness of
desire, begging, for its life--“Don’t go home like a beast to her!”


III

In the morning Helen was again worried by his appearance.

“What time did you come in, Gage?”

“About midnight.”

“You look as if you’d slept wretchedly. Did you?”

“Well, enough.” His tone was surly. He could not bear to look at her,
shining haired, head held high, confidence, strength, balance of mind,
justice, radiating from her. He knew what a contrast he made--she did
not need to tell him of his heavy, encircled eyes, his depressed mouth.

She pushed his hair back from his forehead, standing beside his chair.
It was a familiar gesture between them.

“Gage, you mean more than anything else to me. You know that?”

He mumbled an answer.

“But don’t resent it so awfully because I can’t believe that loving is a
woman’s only job. We mustn’t absorb each other.”

Quoted, he thought bitterly, from Margaret Duffield. Quite reasonable
too. Very reasonable. He suddenly hated her for her reasoning which was
denied to his struggling instincts. All desire, all love in his heart
had curdled to a sodden lump of resentment.

He picked up the paper. There was Helen, marching across the page,
smiling into the camera’s eyes. Curious men with hats and crowding women
showed in the blurred background. He looked from the picture to the real
Helen.

“Very good picture.”

His tone was disagreeable. And he had not answered her appeal.

“Be fair, Gage.”

Very well, he would be fair.

“I haven’t the smallest sympathy with all this, Helen. I know you regard
that as unreasonable. It may be that I am. But I don’t believe you’re
bigger or better because of all this. You’ve done it from no spirit of
conviction but because you were flattered into doing it. The Duffield
girl is simply using you for her own convictions. With her they at least
are convictions. But with you they’re not.”

“That’s quite enough, thanks, Gage.”

He was cruelly glad he had hurt her. How it helped the ache in his own
heart!

Helen thought: “He’s jealous of Margaret. Terribly jealous. It’s
abnormal and disgusting. What has happened to him?” She let him leave
the house with what was almost a little life of spirits when he had
gone. She had not time to sift these feelings of Gage now. Later, if
they persisted. She wondered if he should see a doctor, thought for a
moment of psycho-analysis, speculating as to whether that might set him
straight. But the telephone began ringing frantically.




CHAPTER XII

GREGORY LECTURES


I

The committee on entertainment of visiting lecturers had called upon
Gregory at his hotel and been pleased. He had the ear-marks of
eccentricity, to be sure, but in their capacity of hostesses they were
used to that. Geniuses might not live in St. Pierre but they were
frequently imported thither and as a matter of fact several had grown
there, though their wings had been only budding when they had taken
themselves to the denser air of the great cities.

They had met him now and he pleased them. His fine courtesy, the slight
exaggeration of his manner, his deference to their arrangements and his
lack of pompousness charmed them. They withdrew after he had politely
but firmly refused invitations for either lunch or dinner saying that he
must concentrate before his talk. He neglected to mention that he was
concentrating on Freda and was planning to meet her at a lunch room
outside her office where she had said they would have a chance to talk.

A clean, white table needing no cloths to cover its shining metal
surface with two bowls of oyster stew, steaming very hot, furnished him
and Freda their occasion.

She told him Margaret had asked for him.

“And you told her?”

“That I was having dinner with you to-night. I didn’t mention lunch.
Wasn’t that ridiculously secretive?”

“It was deliciously secret.”

“I don’t think I should monopolize all your time, though,” she demurred.

“Freda!” He was frowning now. “You aren’t going to waste time like that,
are you? You aren’t going to hint at cheapness and little crippled
conventions, are you?”

“No, I’m not. I was just saying--words. I wasn’t thinking. I suppose I
was trying to hold you off for a minute for some obscure reason.”

He glanced at her very tenderly.

“You needn’t hold me off, darling. But it’s such a short time. And
there’s nothing in the world as wise as to seize the cup of joy when
it’s full. There’s an undiscoverable leak in that cup and it empties if
you dawdle over it. It may be accident--death--or human
perversity--almost anything. I’m so sure our cup is full now that I want
to drink it with you quickly. Listen--there’s nothing in the world
against it except that some person whom neither of us cares about at all
might say we weren’t considered--were too hasty. For the sake of that
obscure person whom we don’t know, you aren’t going to send me away, are
you?”

She was hesitant.

“It doesn’t trouble you longer that I came out here to see Margaret
Duffield, does it?”

“A little,” she answered honestly.

“It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t and it mustn’t. With her it was all argument
and all tangle--with you it was like a flash of light.”

“I don’t want her to matter,” said Freda, “I always have wanted my love
to come like this. Without question. Fearlessly.”

“Then you will, darling?”

“I don’t care about the rest, but there’s father. I hate to not tell
him.”

“Will he hate it when you’re happy?”

“He’ll love it.”

“Then--listen. I shall tell him--later. I’ll tell him that I always
prayed that when I married I wouldn’t have to have the eyes of the world
on the coming of my bride. That my wedding should be secret and holy. If
we could tell him without the rest knowing--but he would tell your
mother, wouldn’t he?”

“And mother would want a wedding,” said Freda, a little drearily.

He leaned across to touch her hand.

“You don’t think it’s furtive--clandestine?”

“Oh, no!”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No--”

“I must go on, you see--those damned lectures. I must have the money.
And I must go through to Spokane. I could ask you to wait until I got
back but, darling--what’s the use of waiting? What’s the use of waiting?
We could be married to-morrow--and have Sunday together. Then--then--we
could wait for each other. Or you could come with me--”

“No, we couldn’t, Gregory. It’s too expensive. You know we couldn’t.”

She was so definite that his face fell. At the sight of it she smiled
and reassured him.

“I shan’t mind a bit not having any money.”

“Money’s a nuisance. But I want enough of it--I’ll earn enough of it to
take you to Ireland with me, when I come back in six weeks.”

Her forehead was a little knit. He went on eagerly.

“I’ve never been so practical. You wouldn’t believe what a man of
affairs--American affairs--I’ve been. I looked up the name of a little
hamlet where we could go to-morrow afternoon and be married by sundown.
And then, sweetheart, an eternity of a day before us--and immortality
to look forward to.”

“And no one to know.”

“Unless you wish it--no one.”

“I don’t wish it. It sounds dangerous and mad--but if I don’t, Gregory,
I know I’ll regret it all the rest of my life. It’s my chance to prove
life. It’s not as if I had the faintest doubt of you--”

“Never have I been married,” he laughed, “I’m poor and that’s the worst
of me. You can read all about me in the papers to-day. They tell the
worst.”

“Freda, darling, I’ve always wanted to steal the secret of life. Come
with me--and we can do it.”

There was a flame in her eyes--a response as urgent as his call.

“That’s what I’ve wanted too--all my life.”

The waitress at their table glanced at them impatiently. They dallied
too long--this gawky, skinny, black haired young fellow and the girl in
the dark blue cape. Making love, all right. She was a pretty girl too,
but no style. All that heavy, yellow hair half slipping down her neck.
She’d do with a bob.

She had a still greater impatience as she searched the table in vain for
the tip they had forgotten.


II

The committee in the ante-room glanced cheerfully in at the crowd
gathering for Gregory’s lecture. They had hoped for a big audience but
it was a bad week. The town was full of the Convention delegates and in
little mood for lectures, they had feared. But people came. Fully a
thousand people had gathered to hear the lecture on Ireland and its
Poetry.

They wondered a little at some of the people who bought tickets at the
door--men whom they were sure never had attended any lecture under their
auspices before. That was because they did not know that Gregory
Macmillan’s name was one familiar to other circles than the literary
poetic ones--that his vigor in the Irish Republican cause had been told
even on this side of the Atlantic. There were those who would have come
to hear a lecture of no other subject--Irishmen who had heard his name
and subject announced at their meeting of the Knights of Columbus. The
literary-minded, the students, the people who patronized the lectures of
the Collegiate Alumnae as they did all semi-social affairs, sat side by
side in the hall and watched Gregory as he came out from the faded wings
at one side of the amateur stage.

Margaret Duffield, Carpenter, Helen and a rather unwilling Gage had
adjoining seats. Gage had been extremely disrespectful in his
characterization of the lecture, the society which gave it and the
presumable character of the man who was to give it, especially as he
learned that he was a friend of Margaret’s.

Yet it was Gage who enjoyed the lecture most. From the opening sentence
it was clear that the discussion of Irish Poetry was to Gregory merely a
discussion of Ireland. In Ireland to be a poet meant that one thought
deeply enough to be a patriot. All his poets were patriots.

He made no specific indictment of England except as he read with
passionate fervor the translation of Padraic Pearse from the old Irish--

    “The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
    Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway.
    Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low,
    And even the English, perchance their hour will come!”

It was a quotation and he did not comment on its content. But he
sketched the lives of some of his poets--his friends--his leaders. He
made their dream clear--their simple idealism--their ignoring of the
politics of expediency--their lives so chaste and beautiful. He told of
their homes, their schools,--and sometimes when he ended simply, “He was
killed in the attack of ----, shot by the military”--or more briefly, “He
was executed on ----,” a shudder ran through his audience.

He would show the gayety of Ireland, the joy of the people, their
exuberance--and end with a simple “Of course it is not like that now.
There is much grief and mourning.”

It was not politics. It was a prose poem composed by a poet. One could
not take exception to it as political but the hearers would forever have
their standpoints colored by what he said. It was like a picture which,
once seen, could never be forgotten.

Margaret listened, her ready mind taking exception to some of the things
he said, seeing how he played upon his audience--Walter and Helen
listened with intellectual appreciation. But Gage, slouched down in his
seat felt envy grow in him. There was before him what he had always
wanted. A man who had something indestructible, something immortal to
care for. A conviction--and an ideal--an outlet for his soul. He felt
himself cheated.

He liked too to listen to the poems about women. No controversial
tirades these poems--but verses soft and sweet and pliable as the
essence of women--once had been. He checked his running thoughts and
looked at his wife, sitting beside him with her head high, “conscious of
herself, every minute now,” he thought bitterly.




CHAPTER XIII

LIFE ENTRUSTED


I

Freda worked until noon the next day. Saturday was a half holiday with
the employees of the firm so there was no question of her remaining in
the office longer. All morning she worked steadily, almost absorbedly.
It was as if she held her ecstasy off from her, unwilling to even think
about it yet.

She had spent the night before, after the lecture to which she went
alone, in writing a letter to her father. It was a long intimate letter,
telling of the kind of work she was doing, the way she was living and of
what she was thinking. She wrote as if she were talking to him, on and
on, and her ending was like the conclusion of a talk, as if she asked
for his blessing. “So you see, father dear, I’m all right. And I want
you to know that I never forget what you’ve said to me--that I must live
so that I’ll never be ashamed of having had life entrusted to me.”

She was really not afraid at all. Her demurring had been only the
mechanical reactions of conventions which sat lightly on her. In her
heart she knew that she was at home with Gregory and that the
completeness of their mutual understanding could mean only that they
belonged together. Gregory, like her father, reassured her. In the midst
of his impetuousness, his driving thinking, she felt the purity without
which he could not have been quite so free. She felt his kindness too,
and the gentleness of his hands. He was like her father, she thought.
Her father had perhaps had the glory of adventure in him too once, but
it had been made submissive to circumstance. It had left its residue of
understanding. She felt very sure that when he knew he would be glad.

Physically her fine fearlessness and eager nerves kept her from any
reaction, or from any of the terrors, real or assumed, which women have
come to believe right and modest at the approach of marriage. And minor
faults of Gregory she never paused to consider. It would not have
occurred to her that it was a fitting time to look for them. Little
problems, living difficulties troubled her serene health not at all. She
would have been ashamed to measure them up against her love. The latent
spirit of adventure in her, her fine romantic training, taken from books
and preserved because of her limited knowledge of people, were like
winds blowing her on to the heart of her romance.

With all this strength and surety, this Ali Baba’s cave of beauty to
explore, it was yet characteristic of her that she could work. She had
been in the office four days and already her place was made. It was easy
to see that she was intelligently competent and to know that her
efficiency was not a matter of making a first impression. They all liked
her and she already was beginning to lighten work for various people.

Flandon was not at the office at all on Saturday. He called up in the
course of the morning and speaking briefly to Freda told her to tell Mr.
Sable that he was going out of town over the week-end and would be back
for the hearing of the Kraker case on Monday morning. That made it
easier for Freda. She had a little fear that there might have been some
extra duty for her on this Saturday afternoon which would wreck the
golden plans. So at noon she put her desk in order--she was beginning to
feel her proprietorship in a desk now--and went back to her room to get
her bag, packed the night before.

She had meant to leave a note for Miss Duffield, but by chance she met
her on the stairs. Margaret looked at the bag and made her own quick
deduction.

“Going home for the week-end?”

“I’ll be back Monday,” said Freda, feeling rather rotten as she let
Margaret’s misunderstanding pass.

But she forgot about that. She forgot everything as she went out in the
street full of May sunshine and ran for the street-car which would take
her to the railway station. There, in the noon crowd, she put her bag
between her feet and hung on to the strap above her head, unable to keep
the smile from her face any longer.

Gregory was there waiting for her. And at the first word he spoke, his
spirit of exalted happiness carried Freda up into the heights. He had a
word of endearment for her and then with her bag and his held in one
hand, he managed with the other to hold her close to his side and they
went to find their train.

There was an empty seat. That was the first piece of luck, when the
train already looked impossibly full of men and women and families,
setting out with baggage which overflowed from the seats to the aisles.
But there was the seat, at the end of the coach, undiscovered yet, or
perhaps miraculously set apart for them--made invisible to other
searchers--its red plush surface cleanly brushed for the journey and a
streak of sunlight like a benison across the back of it.

Freda slipped in beside the window and, placing their baggage in the
little rack, with a touch that was almost reverent for Freda’s bag,
Gregory sat down beside her.

“We have an hour and forty minutes,” he declared, “and look, my
darling.” He took out of his pocket a tiny white box, but, as she
stretched her hand, he put it away again.

“You mustn’t see it. Not yet. But I wanted you to know I had it. It’s
the most divine circlet of gold you ever saw. The halo of my wife.”

His voice was very soft and tender, the contact of his body against hers
caressing.

A boy went by with sandwiches. They surprised each other by regarding
him intently and then it occurred to Freda why they did so.

“Did you forget lunch too?” she cried.

So they lunched on ham sandwiches and Peters’ milk chocolate and water
in sanitary paper cups and the train creaked into action, joltingly, as
befitted a day coach in a local train.

Little stations twinkled by with sudden life and between them lay fields
and valleys where life pushed quietly to the sun. They watched the
villages with tenderness. Each one unexplored was a regret. There were
so many things to be happy with. A child came running up to get a drink
of water and leaned on the edge of their seat, staring at them
curiously. They liked that. It seemed as if the child guessed their riot
of joy and peace.

They had found that it was necessary for the haste of their marriage to
go over the borderline of the state, a matter of forty miles. And they
alighted in a little town of which they knew nothing. It was impressive
as they looked about. Straight neat roads led away from the red roofed
station.

“I’d like to walk into the country,” said Freda.

“So we shall. But first we must be married.”

He left her in the parlor of the little hotel while he went to find the
justice of the peace. In half an hour he was back, exultant.

“Nothing dares to hamper us,” he declared. “Now, beloved.”

So they were married, in the little bare office of the justice of the
peace, with a clerk from the court called in to witness that they were
made man and wife by law. Gregory slipped the “circlet of gold” on the
finger of his wife and as he made answers to the questions put to him,
his eyes were on Freda as if he spoke to her alone, as if to her alone
was he making this pledge of faith and loyalty and love. Freda did not
look at him. For the moment she was fulfilling her pledge to life and
Gregory was its instrument.

Then they were out again in the sunlight, choked with emotion, silent.
Vaguely they walked back to the hotel. It was mid-afternoon.

“Shall we stay at the hotel?” asked Gregory.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Only it would be nicer in
the country, wouldn’t it?”

“There should be inns,” said Gregory, frowning for the first time that
day as he looked at the square, ugly, frame building which was before
them, a knot of curious loafers on the porch. “In Ireland we have inns.
They’re somehow different.”

“I truly don’t care where we are,” smiled Freda and for that his eyes
glanced down to hers with admiration.

None the less he went to inspect the little rooms of the hotel and came
down depressed.

“I don’t want you to go up there, darling. Let’s see if there isn’t some
other place.”

The hotel keeper, clerk and manager, reflected on the inquiry which
Gregory tried to make polite.

“Of course there’s the Roadside Inn if you’re looking for style. Five
miles out. Jitney take you there.”

“I know that place,” said Freda, “That’s lovely, Gregory. Oh, I think
you’d like it. Only it may be noisy. They dance there at night.”

The proprietor misunderstood.

“So far as dancing goes here we dance here till midnight too,” he said,
full of pride.

Gregory laughed.

“Well, sir, we think we’d like to be in the country to-day. We’ll try
the inn you so kindly speak of.”

The jitney ride gave them further sense of adventure and when they
stopped in front of the little inn with its quiet air and its stiff
little flowerbeds aglow with red geraniums, they were enchanted. Their
room pleased them too. A little low-ceilinged room with bright chintzes
and painted furniture and a casement window that stood a little open.
The colored man who played the fiddle at night, carried up their bags.
When he had left them, Gregory kissed his wife.

Ten minutes later they went down the brown road where the dust lay soft
under their feet. White birches and young elders all fresh and green
with early summer foliage surrounded them. Then from the road a little
trodden path slipped back into the woods.

“Shall we try it?”

The woods closed behind them. The little path led a faltering way
between trees where long streams of sunlight fell. Under their feet
grass rustled. Branches leaned to touch them. All the woods seemed to
know that lovers were passing and whispered tremulously.

Gregory heard the whispers and turned to the girl at his side. Each
heart heard the other as he stopped to hold her in his embrace until
they grew faint with joy.

“I love you, Freda,” said the man, ever restless.

Freda smiled at him. It was all she could do. Demonstrations of love
were new to her. She was unbent, ready for caresses but not yet quite
responsive except in the fine clarity of her mind. It was Gregory who
must stop to bring her hand to his lips, to hold her against him for a
silent moment.

The woods grew thinner.

“Ah, look,” cried Freda, “the enchanted woods end in a farmhouse yard!”
She was standing on a little knoll and beneath them could be seen the
farmhouse and its buildings, a group of children, perhaps the very ones
who had trodden the path on their daily way to school.

“I like it,” said Gregory. “It’s love bending into life. Don’t you like
to see it from here--like a pastoral picture? Children, kittens, the
thin woman going to carry the scraps to the chickens. See, Freda--isn’t
life beautiful?” Freda saw it through his poet’s vision for a moment. It
was truly beautiful--the group held together by the common interest of
procreation and maintenance--but she saw that more beautiful still were
the eyes of Gregory. She had a sudden feeling that she must never dim
his vision. Whatever might come she must protect that vision even
though, as now, she might see that the farm below was full of signs of
neglect and that the children quarreled.

They turned back and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and he took off
her hat and stroked her hair gently as she lay against his arm. They did
not talk much. Incomplete little phrases in constant reiteration of
their own happiness. Those were all.

The dusk came early and damply in the woods. They went back to the Inn,
a little chilled, and Freda brushed her hair into neatness and went down
to meet her husband in the dining-room. It was a strange and familiar
feeling to see him standing by the door waiting for her. They were very
hungry and talkative now. With the darkness outside, intimacy pressed
closer upon them and they were shy of it, deliciously shy, enticing it
closer to them by their evasion of it.

So after their dinner they sat in the little guest parlor of the Inn and
watched each other, talking about irrelevancies until the whiz of a
motor outside made Freda start.

“You know, Gregory, I’d sooner go upstairs. I know some of the people
who sometimes come here. I’d rather not see them to-night.”

“Yes, darling.”

In their bed-room the muslin curtains were tugging at their sashes,
trying to pull themselves free. A breeze of thick soft coolness came
through the room. Freda felt as if her heart would burst with very
wonder. Life to be known so deeply--so soon. And, as was strange and
frequent with her she lost the sense of everything except Life, a
strange mystery, a strange progress, of which she was an inevitable
part, spreading about her, caressing her, absorbing her. She was not
thinking of Gregory, until he came, knocking so absurdly, so humbly on
the fragile door that her mind leapt into sudden pity, and personal
love.

“You are like a white taper before the altar of love,” breathed Gregory.

Around them in the soft darkness the breeze played lightly. Beneath was
the sound of dance music, of occasional laughter. They heard nothing to
distress them in their complete isolation. Only when the music became
tender, falling into the languorous delicacy of a waltz it added
witchery to their rapture.


II

In the morning it was Gregory who was the practical one--Freda the
mystic. Her mind was filled with mystery and dulled with the pervading
sense of her husband. He was inconceivably more to her than he had been.
She was infinitely rich with thought and revelation and too languorous
to think. Gregory overwhelmed her. In his spirited tenderness, declaring
her the miracle bride of the world, talking an unending poem of love to
her, he was active now--she dreamy and spent. He brought her breakfast
and sat beside her while she ate it. And suddenly it became clear to
them that their time was slipping quickly by.

It had been the plan to return to the city that night but they found it
impossible to leave each other.

“If we rose with the dawn, we could motor back,” said Gregory, “and I
could take the train of abomination that is bearing me somewhere or
other into a barren country and you could be rid of me for a little. Oh,
my darling, the eternity of the next weeks!”

“The eternity that will come after!” she said smiling.

So they decided to spend another night in the little inn. There were
several other guests there but they had a feeling of owning the place.
The lean, colored waiter in the dining-room smiled at them and their
absorption, and gave them the attention he usually reserved for those
too drunk to tip wisely. The chambermaid found pins for a forgetful
Freda and smirked at her as she gave them, with full knowledge of the
honeymoon. Even the manager on being told they would stay another night,
smiled.

Every one smiled. They went for a long walk in the evening and a carter
gave them a ride back to the inn. What was that but the charm of luck
which was upon them?

It was Sunday night but though there was no dancing, people dropped in
on motoring parties, ready to be warmed by hot suppers before they took
the last stretch of the ride back to the city. And it was as Freda was
going upstairs, still in that rapt absorption which had held her day
that one of the incomers saw her and stopped still in amazement. She was
in profile before him, her head held high and she was turning the curve
of the stairs, walking slowly.

The observer walked up to the desk and spoke to the manager who sat
making out bills behind it. There was no visible register, though his
eyes cast about for one.

“Who was the lady who was going upstairs?” he asked unwisely.

His manner did not recommend him.

“A lady who is stopping here,” said the Swedish lady with some
hostility, affronted by the casual question of this young gay fellow.
She had observed Freda and was unlikely to give out information to young
loafers.

“I thought I knew her.” Ted Smillie tried to get on firmer ground.

His interlocutor seemed to grunt in dubiousness.

He gave it up and went into the dining-room, trying to find out more
from the waiter. But the waiter was not too free. He had not been in a
roadhouse inn three years without learning a kind of discretion.

“Lady and her husbun’, suh. Several couples here. Couldn’t make sure,
suh.”

But Ted knew whom he had seen. He knew there had been no mistake. After
all, except for a flare of jealousy, even that not too keen in his
increasingly tasteless emotions, he would have felt that the man did not
matter. But if she was that kind, why on earth had she turned him down?
That would be his reasoning. And, flavoring the whole, that vitiated
detective instinct which makes gossips of little minded men, was
interested, and he was anxious to tell his story. He did not choose the
two men with whom he was supping for confidants. He managed to get one
of them to ask to see the register, just on the chance that it might
throw light on Freda’s companion. But it did not help him. A party of
young men and women had sprawled twenty or thirty names on the register
last night. Ted did not know them and where that party began or ended he
could not tell. There was not a recorded name familiar to him for the
last three days. He went back to the city with his friends and the
Roadside Inn grew quiet.

Freda and Gregory could not sleep. There seemed a million new thoughts
in the mind of each of them, contending with the few hours they were to
be together.

“I can’t bear to have morning come--and the end--” said Freda softly.
She was more dependent now.

“Say the word and I’ll cancel the contracts.”

“You couldn’t. You know you said there’d be a forfeit. We’d be paying
your bureau the rest of our lives. No--you must go. And I’ll be happy.
But when you come back you’ll never go again. I’ll be no modern woman, I
feel. I’ll be the sort of woman who cries when her husband goes to
work.”

It was delightful nonsense.

“I don’t understand modern woman,” said Gregory, “you’re not modern.
Modern is fashionable--that’s the most of it. You are eternal, darling.
You only happen once in a thousand years and then only in the dream of a
poet. I hate your modern woman, living by her little codebook of what
she shall give and what she shall not give--what children she will bear,
what income she must have--who shall earn it. One can’t measure life
that way. It’s got to be measured by freedom or slavery. Either you’re
free and brave, ready to sound depths of life if they’re worth sounding
or you’re a slave and too cowardly to do anything but obey the rules.”

She did not answer. She was in no mood for discussion.




CHAPTER XIV

WHAT WAS TO BE EXPECTED


I

Monday was busy in Sable and Flandon’s office. Conferences, a dinning of
telephones, a vast opening of mail. Every one was conscious of important
work in transaction. The Laidlaw case was having its first hearing
before the District Court and it was understood to be worrying, ticklish
business. The Judge was irascible and his point of view of the case
important from this first hearing. Both the partners were at the office
by half past nine and left together, one of the younger lawyers
accompanying them, much as young doctors are present at a skillful
operation, to learn and observe.

Freda, watching and hearing much of the office talk, discreet as it was,
wished she could have gone along too. She was feeling very fit, buoyed
up by the first strength of separation when it is a delight to feel
one’s capacity for cheerfulness and bravery in the midst of loneliness.
She wanted to plunge very hard into work, to do something important, to
get thoroughly absorbed in her work and not to dawdle into dreams. So
she told herself strongly. At night, when she was alone, she would live
with her memories and her dreams. It was youth’s swagger in the presence
of emotion. She was busy until Flandon left the office, making memoranda
of things to be done, getting papers for him, keeping him from telephone
interruptions. But after ten o’clock the office settled down and became
quiet. The clerks were hammering away endlessly at their typewriters,
the few clients who came in were quickly taken care of, and Freda found
herself harder to control. She was looking up a list of references that
Mr. Flandon wanted ready by noon and answering his telephone. It was not
absorbing work. Try as she would, her mind slipped away from her and
concentrated on amazing facts.

