Mr. Weston, riding home in the taxi, was not without some astonishment
at himself. Why was he so keenly annoyed at Fred's bad taste? Why had he
such an ardent desire to kick Maitland? He might have gone further in
his self-analysis and discovered that, though he wanted to kick Howard,
he did not want to haul him over the coals, as a man of his years might
well have done--merely to give a friendly tip as to propriety to a
youngster whom he had seen put into breeches. Had he discovered this
reluctance in himself, Arthur Weston might have decided that his
indignation was based on a sense of personal injury--which has its own
significance in a man of nearly fifty who concerns himself in the
affairs of a woman under thirty. The fact was that, though he thought of
himself only as her grandfatherly trustee, Frederica Payton was every
day taking a larger place in his life. She amused him, and provoked him,
and interested him; but, most of all, the pain of her passionate
futilities roused him to a pity that made him really suffer. He could
not bear to see pain. Briefly, she gave him something to think about.
His displeasure evaporated overnight, and when he went up to her office
the next morning he was ready to apologize for his words in the taxi.
But it was not necessary. Fred, in the excitement of receiving a letter
asking her fee for hunting up rooms, had quite forgotten that she had
been scolded.
"I think I'd better advertise in all the daily papers!" she announced,
eagerly.
"You're a good fellow," he said; "you take your medicine and don't make
faces."
"Make faces? Oh, you mean because you called me down last night? Bless
you, if it amuses you, it doesn't hurt me!"
The sense of her youth came over him in a pang of loneliness, and with
it, curiously enough, an impulse of flight, which made him say,
abruptly: "I shall probably go abroad in January. Can I trust you not to
advertise yourself into bankruptcy before I get back?"
"Oh, Mr. Weston," she said, blankly; "how awful! Don't go!"
"You don't need me," he assured her; but a faint pleasure stirred about
his heart.
"Need you? Why, I simply couldn't live without you! In the first place,
my business would go to pot, without your advice; and then--well, you
know how it is. You are the only person who speaks my language.
Grandmother talks about my vulgarities, and Aunt Bessie talks about my
stomach, and the Childs cousins talk about my vices--but nobody talks
about my interests, except you. Don't go and leave me," she pleaded with
him.
The glow of pleasure about his heart warmed into actual happiness.
"Please don't think I approve of you!"
She looked at him with her gray, direct eyes, and nodded. "I know you
don't. But I don't mind;--you understand."
"But," he said, raising a rueful eyebrow, "how shall I make Cousin Mary
'understand' your performances?"
"By staying at home and keeping me in order! Don't go away."
It was the everlasting feminine: "_I need you!_" There was no "new
woman" in it; no self-sufficiency; nothing but the old, dependent
arrogance that has charmed and held the man by its flattering
selfishness ever since the world began.
He was opening the office door, but she laid a frankly anxious hand on
his arm. "Promise me you won't go!"
He would not commit himself. "It depends; if you get married, and shut
up shop, you won't want a business adviser."
"I sha'n't get married!" she said, and blushed to her temples.
Mr. Weston saw the color, and his face, as he closed her door and stood
waiting for the elevator, dulled a little. "She's head over ears in love
with him. Well, he's a very decent chap; it's an excellent match for
her,--Oh," he apologized to the elevator boy, on suddenly finding
himself on the street floor; "I forgot to get off! You'll have to take
me up again." In his own office he was distinctly curt.
"I am very busy," he said, checking his stenographer's languid remark
about a telephone call; "I am going to write letters. Don't let any one
interrupt me"--and the door of his private office closed in her face.
"What's the matter with _him_?" the young lady asked herself, idly;
then took out her vanity glass and adjusted her marcel wave.
