She was her usual calm self when she came down-stairs again, and was
able to give her husband a great many directions and suggestions as
they rode to the station.
“I’ll send a night letter to Miss Franklin to come and take care of the
children till I send for them,” she said. “I happen to know that she’s
free now. She’s such a capable girl! You’ll have nothing to worry about
with her in the house.”
Anxiously, but timidly, afraid that it was a reactionary and
contemptible insistence, but resolute to save herself in the eyes of her
world, contemptible or not, she added:
“And you’ll be sure to say that I got a telegram from mother, won’t you,
Andrew?”
She kissed him good-by kindly, pleasantly, and succeeded in getting into
the train with her nice smile still on her lips. Andrew was reassured,
and went home to spend what was left of the night in completing his
lecture notes.
He fell asleep toward morning on the sofa in his office. He would no
doubt have slept peacefully on till noon, as he had often done before,
if it hadn’t been for an unusual noise in the dining-room at
breakfast-time. He was a little indignant, for he had never been
disturbed before, and he was curious, too. His children--even the
four-year-old Frank--were singing lustily, in unison, a jubilant sort of
chant, led by a very fresh, clear, loud young female voice.
“Hail! Hail!” they shouted.
All ruffled and rumpled as he was, he entered the room, to find a
strange spectacle. His three children were standing on the window-seat,
with arms outspread and face upturned. Behind them stood a young woman
in the same yearning attitude, while they all cried their invocation:
“To the glorious sun that gives us life, all hail!”
That must have been the end of it, for the children got down and made a
rush at him.
“Oh, daddy! Mother’s gone to grandma’s!” the eldest little girl told him
eagerly. “Miss Franklin’s going to take care of us. _I’m_ going to write
to mother every single day, but not Jean and Frank. _They_ only
scribble. She couldn’t _possibly_ read it!”
He was not attending. He was looking at the young woman who stood beside
him, smiling. She was a short, sturdy blonde with a very pretty and
impudent face, a wide, jolly mouth, and queer gray eyes, which were at
the same time immensely candid and quite mysterious.
“I’m Christine Franklin,” said she. “I’m the originator of the Franklin
method of child care. I dare say you’ve heard of me. Your wife sent me a
night letter to come and take charge of your little family for a time.
That’s what I do, you know--go from house to house, and liberate.”
“Liberate?”
“That’s how I put it. I always insist that there shall be no
interference from parents or relatives or servants. Then I begin to set
the children free--to let them express themselves--to be natural.”
“I see!” said Andrew. “Is breakfast over?”
It was not, and after a brief toilet he sat down to enjoy it with his
family. He felt that he rather liked Miss Franklin.
“Nothing clinging and hyperfeminine about her!” he thought. “A man could
make a friend of a girl like that.”
He decided to study her. Now that he was free and couldn’t be
misunderstood, he had decided to make a comprehensive study of woman in
general. He knew that there were points about them that he didn’t
understand. He couldn’t really generalize upon the effects of marriage
without a better knowledge of females--he admitted that. Why not, he
asked himself, begin with this interesting specimen?
“What is the Franklin method?” he asked her.
“It’s not really a method at all,” she said. “It would be better to call
it a theory. It’s simply nature and art, hand in hand. I don’t believe
in directing or controlling a child. I simply help it along the road it
indicates itself. My mission is solely to point out beauty to it.”
“That’s likely to make it very much more difficult for them to become
accustomed to discipline and self-restraint when they’re old enough to
be held responsible.”
“But, you see, I don’t believe either in discipline or self-restraint,
in children or in adults. The natural impulses are sufficient. No, Dr.
Nature implants in us only right and beautiful desires. I look upon
self-restraint as superfluous, if not absolutely wrong, in a wholesome
person.”
“Social interdependence requires--” Andrew began.
“We _shouldn’t_ interdepend. We should each be a law unto himself. Let
us be healthy, in mind and in body; then let desire be the sole rule,
the sole conscience. Personally, I know that if I want to do a thing,
it is right to do it. If I want to have a thing, it is a right thing for
me to have.”
Andrew contested that, but she merely smiled at his arguments.
“Well!” she said. “As for _me_, when I want something, I go after
it--and I generally get it.”
Andrew met her clear, shameless glance, and an unaccountable shudder ran
through him. What a girl! What an enemy she would make--or what a
pursuer!
She was undoubtedly an interesting and convenient subject for his new
study, but he didn’t study her. On the contrary, he avoided her. He shut
himself up in his study and tried to write, but the new freedom for his
children entailed such a distressing amount of noise and quarreling that
he accomplished very little.
He wished to write a long and careful letter to Marian. He was afraid
that she hadn’t fully understood, that she was a little hurt, in spite
of what she had said; but he found it a remarkably difficult thing to
explain to a woman that you are very fond of her and yet wish to be rid
of her. He was not the first man who has essayed such a task.
The noise in the dining-room became intolerable. He tore up his third
attempt at a letter and went in there, in a very bad temper.
“Why the devil do you stay in here?” he shouted to his young family.
“Why aren’t you out in the garden, or at school, or wherever it is your
mother sends you? Don’t you know that I’m trying to work?”
Miss Franklin had entered from the kitchen, eating a slice of bread and
sugar.
“Ask the cook for some!” she suggested, and the children vanished. “What
are you writing?” she inquired frankly.
He didn’t care to mention the letter, so he said:
“My lecture. I’m giving one this afternoon, you know.”
“What on?”
“‘Marriage from the Man’s Point of View.’”
She pricked up her ears.
“What is a man’s point of view?” she asked.
“For a man,” he said, “marriage is moral death. It is slavery--bondage
of the worst sort. It is a handicap which prevents any effective
progress. It is, of course, an invention of woman’s, to safeguard
herself and her offspring. She has found it necessary to provide herself
with a refuge, and she has ruthlessly taken advantage of her sinister
influence over the more sensitive and conscientious man to impress him
with a mass of false and pernicious ideas about the ‘home.’ Man has not
one single advantage to gain from marriage, yet he has actually been
taught, by mothers, by women teachers, by all the females who surround
young children, to think of it as a privilege. He secures a home. What
is a home? A nest for the woman, a cage for the man. What is a wife? The
most unprincipled, exacting slave-driver ever yet developed. For her and
her children he is required to give all the fruit of has labor, and, in
addition, a fantastic and debasing reverence and flattery--”
“You poor thing!” said Miss Franklin.
He stopped short, in surprise.
“Why?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“You must have been so wretched with your wife,” said she.
His face turned crimson.
“I wasn’t,” he said, with an immense effort at self-control. “Quite the
contrary. One doesn’t apply general remarks to--specific cases.”
“Oh, yes, one does indeed!” Miss Franklin insisted.