She was a married woman. A week ago she had been a girl visiting at the
home of the Brownleys’. Rapid enough the events which had led to her
working here--but this other secret whirlwind--how strange it all was.
She wondered if lives were like that. Going along placidly enough until
they struck the edge of the waterfall of circumstance and then--. All
lives must have secret strange places. She had loved, in Mohawk, to
reflect on those sometimes. Spoon River had never quite gone out of her
mind. She had always, since she had read it, seen people as other than
the reflection of their acts and seeming--speculating on the curious
contradictions of appearances and motives. Here she sat, working, Gage
Flandon’s clerk, Eric Thorstad’s daughter. And those two things mattered
not at all--gave no key to her. It mattered only that she was the wife,
the secret wife of a man whom she had known six days. Physically,
chemically, actually she was altered. That was life. When you found it,
you held it to you secretly. You never told. That was why you couldn’t
tell about people. Life might be caressing them, making itself known to
them, biting them. Over it all the vast illusion of action. It was
illusion.

The morning drifted by. At a little after twelve Mr. Sable and Mr.
Flandon came in together. It was easy to see that things had not gone
well. They were self-contained, sober, but the lines of Gage’s face were
ugly and those of his partner disapprovingly set. They went into Mr.
Sable’s office and closed the door. Freda, getting on her hat and coat,
heard the young lawyer who had accompanied them, speaking to a
colleague.

“Didn’t go well. Flandon got Judge Pratt mad. Something got under
Flandon’s skin and he didn’t play the old judge very well.”

That was all she heard.

At the moment Gage was hearing the same thing. Sable was walking about
the office in some irritation explaining it.

Gage had continued to handle his work badly at the office. Like many a
man with a hobby he took his hobby into business hours. But the
concession which might be made to a man on account of golf, on account
of curling, were not to be made for a man who had a boresome way of
bringing in the eternal question of whether women were progressing or
“actually retrogressing,” “whether all this woman movement weren’t a
mistake,”--and so on. Needing support, comfort, consolation,
encouragement and direction, Gage, as he felt about for them, only
became somewhat absurd.

Men are not tolerant of those who bore them, except sometimes in the
family, where such things are endured for practical reasons. They moved
away from Gage, so to speak, while he talked on.

Sable noticed it. He had his own irritation, growing more focused each
day. To begin with, they would lose the Laidlaw case and it was all,
Sable thought, due to that false start which Gage had made. He had
rather decisively taken the matter out of Gage’s hands towards the end
but the thing had been lost already--or he preferred to think so. Sable
could bear to lose cases but not a case which involved so much money. It
frightened off the right sort of clients.

When Gage was a cub lawyer, arguing cases with flaring energy in the
local courts, Sable had picked him out as a bright young man. He had
kept his eye on him and his progress, with sheer admiration for the
practical genius with which he picked up important clients and gained
and held their confidence. He edged in on politics after a little--and
in Mr. Sable’s own party. Then King and Sable had made a proposition to
young Flandon--that he join them, bringing his clients, of course, and
coming in, not as an ordinary apprentice lawyer but as the colleague of
Mr. Sable. It was an amazing offer to be made to so young a man. Gage
accepted it. Two years later King, rather elderly now and ready to
retire, went to Congress and the firm name changed from King and Sable
to Sable and Flandon. Flandon made good. He made important alliances for
Mr. Sable, he played the political end for Mr. King, he made money for
himself.

These things were not to be passed lightly over and Mr. Sable had them
all docketed somewhere in his mind. He was fond of Gage too, in his own
restrained way. But Sable was fifty-eight. He had seen many a brilliant
start end in disaster, many a man with ability fail. He knew most of the
signs of failure in men. He knew further exactly what steps Gage should
take to achieve eminence. They were broad and fair before him. Instead
it was increasingly clear that Gage was not keeping his mind on his
work--that he was letting his nerves get the better of his judgment. For
some reason or other he was making a fool of himself. When a man made a
fool of himself, there were, in Sable’s experience, one of three things
back of it--a woman, liquor or speculation. He was watching Gage to see
which of these things it might be in his case.

All this talk which Flandon was always getting off about women
now--thought the senior partner--that was camouflage. He felt fairly
convinced that Gage must be playing the fool with some woman. Irregular
and disappointing, with a lovely, fine looking, distinguished wife like
Mrs. Flandon. Rotten streak in Flandon probably. Sable chose the woman
solution rather definitely. Gage drank when he could get it of course.
And he nearly always had a supply on hand. But he used his head about it
pretty well. It didn’t seem like liquor trouble. As for
speculation--surely he wouldn’t play the fool there. There was plenty of
money coming to Gage, and he always could get more.

It must be a woman. Probably Flandon was trying to keep it from his wife
and that was what was on his nerves. Some little--Sable characterized
Gage’s visionary lady impolitely. He thought on, his mind lighting, for
no apparent reason, on Freda. And there it stopped. Queer, Flandon’s
bringing that girl into the office. Bright enough but no experience.
Unlike him too, considering his usual impatience with inexpert
assistance. He wondered--

So while the Brownley girls gossiped in ugly, furtive, rather lustful
conversations and Ted Smillie told his little discovery on occasion as
being an instance of what those “smooth touch-me-not girls were usually
up to”--while Mr. Sable, his mouth tight in repression and his eyes
keen, watched and noted Freda. Freda went on her serene way. She was
serene and she was happy. At times her happiness seemed to shut her
completely off from every one--even in her thoughts from her father. She
never tired of exploring her memory for the sound of Gregory’s voice,
the touch of his hands, the mystery of love. More and more as the days
went by she hugged her secret to herself. She could not have shared a
vestige of it. Its exquisite privacy was part of its quality. She had
the vaguest notions of what might be waiting her as Gregory’s wife.
Certainly she might have a baby--normally that probably would happen to
her in the next nine months. Gregory was poor. They’d have to work. And
there might be hard things. She thought once or twice that it might be
an ugly sort of proposition if she did not have the particular feeling
she did for Gregory. But there it was. It wasn’t a matter of the
mind--nor of physiology either. She didn’t believe it was physiology
which made her deliciously faint and weak as she read Gregory’s strange
letters--letters so frequent, so irregular, so curiously timed and
written--on the back of a menu, on a scrap of envelope, on a dozen
sheets of hotel paper. Each message, beating, alive, forcing its
entrance. This was the love that according to Margaret was the undoing
of her sex. She knew she would go anywhere Gregory wanted her to go, to
be with him. That she knew her life with him would have its independence
completely in so far as her own love allowed it, did not make it less
clear to her that even if the independence had been less, if she had
found him a man of convention she would none the less--but would she?

She was immensely interested in possibly having a baby, and anxious to
know about it. She wanted to tell Gregory. She wrote him letters in
which she spent the deepest of her thought. She said things in her
letters which would have astounded her if she had read them over. But
she never did read them after she had written them. It would have seemed
almost like cheating to read them as if for criticism.

But to-day she had not had a letter from Gregory and several unpleasant
things broke in upon her absorbed happiness. She missed his letter which
she usually went home at noon to get. In the afternoon as she sat at her
desk working and trying to feel that she could fill up the time until
she went home that night to see if there was a letter, Bob and Allison
Brownley came in with another young girl. They were as resplendent as
usual and Freda judged that they were collecting for some fashionable
charity, from their intrusion with pencils and notebooks. She had seen
women invade these offices almost every day for some such reason but it
was her first encounter with Bob since that night on which she had left
her house. To her horror she found herself flushing, and hoping that
Barbara would not notice her and that thought enraged her so that she
raised her head and looked full at the girls coming towards Mr.
Flandon’s office, evidently referred to her.

She expected some embarrassment in Barbara and instead met a glance of
insolence and surprise. She looked at Allie but Allie looked away and
left it to Barbara.

“Can I take your message?” asked Freda with a little hauteur.

“We prefer to see Mr. Flandon personally,” said Barbara, and went by. It
was in Freda’s mind to stop them but Barbara was swift. Freda could hear
Mr. Flandon’s voice greeting her and judged it was too late to do
anything. She sat down at her desk frowningly and was further surprised
when the door opened very shortly and the girls went out. They,
especially Barbara, had heads unpleasantly held, angrily tilted. The
buzzer sounded for Freda.

She found her employer sitting at his desk looking as angry as his
departing guests.

“Sit down a moment, Miss Thorstad, will you?”

She did as he told her. It was evident that he had something important
and difficult to say. She watched him. He looked nervous, tired too, she
thought.

“That young lady made some unpleasant remarks about you and I asked her
to leave the office,” he said.

“Oh--I’m sorry,” answered Freda. “She’s been abominable, Mr. Flandon.
But it’s too bad you should have been involved.”

“Don’t let that bother you,” said Gage grimly; “it’s of no consequence.
But I wonder if you ought to let her be quite so broadcast in her
remarks. It could be stopped.”

“It doesn’t matter--truly it doesn’t. Let her say what she pleases. If
any one wants to know the truth of the matter I always can tell it, you
see.”

“Would you think it infernal impudence if I asked you what the truth
was?”

She hesitated and then laughed a little.

“You know the funny thing is that I had almost completely forgotten the
whole business. It seemed important at the time but it was really
trivial. Except for the fact that it opened up other things to me. Of
course I’ll tell you, if you want to know.”

She did tell him in outline, stressing the fact of the misunderstanding
all around, on the whole, dealing rather gently with Barbara, now that
anger had gone out of her.

“I had made rather a fool of myself you see,” she finished.

He looked at her as if waiting for her to go on.

“That’s all.”

“I see. She--well--.” He let that pass. “Now ordinarily it is easy to
say that gossip and slander don’t make any difference to a high minded
person. I think you are high minded. I do feel however that she has made
this incident a basis for a kind of slander that is dangerous. Her
accusations against you are, from what I hear, absolutely libelous. It
wouldn’t take ten minutes to shut her mouth if I could talk to her. But
I want you to fully refute her specific attacks.”

“I know. I imagine she might say almost anything.”

“Well, then, you have never stayed at the Roadside Inn, have you?”

To his amazement the face of the girl in front of him changed. She had
been calm and half smiling. Now astonishment, consciousness, and
something like panic showed in her eyes, her suddenly taut body.

“Does she say that? How did she know?” There was a little moan of dismay
in Freda’s answer.

Gage’s face grew stern. He sat looking at the girl across from him,
whose eyes were closed as if in pain.

“To lay her hands on that,” said Freda, under her breath.

“I don’t understand you,” said Gage rather curtly.

She lifted her face.

“It hurts to have any one know that--but for her to know it most of
all.”

“Such things are usually public knowledge sooner or later, my dear young
lady. Clandestine--”

“Don’t say that,” cried Freda, her voice rising, “don’t use that word.”

And then as if some gate had been opened her words poured out. “Can’t
you understand something being too beautiful to be anything except
secret? It was something I couldn’t have let even those who love me know
about. And to have her ugly devastating hands on it! It soils it. I feel
her finger marks all over me. It was mine and she’s stolen it.”

Her head went down on her arms on the desk in front of her. Gage watched
her with curiosity, embarrassment and pity. To his mind this love affair
was a shady business but she didn’t see it so. That was evident. Her
abandonment touched a chord of sympathy in him. He knew how she was
being rent by pain.

“My dear girl,” he told her, more gently, “I’m afraid you’ve been very
unwise.”

“No--not unwise.” She raised her head and smiled unsteadily. “I’ve been
quite wise. It’s just bad luck--that’s all.”

“Could you tell me about it?”

She got up and walked to the window, evidently trying to compose
herself. “It’s nothing that matters to any one but me. And I suppose you
are thinking things that, even if they don’t matter, had better be set
straight. For perhaps you think they matter. There’s nothing that I’ve
done that I shouldn’t have done. I was there at that Inn--with--with my
husband. It was just that we wanted--he even more than I at first until
I learned why--to keep that little bit of life for ourselves. We didn’t
want people to know--we didn’t want to share with any one except each
other. I know you won’t understand but there’s nothing to condemn except
that we had our own way of--caring.”

“But I do understand,” answered Gage, “and I’m glad you told me. I do
most entirely understand. Because I’ve felt that way. Is your husband
here?”

“He’s gone,” said Freda, “but he’ll come back. You see I married Gregory
Macmillan.”

A memory of that slim, gaunt young poet came to Gage. Yes, this was how
he would do it. And how perfect they were--how beautiful it all was.

“Mr. Flandon,” said Freda, “let them say what they please about me. Let
them talk--they don’t know about Gregory--or do they?”

“No--they don’t.”

“Then don’t tell them, will you? Don’t tell any one. I don’t care what
they say now if they don’t lay their hands on the truth. I can’t bear to
have the truth in their mouths. Please--what do I care what any one
says? I don’t know any one. I never see those people. He will be back
and we’ll go away and they’ll forget me.”

She was very beautiful as she pleaded with him, eyes fresh from their
tears, her face full of resolution.

“It’s all right, my dear,” said Gage, “no one shall know. You are right.
Keep your memories to yourself. What they say doesn’t matter.”

He was standing by her at the window now, looking down at her with a
tenderness that was unmistakable. It was unfortunate that at that moment
Mr. Sable entered without notice.


II

There was an argument that night. Sable had forced it. He had said that
Gage had to “cut it out in his own office.”

Gage had asked him what he meant by cutting it out and his partner said
that he definitely meant getting that girl out of the office at once.

“And my advice to you is to keep away from her after she is out.”

The upshot was that Gage had refused. He had simply said that there was
no reason why he should turn out a useful employee simply because any
one disliked her or thought evilly of her. Miss Thorstad was extremely
useful to him and there was nothing further to say. At which Sable had
snorted in disdain.

But, seeing Gage’s stubbornness he had possibly guessed at what might be
the depth of it and grown milder.

“It’s a difficult business for me, Gage,” he said, “but I’ve got to go
through with it. She must leave the office. We can’t afford scandal.”

“Suppose I won’t discharge her?”

“I’m not supposing any such nonsense. You aren’t going to act that way
unless you’re crazy.”

“But if I did?”

Sable looked at him.

“It means a smash probably. Don’t let’s talk foolishness. You know
you’ve got too much tied up in this business to let it go. You couldn’t
afford to say you smashed up your business for a woman. That’s not the
way things are done. I can’t insist on your giving up the girl but I can
ask you to remove the scandal from an office in which not alone your
name is involved.”

“Such rotten minds,” thought Gage, almost without anger. He was feeling
curiously clear and light and deft. He had felt that way ever since he
had found how Freda felt. Something had been strengthened in his own
philosophy by her simple refusal to share her secret with every one. She
put other things higher than the opinion of gossip. So must he.

They let the thing ride for a few days. Gage thought of nothing else and
found himself dreaming a great deal when he should have been working,
according to Sable. He also found that Helen was becoming almost
anti-pathetic to him. She was to make the seconding speech for one of
the candidates at Chicago and was busy with its preparation. There were
conferences constantly, and she had allowed a picture of herself with
her children to be syndicated. Gage found it before him everywhere and
it enraged him. He felt it on his raw mind as an advertisement of the
result of their love, as a dragging into publicity of the last bond
between them.

“I feel like the husband of a moving picture actress,” he told her,
viciously, one day.

She said what she had never meant to say. She was tired and full of
worrying and important matters. Gage and his brooding seemed childish
and morbid. And she had her own secret grievance.

“From what I hear of your escapades at the Roadside Inn you act like the
husband of one,” she retorted.

She had not meant to say that. But when the gossip about Freda had
reached her there had come an ugly coupling in her mind of that gossip
and Gage’s interest in the girl. During that very week-end Gage had been
absent from the city--on political business--he had said vaguely. Yet
she had tried to control her suspicions, convince herself that there was
no cause for investigation or accusation. This flare of hers was
unexpected and unguarded--dangerous too.

A shudder of misery shot through both of them at their own coarseness.
But they were launched. And it was clear to Gage that in some way or
other not only Sable but Helen had thought him involved with Freda. It
did not make him particularly angry. He rather courted the injustice of
the suspicion because it justified him in his own position. This was
where this business of Helen’s had landed them then. Alienated,
loveless, suspicious--this was the natural outcome of the whole thing.
Minds running on sex all the time--that was what happened to these
women--yet without delicacy, without reserve. So she thought he was like
that, did she? She was thinking that sort of viciousness while he’d been
trying to protect her even from himself. What was the use of it all?

“I don’t know what you hear of my escapades as you call them,” he
answered. “Possibly you might inform me?”

She was sick with shame at her own impulse but perhaps it had been at
the bottom of her mind corroding it more than she knew.

“I didn’t mean to say that, Gage.”

“You must have meant something.”

He was insistent, brutal. He would have the truth out of her. He wanted
the inside of her mind, to torture himself with it if he could. He
wanted it over with.

“Not to-night, Gage. I’m tired. Let’s talk over some of these things
when we are both fresh. I--I apologize.”

She moved towards the door of the living-room on her way upstairs. But
Gage caught her hand. He stood looking down at her and as she met his
eyes she saw that his face was almost strange. His eyes looked queer.
They were brutal, excited, strange glints. His mouth seemed to hang
loose and heavy.

“Not to-night, Gage,” she repeated. In her voice was a droop of
weariness that was unmistakable.

“Why not to-night? Because you want to save yourself fresh for your
public to-morrow? You don’t want to be bothered with a husband and his
annoyances?”

“Not to-night because you aren’t in the right mood.”

He still held her hand.

“But suppose I want to go into it to-night. There’ll be no better time.
Day after to-morrow my wife goes to the National Convention to dazzle
the American public. Suppose she sets her house in order first. Every
good politician does that, Helen.”

“There’s a devil in you, Gage, isn’t there?”

“A hundred, and every one bred by you. Tell me, what you were referring
to as my escapades? Tell me.”

He shook her a little. She felt a hairpin loosened and the indignity
suddenly made her furious.

“Let me go.”

“I will not let you go. I want you to tell me.”

“I’ll tell you,” she said bitterly, her words coming as if anger pushed
them out. “Heaven knows I’ve tried to conceal it even from myself. But
your viciousness shows you’ve got a rotten conscience. When you took
that Thorstad girl into your office I wondered why--and then after I
told you she’d been seen at that place with a man, your silly defence of
her might have told me what was the situation. You talk of her--all the
time--all the time. You were away that week-end. Where were you if you
weren’t with her?”

He let her go then. She had said it. It was said, as he had wanted it
said. He felt triumphant. And he would give her no satisfaction. He
would hurt her--and hurt her.

She went on in a tumbled burst of words.

“I don’t blame the girl, though she’s a little fool. But I won’t stand
having her let in for that sort of thing.”

“Why not?” asked Gage, lighting a cigarette. “Isn’t it a perfectly
proper thing for a modern woman to choose her lovers where she will?”

Helen felt herself grow dizzy, not at his question but at the admission
it made. She drew herself up and Gage wondered at her beauty with a hot
surge of desire even while he wanted to torture her more. It was such a
relief to have found a weapon.

“Come,” he went on, “we won’t discuss that young lady. There’s not a
thing in the world against her. If you have been bending your ear to the
ground and heard a lot of rotten gossip I’m not responsible. If the
people who talk about her had half her quality--”

“I warn you, Gage, you’re going to pieces,” interrupted Helen. “I can’t
stop you if you’re determined to ruin yourself. But you’ve acted like a
pettish child for months about the fact that I wanted to do some work
you didn’t approve of, apparently you’ve run off and got mixed up with
this girl, you’ve been drinking far too much--you had whisky before
breakfast this morning--it’s beginning to tell on you.”

“I miss you, Helen,” said Gage with a kind of sinister sarcasm.

She shivered.

“I’m going upstairs.”

“We’re not through.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Aren’t you going to divorce me--or would that hurt your career?”

“You’re not yourself, Gage,” said Helen. She had regained a loose hold
on herself. “I’d sooner not talk to you any more to-night.”

He flattened the end of his lighted cigarette and pulled the chain of
the table light.

“Then we’ll talk upstairs.”

“Not to-night.”

“Yes, we will, Helen. I’m lonely for you.” He came to where she stood.
“Come along, my dear.”

There was not a tone in his voice that Helen could recognize. A kind of
ugly caress--she shuddered.

He put his arm around her shoulders.

“Gage--you mustn’t touch me like this.”

He laughed at her.

“It’s quite the new way, as I understand it, my dear, isn’t it?
Nature--openness--no false modesties, no false sentiments. After all we
are married--or to be more modern, we’re openly living together. The
pictures in the paper prove it. There’s no use being silly. You’ve had
your way a lot lately--now how about mine?”

He pulled her close to him and pushing back her head sought her lips
roughly, as if he were dying of thirst and cared little what healthy or
unhealthy drink he had found.


III

“You know,” said Cele Nesbitt to Freda, “I think Mr. Flandon acts kind
of queer, don’t you?”

“He’s tired, probably,” she told Cele.

“Doesn’t look tired. He seems so excited. I thought he and old Sable
must be having a row. I went into Sable’s office with some papers to-day
and there they were glowering at each other and mum as oysters all the
time I was in the room. They don’t stop talking business when I’m
around.”

“Well, don’t worry about them,” answered Freda, “Mr. Flandon is the
kindest person I know and there’s something wrong with people who can’t
agree with him.”

“Hate him, don’t you?” Cele teased her. “Isn’t it a pity he’s married.
And such a stunning wife and children. Did you see her picture on
Sunday? She ought to be in the movies instead of politics with that
hair.”

Except for Margaret Freda saw only one other person at very close range.
That was Gage’s stenographer, Cecilla Nesbitt, commonly known as Cele.
Cele was a joyous soul who had taken a liking to Freda and shortly
invited her to come home for dinner. Freda had gone and been made happy
and intimate at once. There were all the traces of the cottage that the
Nesbitts had before they moved to St. Pierre--old rattan rocking chairs
and scroll topped beds. Over everything, invading everything was the
Church. There was a little holy water font inside the door, there were
pictures and holy cards framed and unframed everywhere, crucifixes over
the beds, holy pictures in the bureau frames and rosaries on the bed
posts. To Freda in her sparsely religious home, God had been a matter of
church on Sunday and not much more than that except a Bible for
reference and a general astronomical warder at the enormity of God’s
achievements. This difference--this delightful easy intimacy with God
was all fascinating. This was the comfort of religion, religion by your
bedside and at your table. She expanded under it. There was a plenitude
of Nesbitts, sleeping rather thickly in the four bedrooms--two brothers,
young men of twenty or thereabouts--there was Cele after them and then
two younger girls of ten and thirteen and stepping rapidly downward the
twins of nine, Mrs. Nesbitt having finished her family with a climax,
especially as the twins were boys and made up for being altar boys on
Sunday by being far from holy on all other occasions. Still their
serving of Mass endowed them in the eyes of Mrs. Nesbitt with peculiar
virtues. She had a gently conciliatory Irish way towards her sons rather
different from her tone to her daughters. Freda contrasted it with some
amusement with the cold classicism of Margaret’s attitude. To Mrs.
Nesbitt they were obviously slightly inferior in the sight of God and
man, being female, to be cherished indeed, frail perhaps, and yet not
made in the exact image of the Creator.

They were headed for the Nesbitt flat. Freda had no letter from Gregory,
had had none for two days and her heart felt as if it were thickening
and sinking. She would not let it be so. She set to work to make herself
interested. She would not mope. It was not in her to mope. But she did
not know where Gregory was, for his last letter had said he was waiting
advice from the bureau--one of his talks having been cancelled--and that
he didn’t know where he would go now. It did not make her worried or
nervous but she had been drugging her emotions with his letters and the
sudden deprivation hurt her cruelly. So she was going home with Cele to
forget it.

They got on the street car and hung from their straps with the
nonchalance of working girls who have no hopes or wishes that men will
give up their seats to them, their attitude strangely different from
that of some of the women, obviously middle class housewives, who
commandeered seats with searching, disapproving, nagging eyes. Freda
loved this time of day--the sense of being with people all going to
their places of living, fraught with mystery and possibility. Her
spirits rose. She was not thinking sadly of Gregory. She thought of how
her intimate thought and knowledge of him reached out, over her
unfamiliarity with these others, touching him wherever he was, in some
place unknown to her. The thought put new vigor into her loneliness.

It was an oppressively hot evening for June. They climbed the three
flights to the Nesbitt flat with diminishing energy and Cele sank on one
of the living-room chairs in exhaustion as she went in.

“Hot as hell,” she breathed. “Let’s sit down a minute before we wash,
Freda.”

Freda took off her hat and brushed her hair back with her hand.

“Pretty hot all right. Bad weather for dispositions.”

“My idea of this kind of weather is that it’s preparation for the
hereafter.”

Mrs. Nesbitt opened the door to the kitchen and hot heavy smells from
the cooking food came through to the girls. But Mrs. Nesbitt herself,
mopping great hanging drops of sweat from her forehead, was serene
enough. She shook hands with Freda with vast smiling cordiality.

“You’re as cool looking as the dawn,” she said to her. “Are you tired,
dear?”

“Not a bit.”

“There’s a little droop to your eyes, dear. I thought maybe it was bad
news now.”

Freda had a sudden impulse to confidence, a leap of the mind towards it.
But she drew back.

“No--not bad news at all.”

“Your mother and father’s well?”

“My mother is coming to see me for a few days, I think. She’s going to
Chicago for the Convention for the clubs and she’ll come back this way
to see me.”

“Now, isn’t that the blessing for you,” said Mrs. Nesbitt rejoicingly.

The family streamed in, the boys from their work and the twins from
school. Last came Mr. Nesbitt, his tin lunch pail in his hand, his feet
dragging with weariness. They talked of the heat, all of them, making it
even more oppressive than it was by their inability to escape the
thought of it. And Mrs. Nesbitt who knew nothing of salads and iced tea,
or such hot weather reliefs stirred the flour for her gravy and set the
steaming pot roast before her husband. They ate heavily. Freda tried to
keep her mind on what she was doing. She talked to the boys and let Mrs.
Nesbitt press more food on her unwilling appetite. It was very
unwilling. She did not want to eat. She wanted to sit down and close her
eyes and forget food and heat and everything else--except Gregory.

Vaguely she was aware of Mr. Nesbitt talking.

“It was in the paper and no more stir made of it than if a stray dog was
run over by an automobile--shot down they were, martyrs to Ireland.” His
voice was oratorical, funereal, heavy with resentment.

“Who?” asked Freda.

“Fine young Irishmen with the grace of God in their hearts shot down by
the hired wastrels of the Tyrants. Gentlemen and patriots.”

“What an outrage it is,” she answered.