Arthur Weston put his feet on his desk, and reflected. Why had he said
what he did about going to Europe? When he went up to see Fred, nothing
had been farther from his mind than leaving America. Well, he knew why
he had said it.... Flight! Self-preservation! "Preposterous," he said,
"what am I thinking of? I'm fond of her, and I'm confoundedly sorry for
her, but that's all. Anyhow, Maitland settles the question. And if he
wasn't in it--she's twenty-five and I'm forty-six." He got up and walked
aimlessly about the room. "I've cut my wisdom teeth," he thought, with a
dry laugh, and wondered where the lady was who had superintended that
teething. For Kate's sake he had taken a broken heart to Europe. The
remembrance of that heartbreak reassured him; the feeling he had about
Fred wasn't in the least like his misery of that time. He gave a shrug
of relief; it occurred to him that he would go and see some Chinese rugs
which had been advertised in the morning paper; "might give her one for
a wedding present?--oh, the devil! Haven't I anything else to think of
than that girl?" He stood at the window for a long time, his hands in
his pockets, looking at three pigeons strutting and balancing on a
cornice of the Chamber of Commerce. "She interests me," he conceded;
then he smiled,--"and she wants me to stay at home and 'take care of
her'!" Well, there was nothing he would like better than to take care of
Fred. The first thing he would do would be to shut up that ridiculous
plaything of an "office" on the tenth floor. Billy Childs put it just
right: "perfec' nonsense!" Then, having removed "F. Payton" from the
index of the Sturtevant Building, they--he and Fred--would go off, to
Europe. He followed this vagrant thought for a moment, then reddened
with impatience at his own folly: "What an idiot I am! I'm not the least
in love with her, but I'll miss her like the devil when she marries that
cub Maitland. She's a perpetual cocktail! She'd be as mad as a hornet if
she knew that I never took her seriously." He laughed, and found himself
wishing that he could take her in his arms, and tease her, and scold
her, and make her "mad as a hornet." Again the color burned in his
cheeks; he would do something else than tease her and scold her; he
would most certainly kiss her. "Oh, confound it!" he said to himself,
angrily; "I'm getting stale." He did _not_ want to kiss her! He only
wanted to make her happy, and be himself amused. "That is the difference
between now and ten years ago," he analyzed. "Kate never 'amused' me;
oh, how deadly serious it all was!" He speculated about Kate quite
comfortably. She was married; very likely she had half a dozen brats.
Again he contrasted his feeling for Fred with that brief madness of
pain, and was cheered; it was so obvious that he was merely fond of her.
How could he help it--she was so honest, so unselfconscious! Besides,
she was pathetic. Her harangues upon subjects of which she was (like
most of mankind) profoundly ignorant, were funny, but they were
touching, too, for her complacent certainties would so inevitably bring
her into bruising contact with Life. "She thinks 'suffrage' a
cure-all," he thought, amused and pitiful,--"and she's so desperately
young!" In her efforts to reform the world, she was like some small
creature buffeting the air. In fact, all this row that women were making
was like beating the air. "What's it about, anyhow?" he thought. "What
on earth do they want--the women?" It seemed to him, looking a little
resentfully at the ease and release from certain kinds of toil that had
come to women in the last two or three decades, that they had everything
that reasonable creatures could possibly want. "Think how their
grandmothers had to work!" he said to himself. "Now, all that these
ridiculous creatures have to do is to touch a button--and men's brains
do the rest." Certainly there is an enormous difference in the
collective ease of existence; women don't have to make their candles, or
knit their stockings, as their grandmothers did:--"yet, nowadays, they
are making more fuss than all the women that ever lived, put together!
What's the matter with 'em?"
He grew quite hot over the ingratitude of the sex. His old Scotch
housekeeper, reading her Bible, and sewing from morning to night, was
far happier than these restless, dissatisfied creatures, who, in the
upper classes, flooded into schools of design and conservatories of
music--not one in a hundred with talent enough to cover a five-cent
piece!--and in the lower classes pulled down wages in factories and
shops. "Amateur Man," he said, sarcastically. "Suppose we tried to do
their jobs?" Then he paused to think what Fred's job, for instance,
would be. Not discovering it offhand, he told himself again that if
women would keep busy, like their grandmothers--his contemptuous thought
stopped, with a jerk; how could women do the things their grandmothers
did? What was it Fred had got off--something about machinery being the
cuckoo which had pushed women out of the nest of domesticity? "Why," he
was surprised into saying, "she's right!"
He came upon the deduction so abruptly that for a moment he forgot his
sore feeling about Frederica's youth. Suppose the women should suddenly
take it into their heads to be domestic, and flock out of the mechanical
industries, back to the "Home"? Arthur Weston whistled. "Financially,"
said he, candidly, "we would bu'st in about ten minutes."...