He burst into invective at her sympathy, rolling his mighty syllabled
words in denunciation, and his family sat around and listened in
agreement yet in amusement.

“Come now, pop, you’ll be going back, if you get as hot under your shirt
as all that,” said Mike.

“It’s too hot for excitement, pa,” Mrs. Nesbitt contributed equably.
“Pass him the mustard, do you, Cele.”

“I’ll show you a true account of it in _The Irish News_,” said Mr.
Nesbitt, to Freda, ignoring his family.

He wiped his mouth noisily and abandoned the table, coming back to
press into Freda’s hands his _Irish News_, a little out of fold with
much handling.

“The city papers tell you nothing but lies,” he said, “read this.”

To please him, Freda read. She read the account of the shooting of three
young men poets and patriots, whose names struck her as familiar. And
then she read:

“These young martyrs were part of the group who banded together for
restoration of the Gaelic tongue to Ireland. They with Seumas, McDermitt
and Gregory Macmillan now on tour in this country--”

She read it again. It gave her a sense of wonder to come on his name
here, his name so secretly dear, in this cold print. And then came more
than that. This was Gregory--her Gregory who might have been killed too
if he had been there--who might be killed when he returned to Ireland.
She didn’t know where he was. Perhaps--perhaps he had heard of this and
gone back. Perhaps he had forgotten, forgotten about her--about them.
This was so big--

She had to take her thought away from the presence of all these people.
She wanted to con it over--she must get away. Suddenly she stood up and
the heat and distaste for food--the accurate sight of a piece of brown
stringy meat, embedded in lifeless gravy, sickened her. She pressed her
hand before her eyes and swayed a little.

Mrs. Nesbitt jumped up with Cele.

“She’s sick--poor dear. The heat now has quite overcome her.”

They helped her into the least hot of the little bedrooms and she found
herself very sick--nauseated--chilled even while she was conscious of
the heat that oppressed while it did not warm her. The family was all
astir. Mr. Nesbitt underwent censure for having bothered her. But when
Freda, apologetic and recovered, went home on Mike’s arm, getting the
first breath of air which came as a relief to the hot city, Mrs. Nesbitt
came into the room where Cele hung half out of the window trying to
catch the breeze.

“Sick she was, poor thing.”

“Rotten heat got her. She’s not used to working, either, I think. She
felt a lot better. Her stomach got upset too.”

Mrs. Nesbitt pressed her lips together.

“It was a funny way she was taken. If she was a married woman I should
have said the cause was not the heat.”

“Huh?” said Cele, pulling herself in. “What’s that you mean?”

“I mean nothing,” said Mrs. Nesbitt. “Nothing at all. Only I would have
you always be sure to make sure your friends are good girls, my darlin’.
Mind ye, I say nothing against the young lady. But she’s a pretty and
dangerous face and she’s away from her home where by rights should every
girl be.”




CHAPTER XV

THE CONVENTION


I

The Convention gathered. It was an event signal enough to make an
impress even on the great city. Convention Week was recognized by every
one, hotel men, shop keepers, railroad men, newspapers, pickpockets,
police, students in the great universities at the city’s gates, and the
great subordinate multitude which read the newspapers and accepted the
ruling of politics or commerce, as to which days should be held
apart--Labor Day, Mother’s Day, Convention Week.

The streets were hung with banners, great, swinging canvas pieces of
propaganda, bearing crude likenesses of candidates and still cruder
catchwords supposed to represent their opinions or those of their
opinions likely to excite popular pleasure. In the hotel lobbies men
swarmed. Desk clerks, sated with patronage, gave smiling and
condescending negations to those who applied for rooms. The girls at the
cigar counters and newspaper stands worked steadily, throwing back saucy
rejoinders to the occasional impudences of the men.

It was mostly a gathering of men, a smoky, hot, sweating collection of
men who had a certain kind of training in this game of conventions and
politics. They flung themselves into their parts, gossiping, joking,
occasionally forceful, immensely knowing. No one of them was there who
did not feel himself a commissioned prophet--perhaps not as to ultimate
but as to tendencies anyhow. They spoke the great names with a jesting
respect, the lesser ones with camaraderie or a fillip of scorn--but for
any suggestion of political idealists or of women they had a smile. They
admitted the fact that women had been put in the show but it wasn’t
going to change the show any. They knew.

Here and there in the hotels were groups of women, well dressed for the
most part, some of them handsome, all of them more alert, less careless
than the men--talking wisely too but with more imagination, with a kind
of excited doubt as to the outcome, and despite themselves showing a
delighted naïveté in their bearing towards the whole event. That was on
the first day before the heat had really lowered over the city.

Helen and Margaret had been well provided for. They had long before
engaged rooms in one of the most comfortable hotels where previous
patronage made Helen able to choose her accommodations. Gage who had
come after all, had no reservations anywhere and apparently no
particular worry about them. He could always get in somewhere and he had
no intention of staying at the same hotel with Helen and Margaret. He
breakfasted with them on the train and enjoyed it in spite of himself,
enjoyed being able to watch Helen and to bait Margaret with political
pessimism and a jocular scorn as to the effect of women on the
Convention. When they arrived he saw them to their hotel and left Helen
to her “glory” he said, a little mockingly.

“It’s hot,” he said. “Don’t try to make over the whole Party to-day, my
dear.”

“I won’t,” said Helen. Her eyes met his. For thirty-six hours every
glance, every gesture towards him had been unreal, mechanically
controlled. She was not apparently angry--nor cold. It was rather as if
when she spoke to him she had no feeling. Deep in himself, Gage was
frightened. He guessed the fact that anger is often a denial of loss of
illusion and that in Helen’s utter lack of response there was something
deadly, ominous. A glimmer of respect for her work came as he first saw
her, the morning after their catastrophic night, not moping or storming,
but studying notes for her seconding speech. But the glimmer faded. It
was because she really didn’t care. Shallow feelings, easy to suppress,
he told himself. She had probably told Margaret about the whole thing
and Margaret had tipped her off as to how to behave. That thought struck
him and made him curdle with anger again.

If it had not been for Helen there was no doubt that he would have
regarded the women with a kind of tolerance and with some speculation
regarding their usefulness. There was a chance that they might be
useful. But the intensity of his feelings, starting from his invaded
love for his wife, from that sense of exterior influences over which he
had no control and which he did not trust coming into the privacy of
their relations, mauling those delicacies by weighing, appraising
emotions and loyalties, chipping off a bit here and a bit there,
bargaining, discussing, leaving a great imprint of self-consciousness of
the whole, had spoiled all that. Gage was confused. He was in revolt
against a hundred, a thousand things, and that he was not quite sure of
the justice of his revolt made it none the easier for him.

He was in the lobby of the Congress Hotel, turning away from the cigar
counter, alone for the minute, when he felt a touch on his arm and
turned to see Mrs. Thorstad. She was dressed in a neat dark suit and a
tan sailor hat, rimmed precisely with white daisies, looking very
competent and attractive.

“How do you do, Mr. Flandon?” she asked.

He gazed down at her, smiling. She amused him and intrigued him. When he
watched Mrs. Thorstad he felt convinced that all his protest against the
progress of women was somehow justified. It was his quarrel with
Margaret and the foundation of his dislike of her that he could not get
the same feeling with her and had to build it up with anger.

“I hope you’re well,” he answered, as he shook hands with her.

“I want to thank you for all your kindness to Freda. You’ve given her a
great opportunity to find herself.”

Word slinging, thought Gage. What did she mean by “finding herself?”

“She’s a great addition to my office force.” He wondered what this
little person would say if she knew, as she so obviously did not, of the
tumultuous marriage of her daughter, of the ugly stream of gossip that
was pouring about her feet.

“I have the greatest respect for the woman in business,” went on Mrs.
Thorstad. “Of course I confess I had hoped that Freda would interest
herself in something possibly a little more humanitarian, something
perhaps a little more idealistic--oh, I don’t mean to decry the law, Mr.
Flandon, but we can’t help feeling that the business world lacks certain
great ideals--”

Gage grinned, looking like a great humorous puppy.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse me, if you will. I see a man
over there I must speak to.”

Mrs. Thorstad smiled in acquiescence, leaving her chair herself. She
sent a dutiful postal to Mr. Thorstad and went out on the Avenue in
front of the hotel. She had calls to make. The galling sense of the fact
that her impress on the Convention must be a slight one was undoubtedly
under her gallant, moral little smile. To be sure she had come to the
Convention, she had a seat reserved, she was, as she always would be,
taking what she could get, but if Margaret Duffield had not come West it
might have been more.

None the less she called on Miss Duffield and Mrs. Flandon. She found
them at their hotel where congregated a brilliant circle. Harriet
Thompson, renowned from coast to coast as a leader of women, was there.
She was a rather plain woman of forty-five, lean faced with good brown
eyes and a rather disconcerting way of seeming to leap at you intimately
to discover what sort of person you were. And there were Grace Hawlett,
the novelist, and the wives and sisters of famous politicians. It was a
gay, knowledgeable group. Most of the women knew Margaret and were
instantly attracted by Helen’s beauty and charm of manner. Margaret
introduced Mrs. Thorstad as “one of the best woman organizers in the
Middle West,” and they were all cordial. Mrs. Thompson took the Mohawk
leader aside for a little talk. It was astonishing how much Mrs.
Thompson knew about the situation in St. Pierre--how she had her finger
on the strength of the women and the strength of the organization in the
entire state. She put rapid questions to Mrs. Thorstad and checked her a
little abruptly in the middle of some generalities.

“How did you all like Miss Duffield?” she asked.

“Very much indeed,” answered Mrs. Thorstad, with the slightest pursing
of lips. The keen brown eyes looked at her for a minute. It was not the
answer usually made to a question about Margaret Duffield.

Mrs. Thorstad departed to find her own kind. She knew she was not at
home in that particular group which while it awed her by its sparkle of
mind and personality, yet left her resentful, and she went on the round
of her further calls. She found women with petty lobbying to do, with
little reputations which they wished to secure, airing their platitudes
and generalities to each other in heavy agreement, talking of the new
day and denouncing the vagaries of modernity with a fervor that was half
jealous, half fearful.

Harriet Thompson looked at Margaret after Mrs. Thorstad had left them.
She always liked to look at Margaret. The serenity in her calm face, the
touch of austerity which kept it from becoming placid, pleased her. She
crossed to where she was sitting.

“What did you do to that little person, Margaret?”

“I? I didn’t do anything. She rather wanted to be delegate at large in
Helen’s place, I think. Don’t speak of it to Helen. I told Helen there
was no one else even willing to do it.”

“Your Mrs. Flandon is a lovely person.”

She wondered, as she said that, at the soft flush of enthusiasm which
came over Margaret’s face.

“Isn’t she? She’s just what you want, too. I hope she keeps interested.”

“Isn’t she very much interested?”

“Yes--but it’s not too easy for her. Her husband’s rather opposed--makes
it difficult.”

“Odd that a woman like that should be married to a reactionary.”

“He isn’t at all an ordinary reactionary,” said Margaret. “He’s a
politician, without any illusions. Hates all the publicity she gets. I
think he wants her to himself you see--most awfully in love.”

“He’ll never have her to himself if she gets into this game. She’s the
sort of woman, from the little I’ve seen of her that we need. Brains and
personality--not a wild woman or an old fashioned suffragist. Did she
reconcile the husband?”

“Not a bit. He’s here. You ought to meet him. But better carry a
weapon.”

“He might be rather interesting.”

“He is all of that.”

“After all, Margaret, it is rather hard on some of these men. I’ve seen
it before. They suddenly have so little of their wives to themselves.
It affects them like the income tax. They hate to give up so large a
share of their property.”

“To a government they distrust. That’s it with Gage. He doesn’t mind
Helen doing any amount of music. But he hates all kinds and forms of
modern feminism. Thinks it’s shameless and corrupting.”

“It is pretty shameless and sometimes a little corrupting. There’s a lot
in the man’s point of view that you never saw, Margaret. They’re
fighting for themselves of course but they’re fighting for the sex too.
It’s all right, too. Man is, I sometimes think, the natural preserver of
sex. Women get along very well without it, or with enough of it to
decently populate the earth. But men are the real sentimentalists. A
woman’s ruthless when she begins to houseclean her sentiments. A man
never likes to throw anything away, you know, according to the
tradition. He doesn’t like to throw away sex. He’s used it badly,
spotted it up and all that--in his lucid moments he’ll even admit it.
But none the less it’s very often the one thing which can excite his
tenderness and reverence and when he sees us invade the home, as he
says, it isn’t that he’s afraid the dishes won’t get washed. He says
that, but what he is afraid of is that we’ll find the secret places of
his sentiment and ravish them. I’m awfully sorry for some of the men.
They’re going through a lot just now. They seem to feel so left out,
under all their loud jocosity and foolish talk--you know,” she ended a
little weakly.

“I know. I’ve been sorry for Gage myself. Terribly sorry for him. But I
don’t see how one can make concessions. What I’m afraid of is that in
his bitterness he’ll break Helen down. And she might give in but she’d
never forgive him now.”

“You’ve done some speedy work, haven’t you? Smashed up homes and
everything. What happened to your own pet Sinn Feiner?”

“He’s lecturing somewhere or other.”

“Is that all off?”

“It never was on.”

“You couldn’t get absorbed in his enthusiasm because you’ve got one of
your own, haven’t you?”

“I have yours.”

Mrs. Thompson patted her affectionately on the arm. Her contacts were
all warm and intimate. With men and women alike, she seemed to get
inside their minds and look out on the world as they saw it.

“You’re a dear girl,” she told her, “but you must remember that humanity
is a bigger thing even than feminism, Margaret. Be a little more tender
towards the poor men. After all, they can’t all be transported.”

All afternoon the crowds swelled. In the evening the great hotel
dining-rooms were filled with people who represented almost
everything--power, wealth, notoriety, ambition. Headquarters were
established. Newspaper men idled to and fro, joking, prophesying,
gossiping. Underneath the fatuousness of much of the pretense that this
was a great popular meeting, most of the people knew that the rules were
already laid down and things would take their course--must take their
course. And yet there was a certain amount of fair speculation as to
whether in some way the great leaders might not be outwitted after
all--whether some new element might not show sudden strength, whether
the unorganized, half formulated hopes and ideals of millions of
ordinary people might this time put themselves across and lead instead
of follow. The Convention, like the world, was attuned to surprises,
revolts, inexplicable overturnings.

Helen was more than excited. A little less than two days ago she had
felt that she could not go on with this--that the personal agony had to
be fought out first. To her amazement she found that Margaret had been
right. Helen had always agreed with her that women were really not
dependent on emotion but that had been because Margaret’s contention
seemed reasonable and to take the other side hardly worthy. An inner
feeling had persisted that after all Margaret was unmarried and
didn’t--couldn’t know the strength of the emotional pull. But now she
found herself breaking through personal emotional wreckage to impersonal
interest--or if not impersonal interest at least interest in which sex
played no part. She had at first kept up the signs of control because
she must. Now she no longer needed the signs. She thought of Gage almost
dispassionately. Now and then the tragedy of the ruined feeling between
them shook her violently. But she could see their situation spread out
before her. She could see it in relation to the children, to other work.
She could see where things must be stopped in that they did not improve.
And most of the time she hardly thought of Gage at all. She was
responding to all the excitement and interest and admiration around her.
She felt part of a great organization about to act in ways which would
affect the world. The great sensibility of her woman’s imagination,
undulled by much experience in the direction of things beyond her
contact, was played upon by a vision of great power which she might help
direct.

For the first time she understood what Margaret meant by the freedom of
women and why she was not content with the formal letting down of the
gates. She understood what some of the others meant when they talked of
the easy contemporary victories as obscuring the real things which women
needed.

The best of them did not talk the lingo of the “new day.” They knew that
any day was not new long enough to get used to its title. They talked
of adjustment of contemporary circumstances to an evolution as old as
that of civilization, as old as that of man--merged with male
development and yet distinct from it again. They avoided catch words and
the flattery which was sprinkled so thickly, avoided it not pedantically
but with humorous knowledge of its purpose.

They dined with Mrs. Thompson and three other women and held a kind of
informal court afterwards in one of the parlors of the hotel. Every
notable man who came into the hotel seemed to want a word with Mrs.
Thompson. She had a way with them that they all liked, a kind of keen
camaraderie, especially effective in a woman who, like Mrs. Thompson,
could never be accused of trying out any arts of sex attraction. They
liked her company and her brisk tongue and there was added interest in
finding such company in a woman. Helen met the Senators--the men whose
names the party conjured with and handled them as she handled most
people--skillfully.

It was a little after nine when Helen saw Gage at the end of the room.
She had been talking with a gray haired, affable Senator who was telling
her what a beneficent influence the women were to have on the Convention
and she was excited, amused and sparkling. She was wearing a dinner
dress of black lace that Gage had always liked and as she caught his
eyes on her that was the first thought which flashed through her mind.
It was followed by a quick appraisal of Gage himself. He was looking a
little untidy and showing clearly the signs of recent strain and worry.

He did not make his way to her at once. He stopped to talk casually to
some men whom he knew. Helen thought suddenly that Gage was not a big
man politically. He did not have nearly as much prestige as Mrs.
Thompson of course, not nearly as much strength as she herself might
have--. She saw Margaret introducing him to Mrs. Thompson. His manners
were bad. He had none of the easy pleasant way with which the other men
had come up to her. He must be making an extremely bad impression. It
humiliated her somewhat. They were still too close for her not to feel
that.

She joined the group where were Gage and Mrs. Thompson and Margaret.

“Have you had a good day, Gage? I called up the house and the children
are fine. Not a trace of their colds, Esther said.”

He nodded gravely. Their eyes met, denying any intimacies of exchange,
coldly, a little cruelly.

“I hear your wife is to make the prize seconding speech to-morrow, Mr.
Flandon,” said Harriet Thompson, bending towards him.

“I have no doubt of it,” said Gage.

“Do your views agree?” asked the older woman lightly.

“Very seldom,” answered Gage. He had not made it light. It was like the
flick of a whip.

Margaret interposed.

“Gage doesn’t believe in women’s progress, Harriet--don’t get him
started, please.”

“I wish he would get started. There are plenty of times when I think
we’re all talking balderdash and it would be a relief to hear some one
give testimony against us. What is the matter with women, Mr. Flandon?”

Gage’s tired, half-haunted eyes looked at her as if he suspected mockery
but he found none.

“According to most belief, there is nothing the matter with them. They
are supremely successful. They’ve got what they wanted. If they don’t
like the taste of their little mess of pottage as they eat it, it will
be unfortunate.”

“You don’t think they will like it?”

“I may be mistaken. It may suit their taste.”

“I’m afraid it won’t but it’s the best food we’re able to provide so
far. Perhaps we’ve overpaid for it.”

“You have.”

He stopped, abruptly conscious of being drawn into discussion in public.
Margaret and Helen had been listening to the brief dialogue, and he
stiffened to the sense of their presence.

“I can’t stay, Helen--I’ve an appointment. Is there anything I can do?”

She walked with him to the end of the room, impelled by a desire to
preserve what she could of appearances but more by an unexpected pain at
having him leave her. She did not want him to stay--she was clear about
that, but she hated to have him go away in that lonely fashion. The
gentleness that welled up only lasted for a moment. He was ugly still.
She could tell by the set of his lips. It brought back her terribly
painful memories.

“Good night, Gage.”

That was all. Towards morning Gage went to bed. He had been drinking
other people’s whisky and he was ill enough to suspect it had not been
good stuff.


II

He did not go to the great Auditorium until the next afternoon. It took
some time to get himself into shape. The heat had begun, heat which
settled thickly on the city for three days and played its own part in
making possible agreements and compromises. By noon the smart look, the
brisk look had gone from everything and everybody and the sticky battle
with the weather had begun. Gage had met some men from his own part of
the country and they entered the great hall where the banners hung limp
from the ceiling and the delegates were already coming back to their
places after the noon recess. Gage did not look for his wife but after a
while he saw her--as usual looking the mistress of herself. His head was
hot and thick and he hated her for the fine mastery of her health and
beauty. He wanted to see her in tears--prostrate--and because he knew
his desire was ugly he slipped down in his own self-respect, which
already was becoming such a frail reed to cling to.

All that day he did not go near her. He watched her furtively sometimes
while he was in the auditorium but most of the time he spent with other
men in hotel rooms which grew hotter in spite of the efforts of electric
fans and all the time the whisky which he drank made his brain hot and
seething with misconceptions and desires and hatreds.

By the afternoon of the second day it had settled down to an endurance
meeting.

Watching the restless, heated crowd, going through the same old
formalities, Gage wondered whether Helen was aware now what kind of game
this was she had chosen to sit in--whether the farce of it was clear. He
did not wonder clearly. It was a kind of vindictive spite which pricked
a muddled brain.

He had not intend to be there when she spoke but in the end he stayed.
He heard the round commonplace phrases of the man who was nominating the
candidate she was working for--a good man, as Gage admitted--better
caliber than most, but without a ghost of a show for nomination. He
listened with irritation to the outburst of applause. Then he saw his
wife before the great crowd. It seemed quite unreal.

He had not guessed her voice would carry like that. He had not known she
would show up like that. She came like a breath of cool air into that
heated place. In her blue linen gown and white feather hat she looked
cool, fresh, immaculate. When she spoke they listened to her and for a
few minutes Gage caught himself listening eagerly. She was talking well.
No nonsense. It was to the point. Just then he heard a man behind him.

“Some looker, isn’t she? That’s the kind of dames we ought to have in
politics all right.”

Blind rage swept over Gage again. He wanted to turn on the man and
fight. But he did nothing of the sort, being held by a thousand
inhibitions. Instead he watched his wife and as she talked he seemed to
see her offering her beauty to the crowd, seemed to see in every man’s
face--as they watched her--amusement, desire, lust.

He heard the burst of applause when she finished, applause with real
enthusiasm and at every hand clap he felt fury rising. Getting up, he
found his way to the door.

If Helen had expected a tribute from him, piled on the many she received
that night, she was mistaken. Men, women, newspapers all congratulated
her on having put some real fire into the speeches. Her speech, printed
and flashed all over the country was given its own share of praise. It
was clear, forceful, new in its outlook. The women of the country had
chosen a good spokesman, said the papers. But from Gage there was only a
note at the hotel, saying briefly that he had thought it best to return
to St. Pierre--the convention was the usual farce.

Helen twisted his note in her hands.

“So he couldn’t stay away from Freda Thorstad even that long,” she
thought. “Well,--”




CHAPTER XVI

MR. SABLE STARTS SOMETHING


What Mr. Sable had counted on was that Gage, once away for the
Convention, with his wife travelling with him, would stay away for a
week or so. In any case, he had taken matters rather summarily into his
own hands in the case of Freda Thorstad. The presence of the girl in the
office was to him like an open scandal. He knew that she had to get out
of the office and the time to get her out was while Gage was away. Of
course Flandon might raise trouble when he came back but there would be
no scene with the girl and he could put it flatly and finally that
amours had to be conducted outside of the office if at all. He was
extremely correct and secure in his own position and he felt he was most
delicate.

So he was at the office a little earlier than usual the morning after
Gage left for the Convention. Freda was at her desk sorting the first
batch of mail. She looked very neat and capable, in her white blouse
open a little at the throat, her thick golden red hair pulled back
smoothly from her forehead, and her head industriously bent over her
letters.

“Will you come in my office for a moment, Miss Thorstad?”

Freda followed him obediently. He closed the door and, taking his arm
chair, left her standing a little dubiously before him.

“Miss Thorstad,” he said, “I think--er--that it will be best for you to
sever your connection with this office.”

His tone, wholly disapproving, weighted with meaning, told his reasons
with almost comic flatness.

Freda’s brow contracted and she looked sharply at him. Then she laughed.
A brazen laugh, he would have said. Truly a laugh with no more fear or
care or apprehension in it than the laugh of any child who comes upon
something ridiculous.

Mr. Sable frowned. She was a hussy, he thought. Might try to bulldoze
him a little--he became increasingly stern.

“I have no desire to go into our reasons for this but I think it will be
best for you to simply leave at once. You may find the work too heavy
for you. I am sure you understand that no office of this kind could take
the situation differently.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for me to wait until Mr. Flandon’s return?” she
asked.

He had feared that.

“Surely you understand that your presence here is embarrassing to Mr.
Flandon,” he said sharply.

If she had guessed what he suspected she might have contended. But all
that he said struck her as true. She evidently was being gossiped about
and if it did make it embarrassing for Mr. Flandon--Perhaps that was why
he had been so over courteous, to conceal a deep embarrassment.

“Very well, Mr. Sable,”--she straightened her shoulders a little--“I
shall not go on with my work here.”

“Exactly.” With victory so easily accomplished, Mr. Sable became
different, adept at smoothing things over. “Of course when a young lady
cannot typewrite, an office like this has hardly the right kind of
work--”

“I know that. I told Mr. Flandon that at the start.”

“Mr. Flandon being absent, I will give you a check for this week’s
work.”

“I’ve done only one day’s work, Mr. Sable. It is only”--she
calculated--“two and a half dollars.”

She took his check for that--he did not dare press the point--and left
his office. Mr. Sable smoothed his little white mustache, straightened
his papers with the air of having done a good day’s work already, and
pressed the buzzer for his own secretary.

It was only half past nine o’clock. Freda got her hat and coat from the
tiny dressing-room. Her desk was in order and there was no use in
fussing over it. She wanted to get out into the clean air. The pompous
little lawyer’s insinuations while they did not strike deep enough to
insult her, made her feel soiled and dirty.

Cele followed her into the dressing-room.

“Where you going?”

“Going out to look for a job.”

“He let you out?”

“That’s the substance of his message.”

“Well--I call that--” Cele stopped, a veil of thought coming over her
eyes. “Look here,” she went on, “if there’s anything I can do--” She
stressed the last word violently, as if the need for action pressed upon
her.

“Not a thing.”

“You aren’t going back to--what-you-may-call-it? The place you came
from?”

“Mohawk? No--mother’s coming here in a day or two. I’ll wait, and look
for a job.”

“A job,” said Cele, reflectively, “don’t worry too much, will you?
Say--I’ll be around to see you to-night. I think it’s rotten.”

Freda went out, wondering if the slanderous tongues had found even
Cele’s ear.

But she did not linger on thoughts of her dismissal. She was sorry to
leave Mr. Flandon so, but after all he knew and understood and the
whole business was so temporary anyway. Gregory should be back any day
now--and they would go away and never think of such ugliness any more.
It was like her that no thought of personal justification, of setting
people straight on the gossip, ever entered her head. She wanted to
shake them off--that was all. She wanted to get away into light and
clearness and cleanness with Gregory. And it seemed to her that merely
being with Gregory would make an atmosphere like that.

She had received no letter from him in five or six days now and she
missed one sadly. She needed that written touch of vigor and sweetness
which set her days aflame with happiness. Especially now, with the
knowledge that she was probably to bear his child. The lack of an
address so she might send him that delightful information was
distressing. She could have reached him through his lecture bureau but
she had a dread of the letter going astray if it were not sent directly
to him. Not a word or thought of resentment did she allow to penetrate
her love. She kept herself free from that. It was harder to keep fear
away.

She was strolling along, passing through the shopping district, now and
then stopping to look idly at something in the window when she heard
herself greeted. Looking up she saw Ted Smillie. He was quietly affable
and there seemed no escape from speaking to him.

“How are you, Freda?” he asked calmly.

She resented his use of her name though he had come to using it before
their disastrous evening.

“Quite well,” she said, and looked at him evenly, waiting for him to
pass her.

He did not pass. He lingered, showing in his face the return of that
avid attraction which he had felt so strongly before. She was thinner
than she had been when he had seen her last and the shadows under her
eyes made her face more delicate--more interesting!

“I wanted to see you again and luck’s come my way. You know that I did
call on you the next day at the Brownleys’ and found you’d gone. I’m
afraid I acted like an awful fool that night. Didn’t I?”

“Worse than that.”

“But it truly wasn’t my fault. I had been drinking. I know I can’t stand
the stuff. And you made me quite lose my head.”

She reflected that of course it hadn’t been his fault as much as
Barbara’s. And not knowing or dreaming that he was the agency which had
violated the privacy of those two days at the Roadside Inn, she did not
persist in great resentment. She disliked him of course but she was very
idle and ready for distraction.

He went on talking, eagerly.

“It’s been on my mind ever since. I hated to let you think I was like
that. Look here, Freda, I’ve got a free afternoon. Come in and have a
cool drink somewhere with me--won’t you?”

“I don’t think so,” said Freda.

“Please.”

“I might hurt your reputation,” she said, with a scornful little laugh.
“I understand I’m causing a lot of talk among your friends.”

“They always talk about every one--especially if a girl has the courage
not to be conventional--”

She did not trust him in the least. Nor did she like him. It was sheer
ennui which made her consent. She needed company.

They went to the tea room of a hotel, a cool place, furnished with
abundant white willow and great palms. Freda had not been in such a
place before and she, as ever, was esthetically responsive to the oasis
of comfort and coolness it made in the sweltering city. Ted ordered for
her--a tall glass of cool Russian tea with mint leaves and thin lettuce
edged sandwiches. His solicitude for her comfort dulled the edge of
whatever resentment she had towards him--she had never bothered to
preserve much.

“And what are you doing? Did I hear you were working--like all modern
women?”

“Working I was--like all women who need the money,” she answered, “but
I’m not working now.”

“You’re not going back to Mohawk?”

She remembered part of his proposition that she need not go back to
Mohawk, made some weeks ago, glancing at him guardedly, thinking with a
certain amount of interest that this was the very young man who had made
suggestions which should have barred him permanently from her presence.
Here she was, taking his iced tea. Things were queer. She didn’t even
feel particularly angry at him. There wasn’t any use pretending false
rigors.

“I don’t know,” she said, as she had said before.

“I’m glad you left the Brownleys’ anyhow. Are you living with other
friends?”

“No--I’ve a room by myself.”

Obviously he liked that and the visible signs of his liking amused her.

“Can I come to see you once in a while?”

“Oh, no, indeed. I shouldn’t in the least like you as a caller.”

He was undisturbed.

“I’ll have to make you change your mind somehow.”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, delicately, in negation.

“Do you know how much I’ve thought about you since that night?” he
asked, bending a little closer to her.

“How much?”

“All the time.”

She pushed her glass away from her.

“Don’t be silly. I’m not a half-wit, Ted. I think you ought to be
ashamed of yourself. You know quite well you’re engaged to Barbara
Brownley. Her mother told Miss Duffield that.”

His face darkened.

“Well,” he said, “I thought you were above a lot of silly conventions.”

She smiled serenely. “I am.”

“Then--just because a man is engaged to a woman is no reason why he
should never speak to any one else.”

“No--that would put a pretty high penalty on such things, wouldn’t it?”

“People are getting over their old fashioned notions about such things.
Men and women aren’t simpletons as they used to be, you know. We’re
regarding these things in a modern way. More like the French,” he said
largely.

“The French--oh, yes,” said Freda, gravely, “you mean having wives and
mistresses too. I’ve often wondered if the French couldn’t sue us for
libel for the things provincial Americans think about them.”

He flushed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Gracious, no.” But he knew from her laugh that she was. “Why should I
make fun of you?”

She was enjoying herself. She felt so secure, so strong. It was fun to
bait this temperish young man, make him scuttle about for phrases which
had no effect on her at all.

“Anyway you know how I feel.” He pushed aside the glasses and plates
between them and bent himself over the tiny table towards her. She sat
back in her chair promptly.

“You know how I feel,” he persisted, “I never cared for a girl as I’ve
cared for you.”

“Then,” said Freda, with an air of great simplicity, “why not ask me to
marry you?”

He threw out his hands in a theatrical gesture of despondency.

“I’m tied hand and foot. This marriage of mine has been cooked up by our
families. It’s all arranged for us.”

“I know,” said Freda wisely, “as in France.”

He glanced sharply at her.

“But,” said Freda, “the modern way is not to let your parents put that
sort of thing over. Truly. One simply says, ‘Mother--I will wed the girl
of my choice.’”

“You are making fun of me.”

“Well--who wouldn’t?” Freda collapsed into a laugh. “Here I sit,
listening to you make the funniest clandestine love in the world. You
feel you’ve got to do it--to uphold your reputation as a--Frenchman! And
if you slipped into a serious situation you’d be aghast. You don’t care
a thing about me and you know it.”

“Ah, don’t I?” He looked for a moment as if he did.

“You probably care a little about corrupting me. Now look here, Ted,
please stop talking such nonsense. You can’t shock me and it’s pretty
hard to insult me--I am a little ashamed of not being more insulted--but
you probably could make me very angry by persisting in trying to involve
me in petty vice. In the first place I don’t like it. In the second
place, if I ever went in for vice, it would be on a larger scale than
you could dream of. I haven’t the slightest intention of--being French!
You’d better go along and make love to Bob Brownley. She’ll bring some
excitement into your life, I think. The reason I’m not more angry with
you is that you were, indirectly, the cause of the greatest bit of luck
that ever happened to me.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you. But I’m awfully obliged for the
tea--truly. It set me up. Shall we go?”

He was not so easy to repulse. He got up and pulled his chair around to
her side of the table.

“Freda,” he tried to take her hand, “if I gave up Bob would you let me
see you?”

“I wouldn’t if you gave up the world.”

She rose a little impatiently, feeling that this was going too far, and
started for the door of the dining-room.

“At least you’ll tell me where you live?” he pressed her. “Let me go
home with you now.”

“Don’t you have to work in the middle of the afternoon?”

“Nobody’s working much. It’s too hot.”

“Then go play with Barbara. I’ve other things to do.”

Possibly it was the heat and the sense of effort which got nowhere that
made Ted’s face intense and angry. He saw her about to slip away again.

“You can’t go like this, Freda, I’ve only just found you.”

“You’d better let me,” answered Freda, “because I see Maud Dubonnet
looking at you and she knows you and obviously isn’t intending to speak
to me though I lunched at her house, so you see it will be hot with you
when Barbara hears this.”

Against his will Ted looked up and saw Maud truly, with two other girls
and three young men coming into the room. They had to pass Ted and Freda
as they stood there, discussing. Maud Dubonnet was the only one of the
group whom Freda knew. The others all evidently knew Ted and glanced at
him with some interest. Maud did not look at Freda. She held her head
stiffly as she passed, then said something to the others which made them
turn with an attempt at casualness to look at the man and girl. Ted
delayed no longer. He followed Freda out.

“You see it doesn’t pay to do things Barbara won’t like. This will get
back to her before to-morrow and she won’t be pleasant.”

Ted’s mouth set in an rather ugly line.

“I’ll manage Bob all right.” He looked at Freda. Her face under the
plain white hat she wore was mocking, insubordinate, fascinating. “But I
want to see you again. To-night?”

“Nonsense. Good-by, Ted. Be good and make your peace with Bob.”

She turned and went in the opposite direction from the one in which they
had started, going into the first big department store and retiring to
the ladies’ waiting-room where she wrote a letter to her father, and
mailed it. Then, having made sure she was rid of Ted she went home. The
afternoon dragged along. She read and thought and on an impulse went out
again to go to the railway station and get some time tables. She wanted
to see just how far Gregory had been away from her when he last wrote.

Each time the postman approached the house there was a leap of her
heart. Four times a day he came and each time he brought fresh hope. She
would play tricks on herself as she went down to look in the mail box
she shared with the people who rented the apartment in which she stayed.
Each time she put her hand in the box she hesitated before she looked,
then looked quickly as if to catch fate before it tricked her. But it
would be an advertisement of a corset firm for Mrs. Miller, an envelope
with unmistakable savor of a bill about it, a postcard, a white
Louisine envelope with a woman’s handwriting on it. How she hated all
the flatness of the Miller mail.

Each envelope she took in her hands seemed to be mischievously
metamorphosed into one of these stupid envelopes which represented such
dull contact with the outside world. Nothing to do but to go upstairs
and read all over again the old messages of love from him--to wear her
wedding ring in the privacy of her room--to make endless computations on
the presumable date of her child’s birth--to read with unfailing zest
and yet slight nausea the rather mawkish pages of “What Every Mother
Should Know” which she had shamefacedly but defiantly bought at a book
shop, feeling the necessity for some practical knowledge of marriage.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day, breaking through her apprehension and her waiting, cutting
across her vague fears, came the letter. It lay between an announcement
of the opening of a new hair dressing parlor and Mr. Miller’s water and
light bill. How could she hope that the other white envelope would be
anything more interesting? Then she turned it over and the address
stared at her blackly. It was addressed to Mrs. Gregory Macmillan, in an
unfamiliar hand, postmarked at the town from which Gregory had last
written. Gregory always addressed her letters to Freda Thorstad to avoid
any explanations to the Millers. A quick faint fear came over her. She
almost crushed the letter as she flew up the stairs and with her back
against her door faced the envelope again.

Then steeling her mind and her heart, presenting only outer senses to
what blow it might contain, she opened it. The written words made their
sense clear, like some amazingly vital story that thrilled every nerve.

     “MY DEAR MRS. MACMILLAN:

     I obtained your address from your husband and I am writing you to
     tell you that he is extremely ill. We have done our best for him
     and he has a nurse with him constantly but I feel that you should
     come to him if it is at all possible. I do not know what
     responsibilities of family may hold you but I think it my duty to
     inform you that your husband is very sick. He lectured here on the
     fourteenth and the next morning the proprietor of this hotel called
     me to attend him. I found him in the first stages of typhoid and
     had him removed to a hospital here which is comfortable and where
     we have given him every attention. At a time like this his family
     should be with him. I regret that I must be the agent of such
     distressing news.

                                                      Faithfully yours,

                                          L. D. MERRITT, M.D.”

She read it through twice carefully. The thing struck her as quite
unreal, although she had speculated on the possibility of his illness.

Then her mind, working reasonably, went on. She thought of trains and
money. She had fifty--no forty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. It
wasn’t enough, she knew.

She had the time tables which she had obtained the day before. She
studied them, her body held tautly, her face calm, showing a control
which had come unconsciously. She could leave at three fifteen that
afternoon. She’d have to change trains at midnight. She’d get there at
noon next day. There was money. She must have money. No one to get it
from unless she wired her father--better not--Miss Duffield away--Mr.
Flandon away--Cele had none. She thought even of Ted Smillie. Better
not--she’d pawn something. That was what people did when they needed
money.

Like most girls she had a small collection of semi-precious
jewelry--nothing of great value. She opened the little mock-ivory box
on her dressing table and considered the contents carefully. Then she
closed it, put on her hat and stuck the box in her pocket.

Pawning was unlike any experience she had ever had and not as exciting
as books had led her to believe. She felt no shame--only a vague
hostility to the pawnbroker. She hated his having so obviously the best
of the transaction. He was scornful in her array of articles to
sell--the gold bracelet that had cost her father thirty-five
dollars--the little one carat diamond ring that had been her
mother’s--the opal ring--the seal ring--the little silver locket.

In the end he gave her thirty-three dollars, and with the money in her
hands she immediately got his point of view. She had exchanged a lot of
things which meant little to her for the boundless power of thirty-three
dollars which added to forty-nine made eighty-two.

She bought a ticket to Fairmount, Montana. It cost her twenty-eight
dollars and sixty-four cents. She put it in her purse and went home, a
splendid sense of action stirring her.

It took her a very short time to pack her bag. There remained two hours
before the train. She spent it sitting in her room and letting the
knowledge of what she was doing penetrate her mind. It occurred to her
that she should let some one know where she was going but in the face of
Gregory’s illness it seemed even less possible to confide the news of
her marriage. That was to have been a glorious revelation to a few
people. She could not turn it into tragedy, so she decided to tell no
one.

To her father she wrote a letter.

Yet even to him she could not tell the facts. It seemed now when
circumstances seemed to imperil her secret that she clutched it even
more tightly to herself. She could not bear the thought of comment
breaking in like a destructive barrage on the secret glory and beauty
she cherished. In her absorption she did not think much of consequences
or possible worry for any one. Only as she told Mrs. Miller that she
wanted to pay up for her week and that she had been called out of town,
did it occur to her from a comment of Mrs. Miller’s, that her mother was
coming in a day or two. The complication puzzled her--then she overrode
it boldly. It was one of the things that had to be. So she wrote a note
for her mother and entrusted it to Mrs. Miller. It was only a few lines
to tell her that she had left the city--“I’m sorry that I can’t be more
definite about my plans. There’s nothing to worry you, mother. It’s
quite all right and I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t. So please don’t
worry about me. Only trust me, won’t you? I know you will.” She sent her
love and for all her assurances on paper that she knew her mother would
trust her she sealed it with a dubious look.

In the letter to her father she was, if not more informative, at least
more expansive.

It was incoherent, reassuring, happy, sad--the kind of letter that
carries with it great fear to the one who reads it and who sees how
delicate the balance is on which the future is being weighed.

Freda mailed the note to her father, left the one for her mother with
Mrs. Miller and went to the station. Almost before she knew it the long
train, with a jerk of its loose hung body had gathered itself together
and moved out of the yards through the scattering, blackened railroad
district. She watched the little houses and let her mind sink into a
blur of remembrance and anticipation. She was going to Gregory. No more
waiting for letters, no more dreams. Whatever it was that was to come,
it was reality--something to feel and to do--not to wait for.

She slipped her wedding ring on her finger and displayed her hand a
little absurdly on the edge of the window casing. Marvelous symbol--that
ring, she thought. Too bad that people had come to regard it so
disdainfully. How ill it must have been treated to have sunk into such
disrepute. Across the aisle of the day coach she saw a like ring on the
hand of a woman. It was a fleshy hand and the coarse pink skin pushed
itself up on either side of the encircling band but Freda felt kinship
and friendliness. With this unknown woman, with the unintelligent face
she almost felt it possible to converse intimately--as if she might
cross to her and say, “I am Mrs. Gregory Macmillan. Are you going far?”

When the shadows fell thick across the prairie and a white-coated
waiter, a shade more important in his manner that he had been in passing
through the Pullmans, had intrigued a fair number of the day-coach
passengers into the diner, Freda rose a little stiffly. Her chin had red
marks on it where she had cupped it in her hand for so long and there
were streaks of coal dust under her eyes. She made a perfunctory and
inadequate attempt to look presentable and faced a new adventure. She
had never eaten on a train in her life.

The warm bustle and luxury of the place stirred her senses and brought
her out of her lonely rhapsody into an appreciation of what went on
around her. The adventure spirit came to the surface. Freda
Thorstad--sitting at a tidy table in a dining-car, on the way to her
husband. There was no disloyalty to Gregory’s illness that she could not
resist the enchantment of shining dishes which looked like silver and
warm and savory smells and smiling, interesting travelers, with above
and around it all the clatter and rush of the train, moving on to a
hundred destinations, a hundred tragedies and comedies and romances.
Her thoughts at least admitted no staleness as a possibility.

The meal stood out in her memory. She never forgot it. Tentatively she
ordered, tea, biscuits and lamb chops. When the lamb chops came they lay
on a platter with little sprigs of parsley offering them up and made her
very hungry. They looked delightful but inadequate. She ate hungrily,
for these last few days she had had little food.

Four--five--dragging hours. She bought a magazine with a flaring girl on
its cover and read avidly, her mind sinking into its soporific fiction
with weariness, getting respite from her own sharp and vivid thoughts.

The conductor came to tell her that this was her station. He lifted her
heavy bag for her and carried it to the foot of the steps of the coach.

Then came the excitement of the swoop and pause of the Flyer. Freda was
bundled aboard, hat awry, nervously watching for her bag, taken from her
hands by some one, porter or conductor. The curtains swung from all the
berths. The porter’s voice was low and lazy. He showed her to lower
six--a little cubby hole with curtains drawn aside, revealing the
delightful neatness of the berth. Freda knew even less of sleeping on
trains than she did of eating there. Awkwardly she managed to undress
and crept in between the thick white sheets. In the darkness she lay
awake, wondering. Wondering at the rush and sound and the mysteries
shrouded behind green swinging curtains. When the train shrieked a
signal or stopped lurchingly at some station she pushed up the curtain
beside her and, propped on her pillows, lay looking into the night
tasting the full delight of inexperience. At last she fell asleep and
dreamed of Gregory. It was a frightening dream. He did not know who she
was, did not remember her. Towards dawn she pushed her way out of it and
woke up to see the rain falling lightly over the even country and to
realize that she was begrimed with the coal dust and sticky with heat.

At noon she reached Fairmount and stood in the station looking about her
for information. The excitement of the last lap and approaching climax
of her journey overcame her fatigue and her eyes were brilliant. She
decided to take a taxi to the hospital and chose at random one from a
row of disheveled looking “For Hire” machines waiting for the daily
debouch of passengers from the Flyer. She climbed in with her bag and
closed the shaky door, and the driver started his motor. Freda’s heart
was racing. The cab could not go fast enough--nor slow enough. It seemed
to her as if she could not bear what might be waiting of joy or sorrow,
as if emotion was welling up so strong that it would burst its bounds
and overcome her. Through the dusty cab windows she saw Fairmount--ill
developed wooden houses with unhealthy looking trees giving little
shade--a business district of twelve or fifteen squares with all the
machinery of business being conducted as it was at this hour in hundreds
of other First National Banks and Gilt Edge Stores and Greek Restaurants
and brick office buildings. The cab whisked through it rapidly and came
to a section of broader streets where more impressive looking houses of
brick or stone appeared at leisurely intervals. A little park with a
dusty looking playground adjoining it. A row of apartments and there on
the corner where a “Silent Zone” sign, awry and disregarded by a group
of boys playing in the street made a vain appeal, was St. Agatha’s
Hospital.

Inside the little entry was an office with three or four glass windows,
behind which she looked for an informant. A slim, weary looking nun came
at last, looking at her from behind steel rimmed glasses without
curiosity.

“Macmillan--yes,” she said, “you’re--?”

“I’m his wife.”

The nun accepted the fact simply and as if she yielded Freda certain
rights and privileges. Freda felt frightened. She wanted to go into
Gregory’s room, kneel down by his bed and tell him to get well. She
could see it wasn’t going to be as direct as that.

A buzzing, muffled bell, sounded by the nun, had summoned a nurse, who
came into the office thumping heavily on her flat rubber-heeled shoes.
She was commissioned to take Freda to the last room in corridor “A”--the
“typhoid case.” Freda left her bag in the office and followed the nurse,
as she clumped indifferently along. The presence of the nurse bothered
her. She wanted to get rid of her--tell her she would go on alone but
she did not dare. In corridor “A” the nurse gave her a chair.

“I’ll find his nurse and see if you can see him now.”

“I’m his wife,” said Freda.

The nurse nodded.

“I’ll get the nurse first. She wouldn’t like me to bring any one in
without calling her first, you see.” She smiled a little as she
explained this convention of the hospital and her smile angered Freda.
It seemed an intrusion.

Gregory’s nurse came to her. She held out a friendly hand.

“I’m glad you’ve come. We’re doing our best but I was glad when the
doctor wrote you,” she said simply.

Something in her tone pricked the adventure spirit in Freda. It lay
flat, useless, a bit of torn balloon. She saw herself as this other
woman saw her--a wife, come in time of stress to a sick husband, not a
lover to a meeting. That was what she herself had colored her worry
with.

Panic seized her. She followed almost resistingly. The door, with its
printed “No Visitors” sign was opened softly. She had to accustom her
eyes to the darkness. A smell of disinfectants, clean and pungent, came
to her. There was the bed, white and high. She made her way towards it
falteringly. The head, bandaged for coolness, did not turn to her. It
was only when she stood by the bedside that it moved a little,
restlessly. He did not look real to her, not like himself.

“Gregory,” she said mechanically.

His fever-dulled eyes looked up at her--lighted. He made one motion
permeating his whole body as if he would rise in spite of the quickly
detaining hand of the nurse.

“Angel,” he said huskily, “you angel of God--Freda.”

The sound of his voice was a release. All her frightened feelings,
reassured, warmed into life, flooded Freda. She sank down by his side,
her head bent over the hot hand, which lay so impotent on the gray
blanket.




CHAPTER XVII

GAGE FINISHES IT


The Convention went on as Gage had predicted. It held few surprises.
Here and there a wave of new sentiment was perceptible but the old rules
held good. The tremendous heat was a factor. It made many of the
delegates relapse very easily into the political fatalism which is the
breath of life to party control.

To the women it was more interesting and more disappointing than it was
to the men. They were interested because it was all new. They were
disappointed because every one seemed to give in to the obvious so
readily. Harriet Thompson and her group were somewhat grim--humorous
enough. They had not expected anything else really.

It was an exhausting week. There was a threat that the Convention might
go over into the succeeding week but that was unfulfilled. Saturday
night Margaret and Helen went back to St. Pierre too tired and worn to
even talk much to each other, thoughtful, depressed a little and
revolving new enthusiasms at the same time. But now that they were
emerging from the impersonal world in which they had been they felt the
pressure of the personal responsibilities they both were speeding
toward, perhaps, for they sat in silence in their compartment, each full
of her own reflections. Younger and less experienced women would have
welcomed the egotism of their own visions--the anticipations of scenes
in which they would be central. Helen and Margaret, fresh from the lift
of experience which was largely intellectual, did not look
anticipative, or particularly happy.

Helen had wired Gage that she was coming and he met her at the station.
One glance at his dark face told her all she needed to know of his mood.
He took her bags, not offering to kiss her and she and Margaret, oddly
constrained, got into the waiting car. Margaret was dropped at her
apartment and there, at the door, Gage vouchsafed his only conversation.
He asked them briefly if they “were satisfied with the show” and his
voice was heavy with ridicule.

“I think we were,” said Helen, “we didn’t expect as much as you did,
perhaps, Gage.”

A light answer, ringing sharply. Margaret went into her room and flung
open the windows to air it. At the window she looked down the street but
the Flandon motor had disappeared.

Helen kept wishing that it were not Sunday. Sunday was such a long,
intimate, family day. She meant to have been very definite with herself
about what her mode of approach to Gage would be. She found herself
floundering again. Of course there could be no compromise now. This
business with this girl had to be sifted through, admitted--faced. She
supposed there was nothing at all left of any feeling for Gage. He had
been outrageous and, even as she thought that, she worried about him. He
did look so very badly. Other people must be noticing it too.

He said nothing. At the house he helped her out and went into the house
with her. She sought the children. They were delightful and welcoming,
full of questions, of tales about the fun they had while she was away,
eager for presents. Helen kept the children with her, nervously,
postponing the encounter with Gage, wishing he would go down to the
city. But he did not. He hung about, ominous, smoking, reading, yet not
reading with absorption, suddenly throwing book or paper aside and
restlessly trying some new one, watching Helen.

She was pent up. There was such a contrast between the easy interchange
of yesterday and the constraint of to-day. The house didn’t seem big
enough to hold her and Gage. She went about her work trying to be
normal, directing the maids, playing with the children, unpacking her
bags. All the time she felt him watching her even if she were not in the
same room, felt his brooding concentration on her, knew he was wondering
what she thought about, whether she was glad to be back, what she was
going to do about Freda Thorstad. For the first time in her married
life, she had the sense of marriage as a trap. It had never been that.
There were times when she had been a little restive, but she had always
been building on a rock of belief in marriage, joy in it. It was
different to-day. She felt as if she had come in out of the fresh air of
clean discourse, free intercourse, into a narrow room where she was shut
up with a growling man--a room heavy with discord, enmity, suspicion.

The morning passed somehow. They had finished dinner and she was waiting
for Gage to propose something. He usually took the children for country
drives on Sunday. They were in the big sunroom, shady now with its
awnings let down, and Helen was stretched out on a white willow chaise
longue trying to believe she was ridiculous and making mountains out of
molehills when a maid came in to announce a caller.

“There’s a lady and gentleman to see Mr. Flandon.”

“You hear, Gage?”

“Who is it?” asked Gage.

“I think it’s a lady who’s been here before.”

Gage’s face was interested. He rose from his chair and followed the
maid. Helen heard a brief colloquy of voices then Gage saying, “Come
out here where my wife is, Mrs. Thorstad.”

He reappeared through the French doors with the little Mohawk lady
behind him, and behind her a man, a rather stooping, pleasant-faced
gentleman with well poised head and an air of mingled anxiety and
embarrassment. His manner was unlike that of his wife which was
definite, sharp, assertive, even before she spoke. As she saw them Helen
had the quick perception of a crisis. The parents of this girl here
together could mean only complications of trouble. Her mind stiffened
itself for whatever might be coming, as she rose and greeted Mrs.
Thorstad with easy cordiality and accepted the introduction to her
husband graciously.