"Do you want to give me those prices to Laughlin before I go out to
lunch?" a flat voice asked in the outer office; he slid into his
desk-chair as the door opened.
"I haven't had time to look them up yet. Don't wait."
He took up his pen, but only made aimless marks on his blotting-paper;
the interruption jarred him back into irritated denial of possibilities:
"She amuses me, that's all; I'm not in the least--in love." Suddenly,
with a spring of resolution, he took down the telephone receiver and
called up a number. The conversation was brief: "Hello! Jim?... Yes; I'm
Arthur. Look here, I want to break away for a week.... Yes--break away.
B-r-e-a-k. I'm stale. Can't you go down to the marshes with me, for
ducks?... What? Oh, come on! You're not as important as you think....
What?... I'll do the work--you just come along!"
There followed a colloquy of some urgency on his part, and then a
final, satisfied "Good boy! Wednesday, then, on the seven-thirty."
He had hardly secured his man before he regretted it; the mere prospect
of the arrangements he must make for the trip began to bore him.
However, he sat there at his desk and made some memoranda, conscious all
the time of a nagging self-questioning in the back of his mind. "_I'm
not!_" he said, again and again. "I'll get some shooting and clear my
brain up."
But by the time he had sent a despatch or two, and called Jim Jackson up
a second time to decide some detail, he knew that shooting would not
help him much. The nag had settled itself: he had accepted the
revelation that he was "interested" in Freddy Payton. With the contrast
between the pain of the old wound and the new, he would not use the word
"love," but "interest" committed him to an affection, tender almost to
poignancy. Of course there was nothing to do about it. He must just take
his medicine, as Fred took hers, "without making faces." There was
nothing to strive for, nothing to avoid, nothing to expect. She was as
good as engaged to Howard Maitland, and it would be a very sensible and
desirable match;--to marry a man of forty-six would be neither sensible
nor desirable! No; the only thing left to her trustee was to take every
care of her that her eccentricities would permit, guard her, play with
her, and correct her appalling taste. "Lord! what bad taste she has!"
Also, while he and Jackson were wading about on the marshes for the next
week, kick some sense into himself!
That very evening, dropping in to the Misses Graham's and partaking of
a bleakly feminine meal, he laid his lance in rest for her.
Miss Mary was full of flurried apologies at the meagerness of the
supper-table, but old Miss Eliza said, with spirit, that bread and milk
would be good for him! "Now, tell us about that child, Arthur," she
commanded.
"You mean Fred Payton, I suppose?" he said, raising an annoyed eyebrow.
"I don't call her a 'child.'"
"You are quite right," Miss Mary agreed, in her little neutral voice;
"she is certainly old enough to know how to behave herself."
"It's merely that she wants to reform the world," Miss Eliza said,
soothingly. "Reformers have no humor, and, of course, no taste;--or else
they wouldn't be reformers!"
"Your dear cousin Eliza is too kind-hearted," Miss Mary said; but her
own kind, if conventional, heart made her listen sympathetically enough
to the visitor's excusing recital of the hardships of Fred's life.
Once, she interrupted him by saying that it was, of course, painful--the
afflicted brother. And once she said she hoped that Miss Payton was a
comfort to her mother--"though I don't see how she can be, off every day
at what she calls her 'office'--a word only to be applied, it seems to
me, to places where gentlemen conduct their business. When I was young,
Arthur, a girl's first duty was in her home."
"Perhaps there is nothing for her to do at home," Miss Eliza said.
"There is always something to do, in every properly conducted
household. Let her dust the china-closet."
"I'd as soon put a tornado into a china-closet as that girl! She ought
to be turning a windmill," Miss Eliza said.
Her cousin gave her a grateful look, but the other lady was very
serious. "I thought her manner to her grandmother most unpleasant. Youth
should respect Age--"
"Not unless Age deserves respect!" cried Miss Eliza, tossing her old
head.
Arthur Weston had seen that same flash in Fred's eyes. ("How young she
is!" he thought.) But her sister was plainly shocked.
"Oh, my _dear_ Eliza!" she expostulated. "I am not drawn to Mrs. Holmes
myself, but--"
"Neither is Fred drawn to her," Weston interrupted; "and she is so
sincere that she shows her feelings. The rest of us don't. That's the
only difference."