“Did you enjoy the convention? I didn’t see you again after Wednesday.”

“No,” answered Mrs. Thorstad, “I came up to St. Pierre on Friday night.”

She seated herself in the chair Gage brought for her, a little uneasily,
with a righteous wriggle of her thin body. Her husband and Gage stood
together exchanging a few commonplace remarks. The air was electric.

Surprisingly, it was Mr. Thorstad who began.

“We are sorry to intrude upon you on this Sunday afternoon but our
errand is pressing and it will be best to make it clear at once. My
daughter has been employed in your office, Mr. Flandon.”

“Yes?”

“My wife came from Chicago to pay her a brief visit. She found that
Freda had gone away, leaving no address with any one. We are very much
concerned--greatly disturbed. My wife went at once to your office and
there saw your partner--Mr. Sable, is it?” Gage inclined his head--“You
were not there. I believe Freda was directly in your employ. Mr. Sable
tells my wife that Freda resigned her place on Friday morning.
Questioning him we find that she was asked to resign--that,” he paused
and spoke with difficulty, though still calmly, “that rumors subversive
to her character have been afloat. She has disappeared, Mr. Flandon.”
The stoop in his shoulders had somehow straightened. He was as tall as
Gage as he looked at him with restraint and yet with indictment. “Do you
know where my daughter is, Mr. Flandon?”

He stopped. Mrs. Thorstad edged to the side of her chair, foot tapping
nervously on the floor, eyes on Gage. Helen’s eyes were on him too,
though there was no change in her attitude. She had not paled or
flushed. It might have been the most casual of conversations.

The second before Gage’s answer weighed on all of them. He looked as if
he were pondering something--then back at Mr. Thorstad. His voice was
even and controlled.

“No, Mr. Thorstad, I don’t know where your daughter is.”

“Why did she leave your office?”

“She was discharged by my partner in my absence, most unjustly, for
preposterous suspicions. I shall do my best to reinstate her.”

“It will not be necessary, sir.”

Mrs. Thorstad could bear it no longer.

“And what were these suspicions?” She waited for no answer, turning
quickly on Helen. “I went to see Mrs. Brownley to find out if she could
tell me and her attitude is most peculiar--most peculiar. She insinuated
that I should give up my work to keep watch over my daughter. She cast
reflections on me as a mother. I told her that I had always upheld the
strictest doctrines of the home and the family, that I had always
insisted on a moral purity before everything else. That I should be so
treated amazed me! My daughter has always had the strictest upbringing.
What ideas of modern license she had absorbed from contact with this
Miss Duffield I am sure I don’t know. I always objected to that woman. I
asked Miss Duffield about it this morning. She doesn’t know where Freda
is--at least, she says she doesn’t. Well--who does? You took her into
your office, Mr. Flandon, you exposed her to this gossip--”

“Please, Adeline--”

“I need not tell you, Mr. Thorstad, that this unwarranted action of my
partner has incensed me beyond measure. I have the greatest respect for
your daughter.”

Mr. Thorstad inclined his head a little.

“We wish to find her, Mr. Flandon. We are greatly disturbed. My daughter
went away of her own free will, according to a letter I had from her.
She was evidently drawn by some enthusiasm of emotion.”

“She wrote you that?”

“To that effect.”

Mrs. Thorstad broke in again.

“Even before your wife, Mr. Flandon, I think we should tell you that we
know that your name has been coupled with our daughter’s name. Mr. Sable
let us infer it. I’m sorry, Mrs. Flandon--”

She did not look sorry. She looked vindictive.

“I know,” said Helen, “I believe, Gage, that you could throw some light
on all this. I don’t _know_ that you could but Miss Thorstad’s parents
should be relieved of anxiety if possible.”

Gage looked at his wife. Her eyes met his levelly, seemingly void of
feeling, empty even of anger. Her resistance to pain woke
admiration--then cruelty. So that was all she cared, was it? New
woman--modern stuff!

“I do not know where Miss Thorstad is,” he repeated, “I think, however,
that a girl with her strength and control is safe wherever she may be.
She may think it best to keep her plans to herself for the time being--”

“You speak with curious confidence, Mr. Flandon,” said Mrs. Thorstad
sharply. “This matter involves my daughter’s reputation.”

“From what I have seen of your daughter she is above gossip,” answered
Gage. He turned to the other man. “I am sorry I cannot help you. I am
more sorry than I can say that she was treated unfairly in my office and
I shall do my best to adjust that. If I should hear from her of course
you will be informed.”

Mr. Thorstad looked a little tired. He had perhaps keyed himself to this
encounter and found it exhausting to have it end in futility.

“I shall pursue my inquiries, of course. It is not a matter which we
care to have handled through any ordinary channels of search as we are
informed by her that she left voluntarily. It may be that she will
communicate with me to-morrow.”

An embarrassed pause came.

“Come, Adeline,” said her husband, still initiative.

Mrs. Thorstad felt and looked frustrated. She frowned at him, tight lips
compressed. It was clear that she was neither pleased nor satisfied,
that she wished to ferret further and the presence of her husband
restrained her.

“The affair shall be probed,” she said somewhat absurdly.

“You mustn’t go out in this heat without a cool drink. Let me give you a
glass of lemonade, won’t you?”

Helen rang the bell before Mrs. Thorstad could protest.

“It’s very good of you, Mrs. Flandon,” she subsided, stiffly.

Gage seized his opportunity.

“I’ll get you a real drink, Thorstad. Come out in the dining-room, won’t
you?”

Mr. Thorstad, on the point of refusal, checked himself. Gage’s face was
significant. He wanted to see him alone.

In the dining-room they were out of earshot. Gage poured two small
glasses of whisky, his companion’s restraining hand dictating the
amount. Even then Mr. Thorstad waited. He raised his glass perfunctorily
but did not drink.

“I’m sorry for this mess, Thorstad. I don’t believe in taking notice of
gossip ordinarily and you can’t help what a lot of small people think.
But I saw something of your daughter in my office. I admired her
character, her idealism immensely. I--am not involved in any way with
her. I believe wherever she is that she is happy--and safe.”

“Did she leave the city because of that dismissal from your office?”

Gage strode up and down the room.

“That’s it! I don’t know. It might be. I was in Chicago. My partner took
it on himself to let her go. How deeply he wounded her I don’t know. I
was appalled when I heard what he had done. I am going to make
reparation to her in some way, I assure you. It’s the sort of thing that
is hard to repair but I shall do my best when I know where she is.”

“Why did they talk about her in connection with you, Flandon, if there’s
nothing to it?”

“Fools. I shan’t contradict them.”

“It might be wise to contradict them.”

“No.” A gleam of hysteria was in Gage’s smile. “Let them say what they
please as long as it doesn’t hurt Miss Thorstad.”

“It may do that.”

“Then we stop it. But there’s no point in statements now that there is
no possible connection between our names. The thing is to find her if
you feel she ought not to be left alone.”

“Why should she be left alone? She may be in distress.”

“I don’t think so,” Gage was guarding Freda’s secret as best he could
and trying to reassure her father who so inspired sympathy and respect.
“She is so controlled--so high minded that she would act wisely, I’m
sure.”

Mr. Thorstad looked at him curiously.

“Then you have no further information?”

“No--only I hope you’ll take my word that I’m not involved.”

“I am inclined to do so.” Mr. Thorstad put down his untasted glass on
the table and accepted Gage’s outstretched hand. “I do not feel exactly
as her mother does about the matter. Of course Mrs. Thorstad is actuated
by a mother’s great anxiety. I am a little more inclined to trust to
Freda’s judgments. She is, as you say, not a person to be the victim of
any easy emotion or to yield to any false persuasion. She has great
perception of the alliance between true things and beautiful things.”

“I saw that,” said Gage. “You’re very wise, Mr. Thorstad. It’s too bad
she can’t be left alone to work this out.”

“Personally,” went on the other, “the scandal doesn’t perturb me at all.
It is for her mother’s sake that I feel obliged to overstep my own
inclination to let Freda have her own time to make her confidence. I
felt it necessary to trace any possible connection you might have with
her disappearance. I--I am apt to take the word of a gentleman as truth,
Mr. Flandon.”

“You are very good,” said Gage. “Very good. I am deeply grateful.”

“Shall we return to the others?”

The two women were sitting silently, making no pretense at casual talk,
their curiosity as to what the two men had said to each other
indisguisable.

“We must go now, Adeline.”

She rose, evidently torn by a desire to be easy and complaisant and a
disgruntled lack of satisfaction in the interview.

“Very well,” she said, “I’m sure I shall not be able to rest for a
second until my daughter is safe and with me once more.”

They were courteous to the little outbreak of melodrama but not too
responsive.

Helen and Gage accompanied their visitors to the door and saw them walk
down the street, the sunlight bringing out the shiny seams in Mr.
Thorstad’s coat, beating unmercifully on the defiant little daisies in
his wife’s hat.

Helen turned to her husband.

“Why didn’t I hear of this?”

“I didn’t know you’d be interested. You’ve been so interested in
national affairs I couldn’t suppose you had time for little local
troubles.”

She set her lips in anger.

“You gain nothing by viciousness, Gage. Where is that girl?”

“Haven’t I said I didn’t know?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That’s quite in line with your other theories of wifely conduct.”

“I’m not interested in quarreling with you, Gage. I simply want to know
for my own protection what is going on. Is it true that George Sable
discharged that girl while you were away?”

“Quite true.”

“For what reason?”

Gage lighted a swaggering cigarette.

“His mind runs along with yours, Helen. He had the same delicate ideas
you have.”

“Where did the girl go?”

“Didn’t you hear me say I didn’t know?”

“Has she run away from you too? Have you got that girl into trouble?”

“I always hated that phrase,” answered Gage, nonchalantly.

“Why did you come back from Chicago so soon?”

“Why should I stay? A fifth wheel? The entirely superfluous husband of
one of the great feminist successes?”

“I asked you why you came back.” She framed each word with an artificial
calmness.

“You haven’t taken so much interest in me for years, Helen. It’s true,
isn’t it? All a man has to do is to get involved in a scandal to have
the women after him.”

She pressed her hand to her face as if to shut out the sight of him.

“You’re a madman, Gage.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Then she dropped into a chair, weeping long sobs, drawn from emotion
controlled beyond her strength.

“Why do you torture me so, Gage? What devil possesses you?”

He had always had a horror of seeing her weep. He took a step towards
her.

“I’m tired--I’m tired,” sobbed Helen.

Gage stiffened. “And why are you tired? Because you’ve been running
around Chicago. I didn’t tire you. You tire yourself. Then you come back
exhausted and blame me because you are exhausted. If you were more a
wife--less a public character--”

She had risen and stood looking at him angrily again, eyes wide with
hurt and disappointment.

“You jealous fool--you’re on the point of becoming a degenerate. If even
Sable has to watch over your actions--publicly reprove you--”

“He won’t do it again,” said Gage, “not again. I am severing my
connection with the upright Sable. He’ll never pry into my business
again. I’ll tell you that for certain.”

She stopped considering the personal trouble in sheer amazement.

“You’re not going to break with Sable?”

“I told him yesterday I was through. In fact I told him cordially to go
to hell. He can’t play the black mammy to me, you know.”

“But--what are you to do?”

“Oh, I’ll do something. I’ll show him whether I have to sit and take
dictation from him.”

“You’re going to practice by yourself?”

“When my plans are ready, you’ll hear them, Helen.”

She shivered.

“I wonder if you’re headed for destruction.”

“You told me I was a degenerate. Well, we’ll see.”

Looking at him she saw, underneath the mask of tawdry control, the
agitation he was in and the ravages of nervousness. His eyes were not
steady--they were too bright and he had a way of biting at his lower lip
which she could not remember.

She straightened her hair mechanically and went past him toward the
sunroom. As she went she heard him return to the dining-room and stood
with clenched hands trying not to interfere until she had thought things
out.

Lying down in the same chair she had occupied before she tried to get
some order into her thoughts. The problem of Freda, so overwhelmingly
great a moment ago, was matched if not overcome by her realization that
Gage was going from bad to worse--that he seemed to be on the loose
mentally--tearing from catastrophe to catastrophe. The significance of a
quarrel with Sable grew upon her--the probability of all the financial
trouble that Gage might be letting himself in for. And the thing that
she came back to time after time as her thoughts went around in circles
was that Gage did not seem to care any more--that he was so recklessly
indifferent to what she thought--to what was wise for the children and
for her.

For the moment she had passed beyond the point of thinking of rights and
wrongs. She was concentrated on immediate necessities. She almost forgot
the complication of Freda and was shocked at herself when that came back
to her.

She heard the sound of Gage’s car starting down the driveway. He was
going out then. All her feelings, her thoughts bore on one question.
Where was he going?




CHAPTER XVIII

IN HOSPITAL


After the first twenty-four hours with Gregory nothing seemed real to
Freda outside of the hospital. She had found for herself a hotel room, a
shabby little room in a second rate hotel, a room with scarred brown
maple bureau and iron bed from which the paint had peeled. It looked out
on a fire escape and a narrow court, helplessly trapped between tall
brick walls.

To that room she went for her periods of rest, for the hospital had no
vacant room or even bed, where she might relax. After she had gone to
the hotel from the hospital several times the way seemed curiously
familiar. Two blocks to the east, across the street car line, past the
drug store with its structure of Tanlac in the window--one block to the
north and there was the entrance of the hotel with seven or eight broad
cement steps leading up to it. There was not one thing which she passed
which impressed itself in the least on her imagination--not one image
that was vivid enough to penetrate. Night and day it was the same--like
moving blindfolded through still air. It was only when she went back to
the hospital that her mind seemed to stir from its lethargy.

The hardest moments were those of Gregory’s lucidity--when the sight of
her made him flame with a passion which leapt through his restricted and
suffering body, when phrases came to his hot lips which made her quiver
with the sense of him. She would kneel beside his bed and tell him
softly reassuring things and with his head turned on his pillow he would
regard her from the depths of those eyes, always haggardly set, but now
far sunken.

She had no faintest doubts as to her past or present actions. That was
Freda’s great triumph over most of the women she knew. She did not
doubt; she did not worry. Most of them had carried over into their new
self-confidence and their new chances a habit of worry born of ingrowing
responsibilities in the past and now fostered by general
self-consciousness. It was unnatural to Freda to mope over her actions
or to analyze them. She knew how to go ahead and there always was
absence of self-consciousness about what she did, simplicity of manner,
dignity of step. It was as if she had somehow stepped over the phase of
altercation, doubt and experiment into a manner which did the unusual
easily, but only if the unusual came in her path, which accepted new
rules, new customs without a flush, and most of all was able to merge
the best of feminism into a fine yet unchristened ease of sex. She did
not need either the little fears or defenses of her mother or the larger
ones of Margaret Duffield. It did not occur to her that she was very
complete in herself and satisfying to herself. She bothered with no
altercations or analysis.

It was not a wholly sad time for all the deepening anxiety and
danger--it was not a time for depression. Freda knew that she had come
to grips with life and she was glad to feel her full strength called to
battle.

While they wondered about her in St. Pierre, while her name ran like a
little germ of gossip spreading contagion from lip to lip in St. Pierre,
she sat most of the time in the hospital, in the chair beside Gregory’s
bed, touching his hot, tense wrist with the coolness of her fingers--she
sat outside his room in the recess of the bay windows on a curved window
seat and watched people come and go--and once in a while she slipped
into the hospital library and got hold of a book on pregnancy which
fascinated her. Skillfully manipulated conversation with the nurse had
given her enough information so that she had been able to control a
great part of her own present liability to sickness and she felt better
than she had for several weeks.

Three days after her arrival Gregory came successfully through the first
crisis of his illness. Freda walked on air the next day. The doctor was
cheerful and jocose.

“We’ll have that young Irishman of yours out of the woods in ten days,”
he said to Freda, and she had no doubt of it.

The difficulty was not in the progress of the disease but in Gregory’s
own debility. He was not so well a few days later. The doctor talked
gravely of exhaustion and Freda picked up from the reluctant nurse that
exhaustion during the third week was dangerous--that one might die
because of it.

For the first time she was fearful. Here was nothing you could combat
for him. Here was a slow slipping away. He did not often talk now.
Almost all the time he lay, incredibly thin, mournfully haggard against
his pillow, too tired even for Freda to call back.

She thought about death. One day she passed a room in which a man was
dying. She heard the raucous gasp from the filling lungs and trembled.
They brought a priest. She wondered. If Gregory should die, would he too
have a priest to guide him out? She supposed that usually you sent for a
minister or priest. A month before the mere suggestion that a soul
needed ushering into immortality would have seemed absurd to her healthy
pagan young mind, but now, with the severing of the thread so possible,
with the limits of the unknown receding even while they grew close she
wondered. Gregory was not formally religious but in his poems he had
seemed so conscious of God.

“Most poets write of women--but you write only of God and Ireland.” So
she had said to him, she remembered, and he had answered.

“I shall write of woman now, dear heart.”

She went softly to his door. No change. Well, she should go to the hotel
for an hour--But the nurse stopped her.

“Mrs. Macmillan, he is not so well. The doctor thinks these next twelve
hours will be the worst. If you wish to leave I think it will be all
right. If not, I can see that you get a supper tray and if he is better
in the night you can take my cot.”

Freda felt a strange chill rushing over her.

“I’ll stay.” She looked at Gregory. “Worse? He looks just the same.”

“He is weaker--”

The stillness of the phrase--the helplessness. She sat down in the chair
by him again. It seemed so absurd not to call him back--so impotent. He
looked unguarded. If--if he should die he would go--wherever it
was--there must be a future for a soul like Gregory’s somewhere--he
would go alone. Cruel. She thought of the child growing within her. How
much more gentle was birth than death. Gentle and gradual and kind. It
was shared, but this horrible singleness of dying--

She had supper in the nurse’s kitchen. The nurses were kind to her,
faintly curious, preoccupied, full of that gayety so characteristic of
nurses when for an hour they can slip out of the technique of the manner
which they affect and become informal, unrestrained. The shadow of
Gregory’s crisis rested on them not at all, Freda thought. She was not
resentful. But she ate to please the nurse who had managed to get the
supper for her and then went quickly back to Gregory. If it should
happen when she was away! It must not. She must go there to keep it
from happening. Surely she could. Surely she could.

She did not sleep. The nurse watched on one side, she on the other, the
nurse nodding a little and Freda shaking off the fearful drowsiness that
came over her too. She did not want to sleep. She was afraid that if she
slept, it might happen. It was like sentry duty. As long as she was
awake such a thing would not happen. She did not name death in her
thoughts. It was like invoking a presence. She understood trite phrases
as she thought--the triteness of “he has left us,” “passed on,” “was
called.” How those phrases irked her in the newspapers sometimes. But
they were true. It was like that. She heard the soft rise and fall of
the nurse’s breathing. She was asleep--no, not quite.

Now and then he moved a little. His troubled breathing seemed to sigh,
slight, weary sighs. Freda bent close over him. Here we are, she
thought, he and I and him within me. We must stay close, closer than
death can come.

Three hours later, with the gray light coming so early into the room,
the nurse, who had slept a little, roused herself, busy immediately with
the routine of temperature taking, her cap a little askew, her face
puffed with uncompleted sleep.

“Well, we got through that night all right,” she said cheerfully,
softly. “And our patient looks better, Mrs. Macmillan. Look at
him--doesn’t he?”

Freda looked shakily at him. It seemed almost true. He seemed to be
sleeping almost naturally.

“Then you think he’s come through?” she ventured.

The nurse straightened her cap professionally.

“Well, I should say that bad turn he took last night would be the last.
He’ll be coming along now. We’ll get some nourishment into him pretty
soon. You go over to the hotel and get some sleep--no, lie down here on
my cot. You look weak.”

       *       *       *       *       *

And now it was a new atmosphere--an atmosphere of convalescence, of
Gregory coming slowly back to life, visibly changing for the better,
smiling, joking feebly, watching her wonderingly and devotedly, talking
when he was allowed.

“It’s such a ridiculous way to begin housekeeping,” Freda would tease
him, gently.

“It’s a maddening way and a marvelous way--to have all day to watch you
and adore you and not to dare to pull you into my arms for fear a nurse
will pop out on me.”

“You may be sure one would.”

“How long do I have to stay here?”

“A wheeled chair next week if you are good and don’t get excited.”

“A wheeled chair--when I want a highway with you beside me--”

“If you’re impatient--” she stopped to smile at him.

“Listen, Freda--we go straight off together, don’t we?”

“Off where?”

“Back home.”

“We should stop to see my father and my mother. Do you know, Gregory, I
didn’t even tell any one where I was going. I just came. I suppose
they’re all mystified and probably worried. Though I wrote them not to
be.”

“Well, we’ll stop to tell your parents. And then off for Ireland.”

“Have we enough money?” asked Freda.

“Plenty. I have it somewhere. Let me see. It was a black bill
case--maybe you could find it for me. Black bill case with an elastic
band around it. There’s about five hundred. They paid me in
notes--(bills, you say)--at these last places and I meant to get post
office orders. Much safer. Hunt it up, will you, darling? And you might
be looking up passage.”

“Passage for weeks from now,” she said sternly. But she was as eager as
he and they smiled at each other, doubled, trebled in happiness now that
their storm had come and they had been able to weather it together.

She went on the trail of the black bill case and found it easily enough.
It was, with Gregory’s few valuables, in the possession of the hospital
office. In it were some papers, some letters and twenty-three dollars.
Her heart fell with a thump.

“Is this all there was?”

“His watch too--we never leave valuables with sick patients who have no
relatives about. They might get picked up and the hospital be considered
responsible.”

“I mean all the money?”

The nurse in charge of the office wrinkled her forehead and looked at
the note regarding Gregory on her record.

“Black bill case--letters--papers--twenty-three dollars in currency.
That’s what he brought here. Is that correct? We’ve kept the bill case
in our safe, of course.”

She looked questioningly at Freda.

“That’s what is here,” said Freda, “but you see my husband thought there
was more--quite a lot more. I wonder was he sick in the hotel long?”

But the hotel was a blind trail and a suspicious one. The chambermaid
who had called the doctor for Gregory had left the town--strangely
enough two days after he was taken sick. She had never been a competent
girl--The hotel courteously disclaimed all responsibility and hoped the
loss was not great. There was a safe in the office--guests were
requested and so forth--.

“Of course,” said Freda, “I quite understand.” She did. She understood
that the money had vanished and that it was not coming back to her or to
Gregory. She went back to her hotel room and counted what money she had.
With Gregory’s present resources they had fifty dollars between them.
And there was an unpaid nurse at five dollars a day--hospital bills,
doctor bills, doubtless bills for all the medicines. All those things
and no money to meet them, she pondered. Besides she must not tell
Gregory. She must not worry him just now or disappoint him. The nurse
wanted him kept calm and cheerful. But in the meantime, what was she to
do?

It was hard going back to the hospital and facing the nurse. The nurse
was so good to her and Freda felt miserably that to let her be so good
when there was no money to pay her was deceiving. She herself was hot
and troubled. Her clothes were an annoyance. She had only three blouses
and one of those was torn at the neck irremediably. It was hard to keep
cheerful when you needed fresh clothes so badly and had hardly enough
money to pay the hotel bill mounting up against you. But she forgot all
that in the presence of Gregory. He was feeling better this afternoon
than he had up to that time, his convalescence taking one of those quick
strides so encouraging to those who watch. The nurse had propped him up
on his pillows and he wanted Freda beside him.

So she let the matter drift and when he asked if she had found the bill
case she told him “yes.”

“Then that’s all right,” he said gaily, and saved her the lie she had
ready. Nor did he waste more time on money. He wanted to talk of other
things, to ask her questions and it was that afternoon that she dared to
tell him that she expected their child, and to let herself relax a
little in the companionship of his happiness and the comfort of his
reverence.

But when she went back to the hotel she could not bring herself to order
supper. The menu stared at her--with ducklings and roasts and table
d’hotes. Figure as she would, she could not order a supper for less than
a dollar. So she pleaded a headache to the waiter and left the table to
go supperless to her room and then to bed, for the nurse had said
Gregory must be quiet that evening.




CHAPTER XIX

MENTAL SURGERY


Margaret knew all about it now. From her point of view certain
conventions of non-interference between husband and wife were so many
links in the old chain. Undoubtedly it was not that she wanted to force
Helen’s confidence. But to come upon Helen the Monday after that
exhausting Sunday, come to her to say good-by and make plans for the
future, and to find the splendid dignity and poise of the Helen she had
been with in Chicago destroyed angered her. Helen had told her the
facts. She had to tell some one, she told herself in a justification she
felt bound to make in secret, and Margaret was at least a stranger in
the city and moreover the only woman she knew who would not make the
slightest impulse to carry her story to other ears.

Margaret, in immaculate white linen, looking as cool and competent as an
operating surgeon, had listened. She heard the whole of the story, how
Gage had changed--for that Helen insisted upon.

“He’s simply not himself. I suppose it’s the feeling he has towards the
girl.”

“Don’t ‘the girl’ her, Helen. I’m not a bit sure of that part of the
story. Somehow it’s too preposterous that Freda should be languishing
somewhere waiting for Gage’s casual attention. I tell you that girl
doesn’t languish. She’s not that kind. She’s the most magnificently
unconscious modern you ever saw. She wouldn’t be any one’s mistress. She
hasn’t that much dependence in her. Not for a minute. I simply don’t
believe it.”

“She disappeared the day after he came back from the convention. And
then he was away that week-end she was seen at the Roadside Inn.”

“I don’t believe she was ever seen there,” said Margaret.

Helen put her hand to her head.

“I don’t want to believe it, but if he won’t deny it--and isn’t it
possible that the poor child’s run away even from him? If she should be
going to have--oh, damn, I can’t say it even--” She broke off a little
hysterically.

“No--I don’t believe that either.” But for all her stout words, Margaret
sounded a little more dubious this time. “Let’s leave her out of it.
What is there to do about you and Gage?”

“I despise my own incompetence of decision,” said Helen. “But I don’t
know. I don’t know how to go through the business. It seems impossible
that we’ve come to the edge of divorce but I can’t go on living with a
man who acts as Gage does. I can’t, that is, with any measure of
self-respect. And yet I look around and the very weight of detail--the
tremendous business of unwinding a marriage--it seems then as if the
quick flare-up of partings that you read about--the separations that
never involve themselves with the machinery of complaints and retaining
lawyers and distributing property and--moving vans--are quite fantastic.
I wonder if it’s laziness which keeps me so fearful of the mass of
detail, Margaret--”

“Of course you’re trivial on purpose, I suppose,” answered Margaret.
“The things you speak of don’t really bother you.”

“Yes. Translated into more serious terms I suppose the thing that hurts
is the terrible pain of cleavage between two people who have grown into
each other for years.”

“More likely. Helen, I don’t want to probe, but do you want to live
without Gage?”

Helen pondered.

“I don’t want to lose him. I feel dreadfully cheated--put upon. I didn’t
want any of this. If I’d known that he was going to feel so outraged at
the political venture I’d have stopped, I think, before I let it get to
an impasse. But I’m afraid it’s that now. He and I were--well, there’s
no use debauching myself with memories. No--I don’t think I want to lose
him but even aside from this question of his disloyalty--this business
with Freda Thorstad--he’s becoming impossible to live with. The children
are noticing it. He doesn’t play with them as he used to. Goes off by
himself. There’s no free and easy interchange between us at all. Of
course he’s often flatly rude to me before the servants.”

“Suppose you gave up all the things he doesn’t like now, would that
solve things?”

Helen shook her head.

“Not now. The thing has gone too far. We’ve been ugly to each other and
we wouldn’t forget that. Besides I’m afraid I’d be resentful. There’s no
reason why I should be completely subject to Gage’s slightest word. We
can’t build on that basis.”

“What he wants,” said Margaret astutely, “is to have you subject to his
dream.”

Helen smiled rather ruefully.

“He might wake up from his dream!”

“That’s the chance women have always taken--even the luckiest ones.”

“I don’t see that it’s any use for me to think over causes and rake up a
justification here and a justification there anyway,” said Helen. “The
only thing of vital importance is to decide whether I’m going to let
events come as they will and be passive under them or whether I’m going
to try to manage the events.”

“I shouldn’t think there’d be much choice there.”

“There is though. It’s so easy to sit back and say, ‘I’m trapped. I’ll
just have to take whatever fate sends. There’s nothing I can do.’”

“But you won’t, for there are no ends of things you could do. It’s
complicated of course. If you leave Gage, of course it puts a crimp in
your political possibilities just now, not that the fact of separation
would much matter but of course up to this point your political
reputation has been partly builded on Gage’s name.”

“And I can’t trade on his name and not live with him. But then I can’t
trade on his name anyway. I must define a position and take what is
coming to me as an individual and give up the rest.”

“No. It’s complicated too by money. I haven’t any, you know,
Margaret--and Gage has made a lot but we’ve lived rather up to the limit
of it. I don’t believe he stands awfully well financially. If we are to
separate things would go pretty much to pieces in every direction.”

“Very much,” said Gage. He had come in quietly and stood looking at them
in a kind of derisive anger. “I’m sorry to break in on your conference,
and on this delightful exhibition of my wife’s loyalty but since we are
all here, let’s talk it over.”

He sat down elaborately, his eyes on Margaret, ignoring his wife
fixedly.

“Have you made up your mind what we should do, Miss Duffield?”

“Don’t be insulting, Gage,” said Margaret, “it’s so unnecessary. I
haven’t been interfering with your affairs any more than was necessary.”

“Than was necessary to release Helen from the chains of marriage?” Gage
laughed. “Well, your work is done. As far as I’m concerned she’s
released. You may tell her, since you are in charge of our affairs, that
I will leave her as soon as possible--and that is very soon--and that
whatever financial arrangement is possible shall be made for her and the
children. She is correct in saying that my affairs are in a bad way. Mr.
Sable, from whom I have just separated in business, can tell her more
about that. She might care to engage him to represent her in any action
you might see fit for her to take.”

Helen had risen to her feet, quite white.

“Stop!” she cried. “Don’t you dare keep on insulting me. You’re
mad--abnormal--”

Gage bowed vaguely in her direction and continued speaking to Margaret.

“Tell her that she is right. I am mad and abnormal and that she has made
me so, instigated by you. Excuse me now, won’t you?”

He went upstairs but he could hear through the floor the swift,
staccato, shrieking sobs of Helen’s hysteria, hear the whisper of a maid
to the nurse in the back hall, hear a murmur which must be the calming
voice of Margaret. He paced viciously up and down--up and down.

Yet he had come home, driven by an invigorating impulse which had come
to him inexplicably, perhaps born of pity and sudden insight into
Helen’s mind, come home to ask her forgiveness, explain what Freda
Thorstad had told him and ask her to go away with him for a little while
until their minds both cleared. The impulse had risen in his throat--it
had choked him with delight and fear lest she should not be home. And
then through the sunroom doors he saw them, two calm women, talking
together, making and receiving confidences, uncovering him, dissecting
him, and as he stood still and let the blackness of rage sweep over him
again he had heard Helen tell this stranger, this inimical stranger, of
his financial condition. The sense of outrage overmastered him.

After a little it was quiet downstairs and he decided to go to the city
again, going downstairs, looking straight ahead of him. He wanted to see
the children, to have their reception of him ease this last sharp hurt.
They were in the garden of course, and they greeted him with their usual
shouts of delight.

“Well,” he thought, as he bent down to caress them, “I can’t stop now. I
can’t stop now.”

He sat down on the garden bench and took the children on his knees, the
boy and girl, so sturdy and happy, with fat brown knees and thick soft
hair. They were full of comments and questions. Peggy was three and
Bennett just eighteen months older. It was going to hurt terribly to
break away from them. Sable had said, “You can’t act as though you
didn’t have a family dependent on you.” He had shown Sable that he could
act that way, that the family dependent on him was not going to force
him to knuckle under. He stroked Peggy’s hair. How restful it was--if he
could only stay here in this sheltered little garden with the children
who had no tangles in their minds--if Helen would come out as she used
to come out last summer and sit with him while they talked and planned
of the beautiful things ahead for the children and their initiations
into living.

Helen had deserted. She had gone off notoriety seeking. She preferred to
sit in that room talking disloyalty to that woman to whose hard
influence she had subjected herself--Helen was driving him out.

He kissed the children sternly and went back through the house. In the
hall Helen met him. Her face was ravaged by hysterics, red hollows under
her eyes, mouth pulled out of shape. It hurt to regard it.

“Where are you going, Gage?”

For a moment he was gentle.

“Downtown. I’ll not be back till late. There’s no use trying to talk. We
are killing each other.” Then he thought of Margaret Duffield, listening
perhaps and loosening his wife’s hands from his shoulders, where she had
placed them, he went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

But that was not the only crisis Margaret had to meet that day. She was
eager to go back to New York. There was no possible work left for her to
do and she wanted to get away from St. Pierre. She did not tell Helen
that she was planning to go in a few days as she had told her landlady
that morning. When she left the Flandon house Helen was quite calm. With
her fine power of organization she had already decided that the best
temporary thing to do was to accept Gage’s actions and see how far he
would go, allowing her action to be modified by that later. Margaret
looked rather pale. The reasonableness of her own mind was bound to be
affected somehow by this drama through which she had passed and in which
she had been forced to play so disagreeable a part. Perhaps it showed
chiefly in the slight hardness of her attitude toward Walter Carpenter
that night.

She never seemed to attack that decision squarely. She seemed to try to
deny it a right to confront her. And yet, definitely, constantly, with
less impatience than a younger lover and vastly more skill than a less
intellectual one, Carpenter made himself felt. Now and then in their
discussions and in their arguments, he destroyed some reason against
their marriage. Her defenses had been made very weak. She had no
argument against the lack of liberty in marriage which he could not
destroy. He would grant anything. Indeed he asked only for the simplest,
most unadorned marriage bond--and companionship which she had admitted
she enjoyed with him. She might retain her own name if she liked without
any altercation--might leave him for months at a time--he let her
frighten him with no such threats. He offered too, more leisure for
thought than she had ever had in the pressure of earning her own living.
She had told him a little of what it meant to always need all the money
she had in the bank--to do many things and yet never have any feeling of
ease, to fear dependency. “It would mean a charitable hospital or going
to a remote little Pennsylvania town to an aunt who lived with my mother
until she died and who lives on in the almost worthless little place
where I was born.” When she told Walter that, he had almost won her, so
absorbed were they both in the pity and dread of her loneliness. Then
again there leapt between them some deep-rooted fear, some instinct,
some dread pulling Margaret back to her little island of celibacy.

It was far from an unpleasant, bickering companionship that they had.
Margaret, at thirty, past all the desires of adolescence, informed
without experience, had given Gregory nothing and had only been
disturbed and made nervous by him, even while she appreciated his fine
fire and ardors. Carpenter satisfied, soothed her. They had the same
shynesses, the same dread of absurdities in themselves. And Margaret was
afraid that she might be lonely without him and that too worried her.
She did not want to be lonely for any one. So she told him and he
laughed and ventured to bring her hand to his lips and hold it there.
She did not draw it away, perhaps because she was reasonable, perhaps
because she was not.

To-night he talked of Gage, reflecting the gossip of the men of Gage’s
acquaintance. With them the fact of the severing of the firm of Sable
and Flandon was a subject of much speculation. Walter was worried about
it, in his own quiet fashion. Gage and Helen were both his close
friends.

“Talking won’t do any good,” advised Margaret.

“Talking never did do any good with a man. It drives him into himself,
and that’s usually unhealthy. I mean the sort of talking which is full
of advice, of course--or of prohibition.”

“Yet some of you ought to do something with Gage Flandon before he goes
straight to pieces.” Margaret said nothing of what had happened that
afternoon.

“Yes,” said Walter absently, “he’s been going to pieces obviously. But
let’s not talk about him. Let’s talk about ourselves, Margaret.”

They were driving through the summer night, trying to get all the
coolness possible. It was soft warm darkness but the swift car made a
wind which blew back upon them, laden with clover smells, deeply sweet.
All the elaborate mental approaches which Walter had made to the girl he
wanted to marry were abandoned. He stopped the car and put his arm
around her, not supplicating but as if the time had come for concession.

“About ourselves. We talk too much impersonal stuff, Margaret. It’s
great fun but there’s more to be done than talk. We must begin on the
other things. We know each other’s minds now. Let’s know each other’s
feelings.”

It may have been the night, the darkness, the remoteness of the country
road which made him so bold. He tipped her face up to his and kissed her
eagerly, quite different now from the calm mannered man who had sat so
calmly in discussion with her night after night, who had squired her so
formally, who had made love to her mind and tried to capture her
intellect but never more, except for those two easily restrained
outbreaks.

She stiffened like an embarrassed school girl, her hands pressed against
his chest--

“Please don’t, Walter--”

“Foolish girl,” he said gently, “you mustn’t tie yourself up so. Let
your mind ride for a minute and just remember that we love each other,
just as every one in the world wants to love and be loved.”

All the while he talked, urging her, demanding her, he held her against
him, unrelaxed.

“I love you,” he told her. “And I want to be--oh, unspeakably
commonplace about it. I want to indulge myself in a lot of emotions that
are as old as the hills and as glorious. But I want you with me,
darling.”

Still she did not speak. He let her go a little and held her shoulders,
searching for her eyes in the dimness.

“You do love me, don’t you? Why, I’ve seen it for weeks. I’ve seen a
look in your face when I’ve come in--it isn’t boasting, dear, it’s just
a wonderful confidence I have to-night.”

She freed her hands and clasped them tightly in each other. They seemed
the index of some passionate inhibition, some repression, which was
charged with nervousness. Her easy freedom had deserted her, and every
muscle seemed drawn taut.

“Oh, my dear,” he pressed her, “don’t be so afraid. I won’t take
advantage of the fact you care for me. Is it that which holds you
back--that worry about making concessions to a man? Everything I’ve ever
said I’ve meant. I respect every militant inch of you. I love you just
as you are and for it. But above all that--beyond it--there’s more and
hasn’t the time come for the least bit of abandonment?”

“Why?” Her voice was low, not as firm in its tones as it was wont to be.

“Why?” Carpenter repeated her question, “Why? Because we love each other
or we don’t. And we can’t love at arms’ length, dear. We’ve got to be
close, trustful, together. You do like me, don’t you, Margaret?”

“You know I do.”

“And you know I love you. Won’t you come a little way to meet me? I’m so
sure you can trust me. I’m so sure we could be happy. Just let your mind
rest. Let yourself go a little.”

Her mood was chilling his. He tried to gather up the shreds of the
impetuosity that had first driven him to embrace her.

“Let’s not talk,” he said again, almost plaintively, “Can’t we
just--rest in each other?”

“But why are you afraid of talk?” she protested.

He dropped his hands from her shoulders.

“Have I been afraid? Haven’t we talked on every conceivable subject?
Haven’t we said enough to understand each other perfectly?”

“Then--”

“Margaret, dear, we’re at it again. This is what I protest--dragging
argument into every natural emotion. I don’t want to be mind to your
mind to-night. I don’t want to reason or even think--I just want to be
man to your woman and caress you without thought.”

But the verve had gone out of his words and as it went she seemed to
regain her confidence. He made a last attempt to bring back his spirit.
But his embrace seemed to stiffen her. He withdrew his arm and sat
tapping on the steering wheel.

“When will you marry me, Margaret?”

No impetuousness in his voice now, no romance. It met hers in calmness.

“I don’t know.”

“You must know. I can’t stand it any longer. You must or you must drive
me away. There’s no sense in further talk. You know I’ll exact nothing
but the right to be near you. But I must have that. I must know. It
isn’t as if I were younger and could rebound from one love into another.
You’ve got me. I don’t think of anything else. You color every bit of
work I do--every bit of thinking. I’ll trust to your terms. I’ve spent
weeks building up my theory of marriage to suit your desires and
visions. I don’t want to play upon your sympathies but I’ve got to have
you, Margaret--or not.”

He sounded very discouraged, very humble, very desperate.

“I think I’d disappoint you, Walter.”

The pity in her voice and her own discouragement made him turn to her
again but she held out a hand to meet his and he stayed, letting her
clasp his hand loosely.

“I’d be just like this all the time. You think I’d change--under
emotion--when we were married. I don’t think I would. You don’t know how
all the things I’ve thought and seen have influenced me. I couldn’t go
into marriage believing in it much. I couldn’t--go through it--trusting
it much. And when I was cold and I’d nearly always be that way, you’d be
disappointed if not angry. And if I did do as you say--relax--I’d be
spoiling it by not trusting my own feeling. Don’t you think I know?
Don’t you think I almost give in and then some devil of analysis comes
and prods me into a watch on myself? I haven’t anything to give,
Walter--except just what you’ve had. And the reason I can’t marry you is
because while you say and I say that companionship is enough we both
know it isn’t all you’d want. And it’s all you’d find. It’s all I can
give to any man.”

“But, my God, Margaret, women and men have to marry--.”

“I know. It’s all right for other women--most other women. I’m not
speaking for them now. They can keep reasonable and still have enough
feeling to transcend reason now and then--carry them through it.” She
still held his hand in a kind of cold comfort and he could feel her
fingers tighten. “I’ve tried to have feeling lately, Walter--tried to
see if I could find enough--and that kind of feeling isn’t there. I
can’t--I can’t--don’t ask me.”

She withdrew her hand now and sat looking straight ahead of her. A cloud
slipped past the moon and as the earth brightened in the cold white
light Walter, turning to look at her saw her quiet and rigid, tears in
her open eyes, a slim statue of what she claimed to be, sterility of
feeling for him or any man.

“I’m afraid that it’s true,” he said. “Perhaps you can’t.”

At that, coming as a terribly dreary acceptance, she let the sobs come
and for a long while she wept, her head in her own hands. Perhaps she
wept for him, perhaps for herself. He did not offer to touch her
again--as if her dearth of feeling had spread to him in those few
minutes. When at last she straightened herself again, he started the car
and they sped silently back through the country towards St. Pierre.

“Good-by, then,” he said, as they reached her door and he unlocked it.

“Good-by.”

She saw his face, heavy and lined and stern and it seemed to hurt her
cruelly.

“I’ve cheated you,” she said pitifully, “but it’s been myself too. It is
myself.”

He hesitated. For a moment he seemed ready to try again and then he saw
the pity in her face stiffen into resistance. Bending, he kissed her
lightly.

“Nothing I can do for you?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

She heard his car back away from the door. As long as she could hear it
she stood listening. Then with swift definiteness she went to her closet
and pulled out the trunk standing there.




CHAPTER XX

BARBARA BREAKS LOOSE


A glaze settled over the surface of events for the next few weeks in the
Flandon household. Both Gage and Helen were torn away from too much
indulgence in their own thoughts by the implacability of the things
which they must do. Having broken up his legal connections with his own
hands, Gage was confronted with the necessity of in some way making his
next steps justify his past action and an unholy pride made him
determined to show a doubting business world that he had been actuated
by deep and skillful motives. There was the alternative of leaving St.
Pierre and that he was disinclined to do. He wanted to start an office
of his own and demonstrate with the greatest possible rapidity that
nothing but benefit had accrued to him from his break with Sable. He
guessed what he did not hear of the doubts about his move, and he wanted
to put the world in the wrong if possible.

It was true, while he had found Sable’s intervention in the matter of
Freda the unbearable breaking point, that he had a kind of long deferred
zest in contemplating his new business freedom. Sable’s offer had been,
in the beginning, far too lucrative and too flattering to lose but there
was a cautiousness, a lack of independence in many of their mutual
actions which had galled Gage. He was tired of the connection. He was at
odds with the political clique to which his close connection with the
Congressman held him. He was disgusted with the result of the
convention--not that he had hoped for much but the flatness of the
political outlook, the beating of the old drums irritated him. There
were times when the exhilaration of the chance he was taking lifted him
up and if he had been drinking less steadily he might have turned the
exhilaration to much advantage. But his mind was too nervous to plan
steadily or well. It shot restlessly past immediacies into dreams of a
future when he would have justified every action to himself and the
world and particularly to Helen.

He ignored and avoided Helen’s several attempts to come to an
understanding on the question of money. She knew enough about their
affairs to feel that this change of Gage must make a great difference in
their income temporarily, even if he should ultimately succeed. It
worried her greatly. She had made up her mind to a separation from Gage
but mere independence did not solve the money question for them all. She
wanted very much to know exactly where they stood and she was convinced
that the spendthrift, financial optimism of Gage, characteristic always,
but most marked now, was getting them into deeper waters constantly.
Temporarily she and Gage had dropped their personal problem. In one
brief, cold conversation Gage had suggested that, pending a settlement
of his affairs and his new ventures, they waive the personal matters and
Helen had very gladly agreed.

So the days adjusted themselves to a routine so smooth and orderly that
sometimes even to Helen it seemed unbelievable that it was not the
expression of ease and happiness. Only at times, however, for as she
looked at Gage it was impossible not to be conscious of the strain under
which he was laboring. He was often out nights, working or not--she did
not know. She knew that the supply of whisky in the sideboard was
replenished far too often to serve moderate drinking and she knew that
Gage slept badly, for she could often see the light reflected from his
windows in the early hours of the morning.

He never molested her now but left her to her own activities with hardly
a jeer at them. Now and then some scathing remark escaped him and fell
blunted from the armor of her indifference. But for the most part his
early chafing under her prominence was gone. The flood of letters which
came for her in every mail aroused no comment from him. He saw her at
work on the organization of her section of the country and hardly seemed
to notice what she did. Intent as she was on learning what she could do,
how she could do it, always with the thought in the back of her mind
that she needed to find a kind of work that would earn her independence
as well as notoriety she put an entirely new seriousness into the work
she was doing. The old dilettantism was gone and with the death of that
half-mocking dilettante spirit came an entirely new zest for the work
she did.

Mrs. Brownley was full of a glorious naïveté. She wanted to organize
everybody. Politics fairly dripped from her impressive, deliberately
moulded lips. She wanted to pin a small white elephant badge on every
one she met. She had a practical eye that liked to translate enthusiasm
into badges, buttons and costumes. Jerrold Haynes, rather indispensable
now and then to Helen, said that he was sure that the end of the
campaign would see Mrs. Brownley in full elephant’s costume. Jerrold
laughed at Helen too. He told her frankly that she was ruining herself
for an observer.

“A year ago you were in a fair way to become the most beautiful
philosopher of the twentieth century. Now you’re like all the rest of
the women--a good looking hustler. You’ve become ordinary in appealing
to your big audience. You should have been content to charm Gage and
me.”

“I was. But I wasn’t allowed to remain in my sloth.”

“No--that serpent of a Duffield girl. I seem to remember Gage didn’t
like her either. I didn’t, but undoubtedly Gage and I wouldn’t agree on
reasons, would we? Well, where is she now?”

“Down on Long Island somewhere with Harriet Thompson, resting. She was
pretty well fagged out with the months here.”

“Didn’t marry Carpenter, did she?”

“No. Apparently she didn’t or we might have heard of it.”

“Carpenter saved himself from the yoke of feminism just in time,
perhaps.”

“I haven’t seen him lately.”

“He sits around the club all day and cools himself in case he should
decide to keep an evening engagement and need to look fresh. I see him
off and on. Doesn’t look happy, for a fact.”

“Anyway it’s none of our business, is it?”

Jerrold laughed.

“Not a whit and therefore interesting. I hate talking about what is my
business.”

“That’s a common failing,” said Helen a little bitterly. “I never
realized how epidemic until lately, since Gage has decided to go in for
himself. People ask me about everything except my bank balance.”

“The penalty of being in the limelight, Helen.”

She shrugged lightly, a tinge of weariness in her manner.

“Don’t you like the limelight then?” he urged teasingly.

Impatiently she turned on him.

“Oh, more or less, I suppose. But I shan’t like it six months from now.
I’ll be tired to death of it if it still keeps coming. You get fed up on
it pretty quickly.”

“So skeptical--”

“You needn’t mock at me, Jerrold. You ought to admire me because I’m
honest enough not to say that I weep every time my picture is in the
paper. I go further. I am quite miserable when I realize that my
limelight is directed mostly not at the inner workings of my mind but at
my dress and my name and the fact that I take a marcel well.”

“So you know that too, do you?”

“I know everything about it,” Helen boasted mockingly. “I even admit the
necessity for keeping my clothes pretty well pressed and clean. I may
scoff with the rest of you at Mrs. Brownley’s methods of organizing a
Junior Republican Club but I know that she’s the finest realist of us
all. She is willing to admit that women love white elephant badges, and
appeals to them as the virtuous sex, and fashionable Junior Republican
Clubs, which are Junior Leagues in action. I can see myself developing a
philosophy just like Mrs. Brownley and learning to speak of democracy
and the home with her impressiveness and Mrs. Thorstad’s italics and
bending my energies to making the Republican party sought after by women
because after all it includes all the best people.”

“You’re a great woman. I think I’ll write a book about you.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “You’ll never write a
book about anything, Jerrold. You’re too dilettante to ever get started.
I know. I was the same way until Margaret hurled me into all this
action. Now I am, as you say, spoiled for a good dilettante. I’m spoiled
for a lot of things, in fact. For being an easy going comfortable wife.
I’m a poor wreck of a woman politician.” She laughed at him and looked
so mockingly pretty under the big gray chiffon hat she wore that
Jerrold’s eyes were lit with enthusiasm. Jerrold had motored Helen down
to the Brownleys’ summer home for a conference with Mrs. Brownley, who
had the Junior Republican Club on her hands at the moment and wanted to
talk it over with Helen. Mrs. Brownley had done a great deal of
organizing and much of it was extremely effective along the lines
suggested by Margaret and Mrs. Thorstad. But Mrs. Brownley knew that the
lure of the social column was great and she had pressed Bob and Allie
into action. The Junior Republican Club, composed of girls just
preparing for the vote, was to be one of the educational features of the
campaign. They would be useful, she pointed out, in helping when the
Republican women had headquarters, later--and useful or not they ought
to be interested.

So the Junior Republican Club was formed amid much enthusiasm on the
piazza of the Redding Hotel at Lake Nokomis where St. Pierre sent its
fashionable colony during the summer months. They had a president, and
several news agencies had already taken pictures of them “reading from
left to right and from right to left--standing in the back row, etc.”
One of the agencies had been acting for a New York paper and the girls
were somewhat stirred over the novelty. As Allie said, “It was time some
one did something. Look what happened to Russia where the Bolsheviks
drove you out of your homes and took everything you’d got. If they’d
been organized it might have been different.” Besides her father said he
thought women, especially educated women, (Allie spoke with personal
feeling, having spent four thousand a year at the Elm Grove School) were
to be the salvation of the country.

She had plenty of support and enthusiasm. Even in these spoiled and
under nourished little minds a tiny flame of enthusiasm for the new
possibilities of women’s lives were burning. They interpreted the new
freedom to suit themselves as did most other women. To them it meant a
good deal of license, a cool impudence and camaraderie towards men, a
definite claiming of all the rights of men in so far as they contributed
to the fun of existence. “Women aren’t as they used to be” was a handy
peg for them to hang escapades upon, a blanket reason for refusing to
accept any discipline. That was the substance of their feminism.

As for their politics they were hewed from the politics of their fathers
and their class. They were defensive for the most part. They had heard
of the exigent demands of labor, they had seen their fathers irritant
under “Bolshevik legislation”--in their own shrewd minds (and many of
them had the shrewdness common to smallness) they knew that all their
luxury and their personal license, their expensive clothes and schools
and motors and unlimited charge accounts were based on an order whose
right to exist was being challenged. They roused to its defense,
boisterously, giggling, and yet class conscious.

Helen did what she could to palliate any trouble the club might cause.

She pressed on Mrs. Brownley the need of not antagonizing possible and
prospective members of the party by anything that appeared as
snobbishness. Mrs. Brownley agreed astutely, starting post haste on a
scheme for organizing the stenographers of the city and mapping out a
scheme whereby the employees of the large department stores might be
drawn into Republican groups. She urged Helen to talk to the Junior
Republicans and Helen did it.

She noted Barbara among the rest, handsome in yellow linen and yet
looking tired and worn. The artificial penciling under her eyes was
circled by deeper yellow brown hollows, and her restlessness and lack of
interest in the whole proceeding were conspicuous.

“What a world weary face that child has!” thought Helen.

She remembered one of Mrs. Brownley’s confidences about Barbara’s
engagement and idly asked Allie about it.

“Is Bob engaged to Ted?”

“Oh, Lord, who knows!” said Allie. “She’s had an awful row with him, but
she’s got his ring. I don’t know what they fought about. And she’s such
a fool, for she really is crazy about him and he knows it so he doesn’t
pay much attention when she rows.”