"It is a very large difference," Miss Graham said; "this matter of
showing one's feelings is as apt to mean cruelty as sincerity. It's the
reason the child has no charm."
"I think she has charm," he said, frowning.
There was a startled silence; then Miss Eliza said, heartily: "Don't
worry about her! Just now she thinks it's smart to put her thumb to her
nose and twiddle her fingers at Life--but she'll settle down and be a
dear child!"
Miss Mary shook her head. "If I were a friend of the young lady, I
should worry very much. Maria Spencer called on us yesterday, and told
us a most unpleasant story about her. She spent the night at an inn
with this same young man that she smoked with here. Oh, an accident, of
course; but--"
"Miss Spencer is the town scavenger," Weston said, angrily.
Miss Mary did not notice the interruption. "I cannot help remarking that
I do not think that such a young woman would make any man happy." ("It
was difficult to bring the remark in," she told her sister, afterward;
"but I felt it my duty.")
"The man who gets Fred will be a lucky fellow," her cousin declared.
"You know her very well, I infer," Miss Mary murmured. "I observe you
use her first name."
"Oh, very well! And I knew her father before her. But the use of the
first name is one of the new customs. Everybody calls everybody else by
their first name. Queer custom."
"_Very_ queer," said Miss Mary.
"Very sensible!" said Miss Eliza.
"Ah, well, we must just accept the fact that girls are not brought up as
they were when--when we were young"--Arthur Weston paused, but no one
corrected that "we." He sighed, and went on: "The tide of new ideas is
sweeping away a lot of the old landmarks; myself, I think it is better
for some of them to go. For instance, the freedom nowadays in the
relations of boys and girls makes for a straightforwardness that is
rather fine."
"Well," said Miss Mary, "I don't like what you call 'new ideas.' 'New'
things shock me very much."
"I'm rather shocked, myself, once in a while," he agreed,
good-naturedly.
"What will you do, Mary, when the 'new' heaven and the 'new' earth come
along?" Miss Eliza demanded.
The younger sister lifted disapproving hands.
"As for the girls smoking," Weston said, "I don't like it any better
than you do. In fact, I dislike it. But my dislike is æsthetic, not
ethical."
"I hope you don't think smoking is a sign of the 'new' heaven," Miss
Mary said;--but her sister's aside--"the Other Place, more
likely!"--disconcerted her so much that for a moment she was silenced.
"I never could see," said Miss Eliza, "that it was any wickeder for a
lady to smoke than for a gentleman; but, as I told the child, a girl's
lips ought to be sweet."
"Her smoking is far less serious than other things," said the younger
sister, sitting up very straight and rigid. "I do not wish to believe
ill of the girl, so I shall only repeat that I do not think she will
make any man happy."
"She will," Miss Eliza said, "if he will beat her."
"Oh, my _dear_ Eliza!" Miss Mary remonstrated. Then she tried to be
charitable: "However, perhaps she is engaged to this Maitland person, in
which case, though her taste would be just as bad, her meeting him here
would be less shocking."
"If she isn't now, she will be very soon," Frederica's defender said.
"Well," said Miss Mary, grimly, "let us hope so, for her sake; although,
as I say, I do _not_ feel that she--"
Miss Eliza looked at her cousin, and winked; he choked with laughter.
Then, with the purpose of saving Freddy, he began to dissect Freddy's
grandmother--her powder and false hair; her white veil, her
dog-collar--"that's to keep her double chin up," he said. "Yes! She is
_very_ lively for her age!" He wished he could say that old Mrs. Holmes
was in the habit of meeting gentlemen in empty apartments--anything to
draw attention from his poor Fred!
When he left his cousins, promising to come again as soon as he got back
from his shooting trip, and declaring that he hadn't had such milk toast
in years, he knew that he had not rehabilitated Frederica. "But Cousin
Mary feels that she has done her duty in warning me. Cousin Eliza would
gamble on it, and give her to me to-morrow," he thought; "game old soul!
But even if Howard wasn't ahead of the game, the odds would be against
me--forty-six to twenty-five--and, besides, what could I offer her?
Ashes! Kate trampled out the fire."