She stopped as Barbara came towards them.

“I’m going up to town over night. I wonder if you and Mr. Haynes would
take me up? Have you an extra seat? I’ll be a fine chaperon.”

Helen frowned a little. She disliked the insinuation, just as she
disliked Barbara, but the girl’s request could not be refused
gracefully.

“I’m sure Jerrold will be glad,” she said rather coldly.

“When’d you decide to go to town, Bob?” asked Allie.

Another girl joined the group, overhearing the last remark.

“I think she’s going up to keep a watch on Ted. One of the girls saw him
with that pretty Thorstad girl one day at a hotel--the girl there’s been
such a lot of talk about.”

Helen felt herself change color and as she tried to get quick control
caught sight of Barbara’s face. It was almost white, but not as if white
from shock or pain--rather an ugly white, lips compressed, eyes lifted
angrily.

“I don’t consider myself in the least responsible for Ted’s company,
Mildred,” she said sharply.

“Aren’t you afraid to stay alone in the house with just Mathilda?” went
on Allie.

Barbara looked her contempt.

“If you are there,” Allie went on, “call up Mrs. Wilkins and tell her
I’ve got to have those new white skirts by noon Wednesday. If she
doesn’t get them here I won’t pay for them.”

“Write her your grouch,” said Bob, graciously, “I’ve got my own
errands.”

They left Barbara at the portico of the big stone house where the shades
were drawn down and the windows closed.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right here?” asked Helen.

“Oh, yes,” said Bob, “the housekeeper’s here and father’s going to take
me back to-morrow night after I get my shopping done. Thanks so much for
taking me up. And I do feel so guilty--”

But Jerrold speeded the motor and the sound of her voice was lost.

“What a lascivious little mind she has,” he remarked as they drove on to
Helen’s house.

“And malicious, I think. It’s odd. Her parents are really kindly on the
whole. And Allie’s just a nice clumsy child.”

“Whatever hereditary influences might have made this girl, they’ve been
completely choked,” said Jerrold. “She’s pure and simple
environment--rotted by it just as she might have rotted in a slum
somewhere. The only thing that has survived her complete subordination
to money and luxury is old Brownley’s acquisitive instinct--and God help
the person who thwarts that!”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a considerate invocation if it had done any good, for at that
moment Barbara was preparing to destroy any obstacles which lay in the
path of her acquiring Ted.

She went to the telephone in her mother’s room and called Ted Smillie’s
house. He was not in. She tried two clubs and finally located him.

“Yes, it is Bob. I came up--oh, to see a dressmaker. No--just to-night.
No--I’m tired and hot. I don’t want to dance. You come over here. Why,
of course it’s all right. Do come. Well, I’ll make you some lemonade and
we’ll have a talk. Of course. Eight--that’s fine.”

But it was nearly nine before he came. Barbara had found a black dinner
dress which became her, and she had thrown open the windows of the
second floor library to the cooling evening air. She had found some
supper for herself, a casual, icebox supper but for her guest she had
made sandwiches. Also she had hunted long and wearily for some key which
would open the wine cellar and failed to find any. But there were lemons
fortunately and she had, as she promised, made the lemonade. By eight
she was all ready for him--waiting, in repose. By nine she was tense. In
that empty hour she had much time for thinking and her thoughts did not
rest her. They roused her to a nervous tension which was manifest in the
quick gestures so unlike her usual pose of lazy indifference.

He rang at last and she slipped down the stairs to let him in. A single
light burned in the hall cluster.

He looked down at her from his admired height, smiling without
eagerness.

“Where did you drop from? Nowhere? I was going to go down to see you
next week.”

“I had to come up to town to see about some clothes.”

He laid down his hat and turned to her.

“All alone?”

“All alone,” answered Bob coolly. “Even the housekeeper’s gone to see a
sick sister and won’t be back until morning. I guess the caretaker’s in
the basement--at least I told him to stay there.”

“You going to stay here alone all night?”

“Why not? It’s safe as a clock. Bars on mother’s windows and all the
front of the house. Safety locks on the doors. Nothing stealable in the
house and a telephone and house phone in my room.”

“All the same it’s--”

“Unconventional? By this time you ought to know I’m the most
unconventional person on earth. Women don’t bother about conventions as
they used to. We don’t need chaperons at our elbows, thank goodness!”

He smiled appreciatively.

“Let’s go upstairs to the library,” said Bob, “and tell me what you’ve
been doing.”

He followed her obediently and they settled themselves in two great soft
leather chairs drawn up to a little table, the tray of sandwiches and
lemonade between them.

“What’s new?” said Bob.

“It’s dull as can be. Nothing stirring.”

“Who’ve you been seeing?”

“Pretty much of nobody. A few stalemates around the club. That’s all.”

“Then why stay in town? Why don’t you come down to join your mother?
It’s really not bad at Nokomis this year. Dot Lodge has two girls from
New York visiting her that are pretty snappy. And we’ve gone in for
politics. Formed a Republican club.”

“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Ted. “Torchlight processions and all that? Going
to purify politics?”

“Maybe--can’t tell.”

“Maybe not, probably.”

They scuffed around in tawdry repartee, going swiftly through a few
motions of convention that seemed to cling to them. But shortly he was
sitting on the arm of her chair and then he had her held more closely.
For a while she let him fondle her, her cheeks growing hot. Then she
returned to her line of attack.

“If it’s as dull as you say here you ought to be in the country where we
can make it less dull.”

“Can’t. Lose my job if I do. The old man said that he’d make no
distinction in the office this summer. Me and the hallroom boys--we’ve
got to do our eight hours.”

“Sure it’s that? Sure it’s not some girl holding you up here?”

That pleased him.

“So you came up to see me because you’re jealous, did you? Little cat!”

He caressed her as he spoke and she did not seem to mind what he said.

“No--I’m not jealous. But perhaps I’m lonesome.”

“Not this minute you aren’t.”

She seemed to purr.

“Well, this is nice,” he repeated.

“I wish we could stay this way forever. Isn’t it fun to be away from
every one?”

For answer he kissed her.

“I suppose you’re dreadfully shocked by my unconventionality,” said Bob,
“but I don’t care. I despise conventions. I think women have a right to
do as they please. Anything they please. Women aren’t slaves as they
used to be.”

She lay back, invoking her vulgar license in the name of the hard won
liberties of women, corrupting the words she spoke.

“Look out what you say,” said Ted. “Look out, young woman and don’t get
me to take you at your word.”

She shivered ecstatically.

“Ted,”--the time seemed ripe, no doubt--“do you care for that Thorstad
girl?”

“Who--Freda Thorstad?”

“All the girls are talking because you were seen at some hotel with
her.”

“Let them talk, the silly fools.”

She released herself a little.

“Where is she, Ted?”

“Why?” He began to tease her, and her lack of control showed instantly.

“You know she’s disappeared. Why did she go and where did she go?”

“Why should I know?”

“You do know,” she countered.

“I said nothing of the sort.”

Pulling herself loose, she confronted him. Every thwarted undisciplined
desire in her raged at the frail control maintained by habit. Her eyes,
no longer sleepy, blazed at him.

“You know where she is. The creature has gone off somewhere to hide
herself and her shame, I suppose. The abandoned hussy. I know all about
it, Ted. I found out all about it.”

He became a little surly and yet curiosity seemed to pique him.

“You know all about what, Bob?”

She was losing control completely now. The confession, abasement, she
had worked up to was not forthcoming.

“Where is she?” she stormed. “Where are you keeping that girl?”

Her face had changed from that of a pretty girl to that of a furious,
uncontrolled shrew. Her shrill voice tore through the empty room, struck
against the silence.

“Hush,” he said sharply, “don’t yell like that, Bob. Don’t be a fool.”

“I won’t have it. I won’t have you making a laughing stock out of me.
Before everybody--everybody’s talking, laughing at you--at me. You’ve
got to give that girl up. You’ve got to! Pay her off and let her go away
and hide till it’s over.”

The vein of caddishness was rich in Ted. He looked at her
coolly--calculated her hysteria, made her maddeningly conscious of his
imperturbability. Turning away, he lit a cigarette.

“So you won’t answer me!”

“I really don’t know what you mean, Bob. You hurl a lot of accusations
at me and in the same breath you want a lot of promises. I don’t know
what you’re driving at, my dear.”

“Then I’m through with you,” she said, viciously.

An impolite smile glimmered at the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, in that case--” He turned to the door.

But she did not have strength enough to let him go. She followed him,
distressing now in her abandonment which was not even held together by
anger.

“Ted--you know I care--how can you--how can you?”

He turned and appraised her. It was obvious now how much of her charm
was in that thrown aside pose of indifference, lazy mockery.

“You told me you were through with me.”

His voice was quite cold, stiff. It brought her to him with a rush, her
arms thrown about his neck, cheek against his, hot, panting.

“I didn’t mean it, Ted. Really, I was just about crazy. I won’t talk
about that girl--about anything. Let’s just be as we were when you first
came in.”

“I didn’t start all this,” he answered sullenly.

She urged him back to his chair, pulled things into some semblance of
order.

“There, let’s be comfortable after all the melodrama. Here you must eat
some of these sandwiches. I made them myself.”

She poised herself on the arm of his chair and played with him.

“You can’t understand how a girl feels,” she told him, “under a lot of
foolish teasing. They all know I’m fond of you--a little anyway” (that
fell cold)--“and they take it out of me because I’m honest and not a
flirt.”

Ted chuckled. “Not a flirt.”

“You know what I mean. A girl who has been brought up as I have--can’t
let herself go the way other girls of a different class can. I can see
that those girls have an advantage. We’re just as--we’re just like they
are only they’ve been brought up differently.”

She paused for a moment in her fumbling, in the pleading to be admitted
to the class of women of easy virtue whom she fancied held her lover in
their toils, trying to convince him that she was ripe for abandonment.
But he would not help her. He looked at her rather curiously--that was
all.

Sighing she rested her head on his shoulder.

“It’s so nice to have you here.”

“But it’s getting late, Bob. I’ll really have to go.”

She threw a restraining arm across his chest.

“Go where?”

“I have to get back--” he said vaguely.

It was time for her last card. Actuated by that vivid fear of his
possible destination, perhaps, she relaxed completely in his rather
unwilling arms.

“Don’t go--don’t go at all to-night. Let’s just stay here--together.”

She could feel him stiffen and looked up slowly, languorously, slyly at
him. But she should have known what she would see--should have known
that so easily played a game would not be worth the candle of
compromise which would bind him so much more to her. He was too
sophisticated to be attracted by unsought abandonment.

“Look here, Bob,” he almost shook himself to be free of her, “you’re not
quite yourself to-night. You’re a bit tired and you’ll be better for a
night’s sleep. I’ll have to run along now. Don’t come down. Good night.”

She made a swift movement--then seemed checked by a vision of its
futility. The other door closed quietly and heavily. Stripped of the
pose that served her for strength, the vanity which served her for
modesty, Barbara sat in the leather chair which Ted had abandoned and
let her ugly imaginings consume her.




CHAPTER XXI

WALTER’S SOLUTION


The Thorstads had not gone back to Mohawk. Mrs. Thorstad had said that
she would stay in St. Pierre until they heard further from Freda and
since it was the school vacation her husband had agreed. After the first
shock of disappearance they had accepted Freda’s letter at its face
value and decided to wait for news from her. It was all they could do,
in fact. One alternative, publicity, advertising her disappearance,
would have done only harm and have looked cruelly unnecessary in view of
her farewell letter to her father. The other alternative, setting
private detectives to work, would have been too expensive and again her
letters did not justify that. They must wait. Mrs. Thorstad, after a
bit, did not brood, nor indeed appear to worry greatly. She was quickly
allied with clubdom and petty politics and was busy. Her husband, trying
to interest himself in stray free lectures at the University and in the
second hand bookstores, grew rather pallid and thin.

They stopped at an inexpensive boarding house on the West Side. It was a
place of adequate food, adequate cleanliness and no grace. Mrs.
Thorstad’s reputation as a prominent club woman stood her in good stead
in these rather constricted surroundings where most of the guests were
men of sapped masculinity, high busted women dividing their time between
small shopping and moving pictures. The men were persons of petty
importance and men of small independence, but there was one strangely
incongruous person in the company. He was the editor of the scandal
paper of the city, a thin, elderly, eye-glassed person of fifty, who had
maintained, in spite of his scavenging for scandals, some strange
insistence on and delight in his own respectability. He was personally
so polite, so gentlemanly, so apparently innocuous that it was almost
incredible to think of him as the editor of the sheet which sold itself
so completely on the strength of its scandal that it needed no
advertising to float its circulation.

There was a natural attraction between him and Adeline Thorstad. They
had mutually a flare for politics and intense personal prejudices
complicating that instinctive liking. They often ran upon the same moral
catch words in their conversation. Robinson began to be a “booster” for
Mrs. Thorstad. He saw her political possibilities and commenced to call
attention to her here and there in his columns.

It was one of Mr. Thorstad’s few occasions of protest.

“Shall you tell him to keep your name out of his paper or shall I?”

“But he’s said nothing that isn’t awfully friendly, Eric. I hate to hurt
his feelings. I’m sure he meant to be kind.”

“You don’t want to be featured in ‘The Town Reporter,’ Adeline. It
doesn’t--it isn’t right.”

She let the stubborn lines settle over her face.

“I don’t think the ‘Town Reporter’ is as corrupt as almost any of the
others.”

“Look at the stuff it prints!”

“But, my dear, if it’s true, isn’t there a kind of courage in printing
it?”

He looked at her in exasperation, measuring her and his own futility.

“So you want to let that go?”

“I think it’s better not to hurt him, Eric.”

He shut the door of their room sharply and yet when she saw him again
he had regained his quiet indifference to her doings. The friendship
between her and the editor continued to flourish.

They were in the dining-room on Tuesday, the third of August, when the
morning papers were brought in. It was a sticky, hot, lifeless morning.
Halves of grapefruit tipped wearily on the warmish plates. No one spoke
much. The head of the silk department in Green’s was hurrying through
his breakfast in order to get down to inspect the window trim. The
stenographer at Bailey and Marshall’s had slipped into her place. Mrs.
Thorstad was alert determinedly, Mr. Thorstad sagging a little beside
her. Robinson picked up his paper first, casually, and uttered a low
whistle.

“That’s a bit of news,” he said.

Several people craned and reached for the papers they had been too
indolent to open. A headline ran across the page.

                  PROMINENT CLUBMAN KILLS HIMSELF IN
                           FASHIONABLE CLUB

           WALTER GRANGE CARPENTER, CAPITALIST, SHOOTS SELF
                 FATALLY IN EARLY MORNING HOURS. CAUSE
                          OF SUICIDE MYSTERY.

They gathered around the news without a particle of sympathy. No one
cared. He was a mystery and sensation--that was all.

“Funny thing,” said Robinson. “I wonder what was at the bottom of that.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if it was the Duffield girl,” Mrs. Thorstad
said rather casually.

“Who was that?”

“You know--the political organizer who was sent here for the Republican
women.”

“Was Carpenter in love with her?”

“I think so. I saw him--well, perhaps I shouldn’t say--”

Robinson gave her a keen glance and let the matter drop. But that night
after dinner he sought her out again, segregating her from the rest of
the people. Mr. Thorstad was not there.

“What was it you were saying about that Miss Duffield?”

She hedged a little.

“Oh, I don’t like to talk scandal, Mr. Robinson. I’m no gossip. I never
liked the woman. I always believed she made a great deal of trouble and
I know she was not a good influence on my daughter. But I have no wish
to malign her. If she is responsible for this tragedy, she and her free
love doctrines have indeed wrought havoc--”

She paused abruptly.

“I wish you’d tell me what you know,” said Robinson. “I’ll confide in
you, Mrs. Thorstad. I heard from a certain source to-day that Carpenter
left this Duffield women everything he possessed. Every one seems to
know they were seen around town constantly until she went away. There
seems to have been considerable expectation that they would
marry--surprise that they did not. Well--you can see that any
information added--”

“But what good would it do?” She pressed him, her utilitarian little
mind anxious for results.

“I’d rather like to know why Carpenter shot himself. So would other
people. If this woman is a menace she should be exposed.”

“She should indeed. An interloper, making trouble, trying to run
politics--”

He surveyed her amusedly, familiar with outbreaks of spite, waiting for
his point to win itself.

“You knew her well.”

“I worked with her closely. A brilliant person--clever, modern. Modern
in the way that these Eastern young women are modern. I did not approve
of many things she did. I did not approve of some of the things she
said. Then there was an incident which convinced me.”

She went on, a little deft prodding keeping her in motion, telling the
story of having seen Walter Carpenter come to Margaret’s room and of
having seen the letter from Gregory with its protestation that he must
see her, that he wanted “to unloose her emotions--not fetter her in
marriage.” How those words had imprinted themselves on Mrs. Thorstad’s
mind! There was great satisfaction in Robinson’s face.

“And this Gregory?”

She had thought that out too.

“Why it must have been that Gregory Macmillan. He came here later and
she talked of knowing him. I heard Mrs. Flandon speak of it.”

“Ah, the Sinn Feiner! Why, it’s perfect.”

She had a moment of fearful doubt.

“You wouldn’t quote me? There’d be no libel--?”

“My dear lady, I’ve no money to spend on libel suits. I’ll never get
mixed up in one. Every bit of my stuff is looked over by a lawyer before
it sees the light of print. Don’t you worry. I’d never implicate a lady.
Scourging a vampire”--he fell into his grandiloquent press language
again--“is an entirely different matter.”

“There’s such a thing as justice,” said Mrs. Thorstad bridling.

He nodded with gravity. They might have been, from their appearance, two
kindly middle-aged persons discussing a kindly principle, so well did
their faces deceive their minds.

So it happened that the next issue of the ‘Town Reporter’ carried in its
headlines on the following day--

     WAS MYSTERY OF SUICIDE OF RICH CLUBMAN ENTANGLED IN FREE LOVE
                               PROBLEM?

There followed an article of subtle insinuation written by the hand of
an adept. It crept around the edge of libel, telling only the facts that
every one knew, but in such proximity that the train of thought must be
complete--that one who knew anything of the people implicated could see
that Margaret Duffield (never named) believer in all “doctrines of free
madness” had “perhaps preyed upon the soul of the man.” And then after a
little the “Sinn Feiner” came into the article, he too coming from
groups who knew no “law but license.” Ugly intrigue--all of it--dragging
its stain across the corpse of Walter Carpenter.

       *       *       *       *       *

The news had come to the Flandons at breakfast too. Gage had come down
first and picked up the newspaper while he was waiting for Helen and the
children. He read it at a glance and the blow made him a little dizzy.
Like a flood there came over him the quick sense of the utter blackness
of Walter’s mind--more than any sense of loss or pity came horror at the
baffled intellect which had caused the tragedy. He stood, reading,
moistening his lips as Helen entered and lifted the children to their
chairs.

“Any news, Gage?”

He handed it to her silently.

“Oh, my God!” said Helen, “How terrible! How awful, Gage!”

He nodded and sat down in his chair, putting his head in his hands. She
read the article through.

“But why, do you suppose?”

Then she stopped, knowing the thought that must have come to him as it
came to her.

“Poor, poor Walter!”

She went around the table to Gage.

“You’ll go down of course, but take a cup of coffee first,” she said,
her hand on his shoulder.

He roused himself.

“All right.”

Some one telephoned for Gage and he said he would come at once to the
club. They went on with the form of breakfast. The children chattered.
The room shone with sunlight. Helen, through her shock and grief, caught
a glimpse of the shrinking of their trouble against this terrific final
snuffing out of life. Abashed at the comfort it gave her, she drew away
from the thought.

But it made her tender to Gage. It kept persisting, that thought. “It
wasn’t Gage. It might have been Gage. It might have been us. People like
us do go that far then. How horribly selfish this is. Poor Walter!” She
suddenly stopped short. She must telegraph Margaret. Margaret would have
to know. Whatever there had been between her and Carpenter, she must
know. Doubtless--perhaps--she would want to come to see him--Or would
she?

She telegraphed Margaret as compassionately as possible. Yet it seemed a
little absurd to be too compassionate. Margaret wouldn’t like the shock
“broken.” She would want to know the facts.

The sun seemed brighter than it had been for days. Despite the grave
weight of sorrow on her spirit, Helen was calmed, attended by peace.
She was feeling the vast relief attendant on becoming absorbed in a
trouble not her own. It was not that her grief was not deep for
Carpenter. He had been Gage’s good friend and hers. And yet--it was
almost as if in dying he had deflected a tragedy from her, as if he had
bought immunity for her with his terrific price. She dared not tamper
with the thought of what this might do to Gage.

The mail man in his blue coat was coming up the steps. She opened the
door for him, anxious to do something, wondering if there would be a
letter from Margaret. There was. She laid the others aside and read that
first. It was a long letter full of thought, which at another time would
have been interesting. Margaret had wearied of Republicanism. She and
many other women were talking of the “League” again.

And Walter Carpenter lay dead. Was it relevant?

Helen put down the letter and looked through her others. There was one
from some hotel in Montana. She ripped it open and the first words
startled her so that she looked for the signature. It was signed by
Freda Thorstad.

A swooning excitement came over Helen. She hardly dared read it. Then,
holding it crushed tightly, she went up to her own room. As she went the
children called to her. They wanted her to come and see the castle in
the sandbox.

“Soon,” she called to them, “I’ll be down soon. Mother’s busy--don’t
call me for a few minutes.”

She locked her door and read the letter. What had startled her was that
abrupt beginning “Asking for money is the hardest thing in the world--at
least nothing has ever been so hard before.” It went on “But I don’t
know what else to do, and I must do something. I can’t write any one
else, partly because no one else I know has enough money to send me and
also because I haven’t told any one except your husband about
myself--and I suppose he has told you. If he hasn’t he’ll tell you now
that it is the truth. It’s this way. My husband has been terribly sick
and what money he had was stolen while he was at the hotel before I got
here. He’s still weak and of course he wants to go home. But I haven’t
dared tell him we haven’t any money because he doesn’t know the maid
picked his pockets while he was ill. We have to get away from the
hospital now that he’s well enough to travel--we don’t know anybody in
the city and there are his hospital bills to pay. The doctor told me he
would wait, but I can’t ask the nurses to do that. It seems almost
ridiculous for an able bodied person to be asking for money but we owe
so much more than I can earn that I must borrow. There doesn’t seem to
be any way to get money sometimes except by borrowing. I know I could
pay it back as soon as Gregory gets well again. I suppose you’ll wonder
why I don’t ask father. Well--he hasn’t as much money as we need. We
need nearly six hundred dollars to take Gregory to Ireland and pay the
bills here. Perhaps it would be better to get it from Gregory’s friends
in Ireland. But I know from what he’s told me that they all are trying
so hard to do things for the country with what little money they have
that it would worry him to ask them. And it would take too long. He
mustn’t be worried, the doctors say, and he must get back to his home
soon. You know something about him for I remember that I saw you at his
lecture. He is really very wonderful and.... It isn’t as if I had a
right to ask you either, except perhaps a kind of human right.... You’ve
been so kind to me, you and Mr. Flandon....”

Helen finished the letter with a rueful, very tired smile. Then she took
it into Gage’s room and laid it on his bureau where he would see it,
when he came in. He telephoned at noon to tell her that he was coming
out; she kept out of the way so that he would read the letter before she
saw him.

He brought it to her and gave it back, folded.

“I suppose I should have told you that business but it was the girl’s
secret. She didn’t want it known and I stumbled on it.”

“I see,” she answered, inadequately.

“Looks like a bad situation for them, doesn’t it? I didn’t know, by the
way, where she had gone. I assumed she had gone to join him but I did
think Sable had driven her to do it. Evidently he sent for her.”

“And he nearly died.”

They paused in embarrassment. Helen held herself tautly.

“There’s an apology due you,” she began.

He held his hand out, deprecating it.

“No, please--you had every reason.” He changed the subject abruptly.

“Do we let her have the money?” He smiled for a minute. “Money’s tight
as hell. I haven’t got much in cash you know. But I don’t see how we can
refuse the girl.”

“We won’t,” said Helen.

“By the way, what I came out to say was that Walter’s lawyer thinks we
should send for Margaret Duffield. There’s a rumor that she is his
legatee. He had no family--his mother died last year. From what Pratt
said he left it all to Margaret. She’ll be rich.”

“I did wire her,” answered Helen, “an hour ago. I thought she ought to
know.”

“That’s good.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was all in the paper. He shot himself a little after midnight. He
was alone in his room. It was evidently quite premeditated. There was a
sealed letter for his lawyer with instructions undoubtedly and
everything was in perfect order. He--he had simply decided to do it. And
he has done it. Something made him lie down--that’s all.”

He spoke reflectively, with a degree of abstraction that was surprising.

“Why do they think he did it?”

“Heat--not well physically. That’s what goes to the papers. Better
spread that. If the girl is involved, we’ll keep her name clear.”

“Oh, yes.”

“For Walter’s sake,” Gage went on. And then very slowly, he added, “I
wouldn’t like people to know that she got him.”

“Yet if it comes out that he left her everything, won’t people guess?”

“They won’t know. Nor do we know. Nobody knows except Walter and he’s
dead.”

They sent a second wire to Margaret requesting her presence for urgent
reasons and by night they had heard that she would come. The funeral was
to be on Friday.

It was Thursday evening when the “Town Reporter” bristled with ugly
headlines on the streets of St. Pierre. Walter’s body lay in the
undertaking “parlors” those ineffective substitutes for homes for those
who die homeless, in the brief period between their last hours among
human kind and the grave. No place except a home can indeed truly
shelter the dead. Walter lay inscrutably lonely, in the public parlor,
mysterious in the death which was a refusal to go on with life, a
relinquishment so brave and so cowardly that it always shocks observers
into awe. As he lay there, a raucous voiced newsboy outside the window
ran down toward the main throughfare, a bunch of “Town Reporters” under
his arm, shouting, “All the noos about the sooicide”--and in half an
hour his papers were gone, some bought openly, some bought hurriedly and
shamefacedly. Hundreds of people now knew the reason Elihu Robinson gave
for the death of Walter Carpenter, his version of the struggle in the
stilled brain of the man he had not known except by sight and hundreds
of people as intimate with the tragedy as he, wagged their heads and
said wisely that this “was about the truth of it,” with other and sundry
comments on the corruption of the age and particularly of the rich.

The Flandons read it with mixed disgust and anger. They knew it was the
kind of stain that only time could scrub away. It did not matter much to
Walter now that he was slandered. His suicide was a defiance of slander.
They were sorry for Margaret but not too much bothered by her reception
of such scandal if it came to her. It was only local scandal.

“The worst of it,” said Helen to Gage, “is tying Gregory Macmillan up
that way just as they were about to announce his marriage. I telephoned
Freda’s father this afternoon for I was going to tell him you had had a
business letter from her and knew where she was. It seemed wise. But
anyway he had just heard from her too. He was so happy, poor fellow. Now
to have this nasty scandal about his son-in-law will be another blow. I
shall go to see him and tell him that it’s an utter lie. I know from
what Margaret told me that there never was a thing between her and
Macmillan.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Thorstad had already taken the matter up with Elihu Robinson. He had
called him what he was and his white faced indignation was something the
editor preferred to submit to without resistance. But he was not without
trumps as usual.

“But who is your authority for saying that Macmillan was implicated with
this lady?” asked Mr. Thorstad, angrily.

He had not told that Macmillan was his son-in-law and the editor
wondered at his defense of Macmillan.

“My dear fellow,” he said with that touch of apologetic and righteous
concern with which he always met such attacks. “My dear fellow, your
wife told me that.”




CHAPTER XXII

THE MOURNERS


Margaret came, calm and yet clearly distressed beyond measure. It was
pathetic to see her control, to see that she could not even break
through it to the relief of abandonment. She was very white during the
day of the funeral and the ones succeeding it and her eyes met other
eyes somewhat reluctantly. She came on Friday morning and Helen had not
been able to persuade her to stay with them. She had gone to a hotel and
from there, quite simply to the parlors of the undertakers.

“Don’t wait for me, Helen--and I’d sooner be alone. I’ll be here a long
while, probably.”

Perhaps after all Walter and Margaret found relief in each other when
the grim parlor door was shut. At least at the funeral Margaret sat very
quietly, though the well-bred curious eyes of the little group of people
strayed unceasingly toward her. She went through it as she went through
the following days. It was soon known, before the will was probated,
that she was Walter’s legatee. There was a great deal of business to be
done. Walter had decided no doubt that the brief embarrassment of
inheriting his fortune was better than the recurrent fear of cramping
poverty which had always pursued her and of which she had told him. She
saw the lawyers and his business associates and discussed with them the
best way of disposing of Walter’s interests, and word of her coldness
spread around rather quickly and was considered to justify Mr.
Robinson’s deductions.

Gage saw her at the funeral. He had not looked for her--had not felt
ready to see her. But in the semicircle of chairs facing the gray satin
coffin, he was so placed that his eyes met hers unexpectedly. When they
did, hostility glinted in his. “You got him,” they seemed to say--and
hers looked back steady, unrepentant, even though her mouth was drawn
with pain and sorrow.

It had hit Gage as it had Helen. The lightning had been drawn from him.
Walter’s death had roused in him an instinct of resistance which had
been dormant. He had no certain idea of what had passed between Walter
and Margaret but he knew what Carpenter’s point of view had been--how
far he had gone, how willing he had been to yield every concession to a
woman--to Margaret--in the belief that it would then be possible to
build love on a basis of comradeship. Walter had found failure, just how
or why no one knew except perhaps Margaret herself. Gage’s mind stumbled
along nervously, trying to analyze his and Walter’s failure. He
remembered how they had talked together about women, how Walter had said
he would be “willing to trust to their terms.” For some reason he lay
dead of their terms. And he himself--he had looked at himself in the
glass an hour ago with a kind of horror as if he saw himself for the
first time in weeks. There was a softening of his features it seemed to
him, a look of dissipation, of untrimmed thought, brooding. The memory
of his face haunted him. That was what came of being unwilling to trust
to the terms of women. Either way--

He looked across at Margaret again, quiet, firm, persistent through
tragedy, through all emotional upheaval, and a grim admiration shot
through his hostility. After all she was consistent. With all his
admiration for women, even at the height of his passion for Helen, he
had never connected her or any woman with ability to follow a line of
action with such consistency. He had some sense of what was going on in
Margaret’s mind--an apperception of her refusal to let this tragedy
break her down.

He became conscious of Helen’s sigh. She sat beside him, her hands
folded loosely in her lap. The minister talked on, performing with
decent civility and entanglement of phrase, the rites of last courtesy
for the dead. Gage wondered what he and Helen would do. He was glad that
the mess about Freda Thorstad was cleared up. Not that it made any grave
difference except in a certain clearness of atmosphere. If she got a
divorce she couldn’t get it on those grounds. He wondered how their
painfully sore minds could be explained in a divorce court which was
accustomed to dealing with brutal incidents. Perhaps a separation would
be better. He wondered how he was going to provide for her decently. It
was going to be a long job building up the new practice. Things were
breaking badly.

Some emphatic phrase of the minister, starting out of his droning talk,
brought Gage’s eyes back to the coffin. Strange how the sense of that
silent form within it gave him fresh energy. Life had got Walter. Women
had got him, in some obscure way. He felt his shoulders straighten with
stubborn impulse. They wouldn’t get him. Deftly and logically his
thought became practical. He would cut out all this thinking about
women. He would--perhaps he would get the Thornton business. It meant a
big retainer. He could have done it a few months ago. Now--he visualized
old Thornton’s tight mouth, keen eyes. He’d want value received. Have to
get in shape--cut out the booze--concentrate on business--men’s
business. The actual phrase took shape in his mind. Men’s business. By
God, that was how women got you. They got you thinking about them until
you became obsessed, obsessed with them and their business. It was so
and it had always been so. These new problems were not what people
thought they were. They were not sex stuff. Perhaps they altered the
grain of woman--changed her--but the adjustment of sex was as it always
had been, between each man and each woman. Let the women go on, be what
they wanted, do what they wanted. It made some of them better, some of
them worse--put new figures in the dance but it was the same dance. Even
if it wasn’t the minuet or the waltz there was still dancing. And there
was choosing of partners.

Every one stood up. Gage was standing too, with the rest, his vagrant
thoughts brought back from their wanderings to the ever shocking
realization that he was helping in the laying away of this friend of his
and the inevitable feeling that life was a short business for him and
every one. He fell back into triteness. You must play the game.

After it was all over he was standing beside Helen.

“I want to go to see Margaret,” said Helen. “I’ll go to her hotel now,
Gage.”

“Bring her home if you like,” answered Gage.

The ease of his tone startled Helen. She looked at him in quick
surprise, meeting his unexpected smile.

“I merely meant I thought I could be reasonably civil,” he said--and
with impulse, “I feel rather cleaned out, Helen. I’ll run down town now
and see what I can do before dinner.”

She thought, “He hasn’t had anything to drink for two days,” placing the
responsibility for his unwonted pleasantness on a practical basis. It
cheered her. She went to Margaret’s hotel and found her in her room,
lying on her bed and her head buried in the counterpane. It was the
nearest to abandonment that Helen had ever seen in her friend so she
ventured to try to comfort.

“It’s the awful blackness of his mind that I can’t bear,” said
Margaret, “the feeling he must have had that there was no way out.” She
sat up and looked at Helen somewhat wildly. “It frightens me too. For he
had such a good mind. He saw things straight. Perhaps there isn’t any
way out. Perhaps we are battering our heads against life and each other
like helpless fools.”

“Did you love him?” asked Helen. It seemed to her the only vital point
just then.

Margaret threw her hands out futilely.

“I don’t know. I was afraid of what might happen if we married. Either
way it looked too dangerous. I was afraid of softening too much--of
lapsing into too much caring--or of not being able to care at all. He
wasn’t afraid--but I was. And--the rotten part is, Helen, that I wasn’t
afraid for him but for myself.”

She was hushed for a moment and then broke out again.

“It wasn’t for myself as myself. It was just that if our marriage hadn’t
been a miracle of success, it would have proved the case against women
again.”

“You mustn’t think any more than you can help,” said Helen. “It wasn’t
like Walter to want to cause you pain and I know he wouldn’t want you to
suffer now.”

“No, he was willing to do all the suffering,” said Margaret in bitter
self-mockery. “He did it too.”

She got hold of herself by one swift motion of her well-controlled mind
and stood up, brushing her hair back with the gesture Walter loved.
“It’s not your burden, poor girl. You have enough.”

“Not so many,” said Helen. “By the way, Margaret, you haven’t heard
about Freda Thorstad, have you?”

“Did she come back?”

“No--she wrote. She had married Gregory Macmillan secretly when he was
here. They sent her word that he had typhoid out West and she went to
him. Why she didn’t tell people is still a mystery.”

“Married him--Gregory? But she’d only known him four days.”

Helen nodded. “That’s just it. Isn’t it--” she stopped, fearing to
wound.

“Magnificent--brave--foolish--” finished Margaret. Her voice broke
unaccustomedly. “It’s wonderful. Gregory will be a strange husband but
if she shares him with Ireland and--oh, it’s rather perfect. And so all
that nonsense about Gage being involved--”

“Was nonsense.”

Margaret did not ask further about Gage. She reverted to Freda and
Gregory. The news left her marveling, an envy that was wonder in her
remarks. She made no comparisons between Freda and herself and yet it
was clear that Freda wrought herself to another phase--a step on towards
some solution of thought.

Helen urged her to come to dinner.

“I’d rather not, I think. I’ll have a rest perhaps.”

“Then you’ll go out with us for a ride to-night?”

“Gage wouldn’t like it, would he?”

“He suggested your coming to dinner, my dear.”

They smiled at each other.

“Then I’ll go.” She turned swiftly to Helen. “Oh, work it out if you
can, Helen. Not working it out--is horrible.”




CHAPTER XXIII

RESPITE


Freda was trying to mend a blouse. Her unskillful fingers pricked
themselves and it was obvious that even her laborious efforts could do
little to make the waist presentable. Its frayed cuffs were beyond
repairing. However, it would do until they got to Mohawk and she could
get the clothes which she had there. She had not written her mother to
send her anything. Nor had she spent any of the money the Flandons had
sent for such luxuries as new clothes. She had been uplifted when that
check for a thousand dollars--not for six hundred--had slipped out of
the envelope with Mrs. Flandon’s kind, congratulatory letter. Gregory’s
three hundred had been put back in his purse and then, as it gradually
came over her impractical mind that such a sum was totally inadequate to
their need she had told him that she had some money of her own--a little
reserve which had been sent to her. Naturally he had assumed her father
had sent it and later she thought she would tell him that it was a debt
they had assumed and make arrangements for paying it. Not now. He must
not worry now about the money. She looked across the room at him--their
shabby little hotel room, with its lace curtains pinned back for air and
the shaky table desk dragged up before the window. He had not been quite
fit enough to travel when they left the hospital, and she had insisted
that he must try his strength before they made the journey to Mohawk,
the first lap on the way back to Ireland. How eager he was to be off
now--how impossible it was to check him! She forgot the blouse and sat
looking at him, sitting there unconscious of her regard. His profile was
outlined against the blank window opening, still so thin, and yet so
restored.

“It’s getting dark. You ought to stop now, Gregory. You’ll be worn out.”

He did not hear her. That was one of the things she had found out could
happen. Especially since this lot of mail had been forwarded from his
bureau, letters full of such terrible news for him from Ireland. His
friends were in prison--were killed. Devastation was spreading.

She rose, with a new air of maturity and crossed to him.

“It’s growing late.” This time she came behind his chair and bent her
cheek to his.

He moved absently.

“Yes, sweetheart--I’ll be soon through. I was writing to Larry’s widow,
poor girl. There seemed so much to say.”

“I know, but you must stop.” She used the appeal she had already learned
to use when he was bound to tax his fragile strength. “You’ll never get
back there unless you rest more.”

“Oh, yes I will. And when I do get back--how I’m going to start some
things in motion. It will be a terrible swift motion too. I’ve lost a
sad amount of time.”

Freda laughed and he looked at her. It was a laugh of pure amusement,
and so contagious that he joined her, jumping up from the letter to kiss
her.

“No--you laughing rogue--not time lost in winning my bride. Mocker.”

Freda held him at arms length teasingly.

“I have you for a minute now, haven’t I?”

“You always have me. You don’t mind, darling, that they need me? You
wouldn’t--not share it with me?”

“Of course I share it. And I know I have you--when you remember me.”

He buried his lips in her hair and then drew her to his knees.

“Sweetheart, if you could know how they suffer--when you see--”

She composed herself to listen, knowing how it would be. He would hold
her close like this and tighter and tighter his arms would feel as he
explained and related. Then, in his excitement, he would loose her and
leave her, gently, while he paced up and down the room and forgot the
tenants in the next room and herself and everything in his impassioned
oratory.

So he was. That was Gregory. When he put her down she turned on the
light and picked up her sewing. It was not that she did not listen
willingly. She did. If she could not kindle in his flame she was warmed
in the glow of it. She too had come to care. Perhaps when they reached
Ireland and she saw for herself she would kindle too--she rather hoped
so.

He stopped talking and his mind, relaxed, shot back to her.

“Do you feel well to-night, darling?”

“Of course. I’m the most indomitably healthy person you ever knew. I
can’t help it.”

“You’re so sweetly healthy that I keep forgetting to take care of you.”

She tossed the blouse from her restlessly and stretched her long arms
back of her head to make a cushion.

“It doesn’t bother me when you forget,” she told him. “I’m very glad
that it doesn’t, too. I’m glad I haven’t begun marriage by learning
habits of dependency. I think we’re rather lucky, Greg. Being us, as we
are, with a two day wedding trip and a crowning episode of typhoid and
now a baby and an Irish question ahead of us, we’ve learned how to
stand alone. Mind our own business instead of crowding into each
other’s, you know.”

He did not know. A great deal of modern difficulty and problem making
had slipped by him. “You are an obscure young person,” he told her, “and
most divinely beautiful. I am going to get Francis Hart to paint
you--like that, with your head thrown back. I want a hundred paintings
of you just to compare with you, so that I can show that no painting can
be as lovely as you are.”

       *       *       *       *       *

They spent a week in Mohawk and because Gregory found that Mr. Thorstad
knew Irish history with unexpected profundity and sympathy he was
content to spend much time with his father-in-law. They met on many
points, in the simplicity of their minds, the way they wound their
thoughts around simple philosophies instead of allowing the skeins of
thought to tangle--in the uncorrupted and untempted goodness of them
both and their fine appreciation of freedom--the freedom which in Mr.
Thorstad had bade his daughter seek life and in Gregory had tried to
unloose the rigors of Margaret Duffield. Gregory did not talk so much to
Mrs. Thorstad. He was apt, in the midst of some flight of hers, to look
a little bewildered and then become inattentive. She, however, took it
for genius. The chastening which she had suffered after that mistake of
blackening Gregory’s name in connection with Margaret had still some
effect. She was anxious to wipe that error out and to that end she
worked very hard to establish the fame and name of Gregory. His books
were spread over the library table and she had already, in
characteristic method, started a book of clippings about him.

She spent a good deal of time with Freda. Freda was rather more gentle
than she had been, and interested honestly in many of the details of
child bearing that her mother dragged up from her memory on being
questioned. If Mrs. Thorstad felt disappointment in Freda, she tried
very honestly to conceal it but now and again there cropped out an
involuntary trace of the superiority which she as a modern woman was
bound to feel over a daughter who took so little interest in the
progress of politics and listened so much to her husband’s talk. She
spoke of it once only and most tactfully.

“You must be careful not to be a reactionary, my dear. You are going
from the land of freedom and the land in which women are rising to every
dignity, to a country which may be--of course is bound to
be--comparatively unenlightened. I hope indeed that you have your
children. Two--or even three children--are very desirable. But you must
not forget that every woman owes a duty to herself in development and in
keeping abreast of the times which may not be neglected. I don’t want to
hurt you, dear. Of course I myself am perhaps a little exceptional in
the breadth of my outlook. But it is not personal ambition. It is for
the sex. Did I tell you that Mrs. Flandon talked to me when she saw me
in St. Pierre about doing much of the state organizing for the
Republican women? She says she needs some of my organizing ability. I
shall help her of course. In fact I hope I may be able to prevail upon
your father to apply for a position at the University in St. Pierre. I
feel we have rather outgrown Mohawk.”

“But, mother, that means an instructorship again for father, and it’s a
step backward.”

“Not exactly that. Think of the advantages of living in the city--the
cultural advantages. And there is a great field open in municipal
politics. I have some strong friends there--and one gentleman--an
editor--even went so far as to say there might be a demand for me in
public life in St. Pierre, if I established residence there.”

“It would be pretty rough on father to pull up stakes here--”

The hint came again.

“My dear child, you must not be a reactionary. I do not like to see you
start out your married life with the idea of subordinating your life as
an individual to a husband, no matter how beloved he may be. It is not
wise and it is not necessary. Look back over our life. Have I ever for
one moment failed in my duty towards the home or towards my husband or
child and has it not been possible at the same time for me to keep
progress before me always and to remember that the modern woman owes it
to herself to go out of the home and keep abreast with the times?”

But it was not a question. It was a statement. Freda made no reply and
her mother changed the subject with the satisfied air of the sower of
seed.

“When you come to Ireland,” she told her father laughingly that night,
“you will sit on the doorstep and learn to smoke a pipe. And Gregory
will be president of the Republic. And I will be--(ask mother)--a model
housewife, chasing the pigs--”

They laughed with an abandonment which indicated some joke deeper than
the banality about the pigs.

“It’s a worthy task,” said her father. “I’ll come--and I’ll enjoy
learning to smoke a pipe and see Gregory run the government--and as for
you--whatever you do you’ll be doing it with spirit.”

She nodded.

“I’ve just begun to break my trail.”

Then the day came when they must leave the little frame house and after
the excitement of getting extremely long railway tickets at the station
and checking all Freda’s luggage through to New York, they said good-by
to the Thorstads and left them standing together, incongruous even in
their farewells to their daughter.

They were to stop at St. Pierre over night. Mrs. Flandon had written to
urge them to do so and Freda would not have refused, if she had been
inclined to, bearing the sense of her obligation to them. She had not
told her father of that. It amused her to think that her father and
Gregory each felt the other responsible for those Fortunatus strings of
railway ticket. But she wanted Gregory to meet the Flandons again that
the debt might be more explainable later on.

St. Pierre was familiar this time when they entered it in mid-afternoon
as she had on that first arrival with her mother. It was pleasant to see
Mrs. Flandon again and to taste just for a moment the comfortable luxury
of the Flandon house. Freda felt in Mrs. Flandon a warmth of
friendliness which made it easy to speak of the money and assure her of
Gregory’s ability to pay it a little later.

“You’re not to bother,” said Helen, “until you’re quite ready. We were
more glad to send it than I can tell you. It’s a hostage to fortune for
us.”

Then she changed the subject quickly.

“I wonder if you’ll mind that I asked a few people for dinner to-night.
You married a celebrity and you want to get used to it. So many people
were interested in the news item about your marriage and wanted to meet
Gregory and you. I warned them not to dress so that’s all right.”

“It’s very nice,” said Freda, “I’ll enjoy it and I think--though I never
dare to speak for Gregory--that he will too. I remember having a
beautiful time at dinner here before. When I was here visiting the
Brownleys you asked me--do you remember?”

“I asked the Brownleys to-night. They were in town--all but Allie. I
asked the elder two and Bob and her young man--Ted Smillie, you know.”

She looked at Freda a little quizzically and Freda looked back,
wondering how much she knew.

“Think they’ll want to meet me?” she asked straight-forwardly.

“I do, very much. I think it’s better, Freda, just to put an end to any
silly talk. It may not matter to you but you know I liked your father so
much and it occurred to me that it might matter to him if any untrue
gossip were not killed. And it’s so very easy to kill it.”

“You take a great deal of trouble for me,” protested Freda.

Helen hesitated. She was on the verge of greater confidence and decided
against it.

“Let me do as I please then, will you?” she said smilingly and Freda
agreed.

Helen felt a little dishonest about it. The dinner was another hostage
to fortune. It was gathering up the loose ends neatly--it was brushing
out of sight bits of unsightly thought--establishing a basis which would
enable her later to do other things.

She had an idea that it would please Gage, though he had been
non-committal when she had broached the idea of having Gregory and his
wife for a brief visit. Helen had seen but little of Gage of late. She
knew he was working hard and badly worried about money. They had sold a
piece of property to raise that thousand for the Macmillans and he had
told her definitely of bad times ahead for him. She offered to reduce
the expenses of the household and he had agreed in the necessity. They
must shave every expense. But it invigorated Helen. She had amends to
make to Gage and the more practical the form the easier it was to make
them. Neither of them desired to unnecessarily trouble those dark waters
of mental conflict now. Helen guessed that Gage’s mind was not on her
and that the bad tangle of his business life absorbed him. Brusque,
haggard, absorbed, never attempting or apparently needing affection, he
came and went. Never since Carpenter’s death had they even discussed the
question of separation. That possibility was there. They had beaten a
path to it. But hysteria was too thoroughly weeded out of Gage to press
toward it. Without mutual reproach they both saw that separation in the
immediate future was the last advantageous thing for the work of either
of them and flimsy as that foundation seemed for life together, yet it
held them. They turned their backs upon what they had lost or given up
and looked ahead. Helen heard Gage refer some political question to her
for the first time, with a kind of wonder. She suspected irony, then
dropped her own self-consciousness as it became apparent that he really
did not have any twisted motive behind the query. She began to see that
in great measure he had swung loose from her, substituting some new
strength for his dependence on her love. And, when some moment of
emotional sorrow at the loss of their ardors came over her, she turned
as neatly as did he from disturbing thought to the work, which piled in
on her by letter and by conference.

       *       *       *       *       *

They sat at dinner in the long white-paneled dining-room, twelve men and
women. The three Brownleys and young Ted Smillie--Jerrold Haynes because
Helen wanted to have him meet Freda and Emily Haight because she fitted
in with Jerrold now that Walter Carpenter was gone. To these Helen had
added the young Harold Spencers because they were the leaders of that
group of young people who made or destroyed gossip. It was a dinner
party made up hurriedly on the excuse of Gregory’s celebrity and such
little intrigue as was hidden in its inception made it no less a
pleasant company.

Interest was concentrated on Freda and Gregory of course and under
Helen’s deft manipulation the story of their marriage and its secrecy
was told, lightly, but with a clearness of detail that sent Ted’s eyes
rather consciously to his plate once or twice as he avoided Barbara’s
glance. Ted was sitting beside Freda and paying her open homage when he
could get her attention. But Gage had much to say to her.

“Are you still chasing romance?” he asked. “I always remember your
startling me with your belief that women were more attractive when they
believed in romance.”

“Yes--I’m still after it. I feel the least bit guilty towards Gregory.
Because while he goes back to Ireland with his heart in his hands ready
to offer it to the country, the whole revolution is to me not as great
tragedy as it is adventure. It is tragedy intellectually but not
emotionally as far as I am concerned while to Gregory”--she turned her
head to glance at Gregory.

“And marriage is adventure too, isn’t it?”

She forgot Ted and leaned a confidential elbow towards Gage, resting her
chin in her cupped hand.

“I wouldn’t dare say it in the hearing of my mother or the feminist
feminists but that’s what it is. They talk of partnerships and new
contracts--but they can’t analyze away or starve the adventure of it.
All this talk--all the development of women changes things, but its
chief change is in making the women type different--stronger, finer,
you know, like your wife and Margaret Duffield. But even with women like
that when it comes to love and to marriage it is adventure, isn’t it?
You can’t rationalize things which aren’t rational and you can’t
modernize the things that are eternal.” She became a little shy, afraid
of her words. “Mother thinks I’m a reactionary. I don’t think I am. I
want women to be stronger, finer--I’ll work for that--but that’s one
thing, Mr. Flandon. It hasn’t anything to do with the adventure between
men and women, really.”

He started at that. But Ted claimed Freda’s attention and reluctantly
she turned to him.

“I think you treated me rather badly not telling me you were married. I
thought all along that I had a chance, you know.”

The brazenness did not make her angry. Nothing could anger her to-night.
She was all warm vigor, pervading every contact between her and every
one else.

“Barbara looks very well to-night,” she answered with cool irrelevance.

Barbara did. She had dressed with her customary skill but with the wit
to avoid her usual look of sophistication. To-night she was playing the
artless simple girl for Gregory’s benefit, listening to him with only an
appreciative comment now and then. It was clear that Gregory was talking
to her as he talked to one in whom he felt there was intelligence.

“And how clever she is,” added Freda reflectively.

The talk grew more general. Barbara called the attention of every one to
something Gregory had said, a concession for one who did not usually
share her dinner partners or else a successful attempt to break up other
conversations. Irish problems led to a discussion of general politics.
Helen was in the talk now--vigorously. Mrs. Brownley gave the retailed
opinion of Mr. Brownley before he could quote himself.

Gage heard without contributing to what was being said. He was listening
with amusement to Mrs. Brownley’s platitudes and half unconsciously
letting his admiration rise at the clarity of Helen’s thought and the
deftness of her phrases. What presence she had! In the contemplation of
her he felt the problems which had been harassing him all day--deadlocks
in plans, money shortage, fall away. As they had used to--he slipped
into memories and amazingly they did not cause him pain, though even as
he looked he saw upon her the marks of the work she had done and would
do, the new definiteness, the look of being headed somewhere. But his
rancor seemed to have burned itself out and with it had gone the old
possessive passion. He stirred restlessly. Some phœnix was rising.

Mr. Brownley turned at his movement, offering sympathy.

“Nothing for us to do, Gage,” he chuckled tritely, “except to talk about
recipes. The women talk politics now.”

Gage did not laugh at the old joke.

“Women and men may get together on a subject yet,” he answered, with
heavy awkwardness.

Instantly it seemed to him that it was what he had meant to say for a
long time. He caught the incredulous, almost pitiful look on Helen’s
face as she heard and pretended not to hear, met the quick, wondering
glance she snatched away from him.

Her tremulousness gave him confidence. Impatient of his guests now, he
looked across at her, his eyes kindling. Whether they could work it out
through his storms and hers ceased to gnaw at his thought of her. He
saw her strong, self-sufficient, felt his own strength rising to meet
hers, also self-sufficient. The delight of the adventure, the
indestructible adventure between man and woman remained. His mind moored
there.


THE END



Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

rose with the bawn=> rose with the dawn {pg 149}

what a beneficient=> what a beneficent {pg 183}






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