As things turned out, Flora might have seen her "friend" in Payton
Street Friday night, had devotion prompted him to call, for the
festivity at the camp was postponed for three days. The morning mail
brought Frederica a brief line from Howard Maitland; he had found, he
said, after he left her office, that he had to run on to Philadelphia.
Back Monday morning. If her invitation held good, he'd come out to
Lakeville for supper Monday night. The letter ended with some
scratched-out words, which looked like, "I may have something to tell
you--" The obliterated line made her glow! But the delay was
disappointing. Three whole days before she could hear that "something"
he wanted to tell her--and she wanted to hear! Well, it would give her
more time to fix things up in the cottage. With this in view, she and
Zip and Flora went out to Lakeville Sunday morning, and Fred had a
silent day to keep an eye on the dusting, and work on her suffrage
paper, and jolly Flora, whose plaintive dullness was beginning to be
rather trying.
"You _must_ brace up, Flora," she said; "you haven't half dusted the
legs of the table! I don't want Mr. Maitland to think we are not good
housekeepers, just because we are 'New Women,' you and I!" But Flora did
not brighten. She had telephoned the "reg'ler invitation to the movies"
before leaving Payton Street, but the "friend" had only said (she told
Frederica) "he'd see 'bout it. He'll write to me, and I'll git it
Monday," she said. But it was evident that she had very little hope of
an acceptance.
All that pleasant, hazy Sunday Frederica followed the old, old example
of her grandmother, the cave-dweller, and decked her little shelter. She
went into the woods and brought back an armful of maple leaves and, with
Flora's melancholy assistance, fastened them against the walls and over
the doors, hiding, to some extent, the frieze of fans and the yellow
pennons of the Cause. She even took down the muslin curtains and washed
and ironed them herself, and put them up again, crisp and dainty. The
little room bloomed with her joy. When she sat down to "polish" her
article she kept jumping up every few minutes to move a bowl of flowers,
or put an extra book on the mantelpiece.
"I wonder," she thought, "if he can read the titles from that morris
chair?" She had decided in what chair he was to sit. She tried the
visual possibilities of the chair herself and, by screwing up her eyes,
found she could just make out the appallingly learned names on the backs
of some of the books. "_That_ will show him what I'm up to!" she said.
It was the old Life Purpose--the eternal invitation! The bird preens
itself, the flower pours its perfume, the girl's cheek curves like a
shell. A man can almost always see the beckoning of that rosy curve, or
of a little curl nestling at the back of a white neck, or of soft, shy
eyes; for so, in all the ages, Life has invited. But it has never
beckoned with a German treatise!
Frederica, giving Zip a lump of sugar and making a solitary cup of tea
for herself, did not know that she was beckoning....
When, at five o'clock, a motor came chugging along the road, and Arthur
Weston opened the door and demanded tea, he, at least, felt the
invitation--which was not for him. The white curtains, the open piano,
the warmth and fragrance and pleasantness, and, most of all, Frederica,
sitting on a little stool by the fire, her face sparkling with welcome.
Everything was beckoning!
Standing up, warming his hands at the fire while Fred ran out to the
kitchen to make fresh tea for him, the caller read the names of the
books lined up in a row between the lighted candles on the mantelpiece,
and whistled.
"Is this your light reading?" he said, as she came back with the
cream-pitcher. "For Heaven's sake, lay in some funny papers for the
simple male mind!" Then he pulled Zip's ears, took his tea, and said he
wished he could ever get enough sugar.
"I saw Maitland on Thursday," he said, reaching for another lump.
"Yes, he is on deck," Fred said.
Her man of business made a hopeless, laughing gesture, as if he gave up
trying to solve a puzzle. "Are they engaged, or aren't they?" he said to
himself. Her way of speaking of the cub was certainly as indifferent as
it well could be! "But that doesn't prove anything," he thought,
drearily.
He stayed a long time; he had a feeling that his call was a sort of
last chapter. "In about a week I'll get one of those confounded
engagement letters," he told himself. He settled down in the morris
chair--the chair in which Howard was to sit the next evening--and
started her talking. He did not need to make any replies. Once Frederica
"got going" on her own affairs he could watch her in lazy, tender
silence.... How soon it would be over--this watching and listening! How
soon his plaything would be transformed into a happy, self-absorbed,
quite uninteresting wife and mother! For Fred Maitland, he was cynically
aware, would cease to interest him, because she would cease to be
preposterous; she would be normal. Of course Fred Payton would always be
a darling memory; she would never leave his heart. His heart ached at
the thought of its own emptiness if he should try to turn Fred Payton
out just because Fred Maitland was another man's wife. No, he would not
even try to forget his wild, sweet, silly Freddy! She should always
remain as, back somewhere in his memory, Kate remained, dark-browed and
cruel. The Kate of to-day, whose presence in his heart would be an
impropriety, was not even an individual to him! But the old Kate was
his. He wondered if Fred would ever become as vague to him as Mrs.
Kate----.... "What is her name! Oh, yes--Bailey. When I heard she'd
married him, I didn't sleep for two nights; and now I can hardly
remember his name! 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them--' ...
Fred, almost all the houses out here are boarded up. I only saw a light
in one house."
"I was telling you of the woman's movement in Sweden," she said,
affronted.
"I'd like to see a woman's movement back to town from this cottage! You
really ought not to be out here at night, just you and Flora. That one
house which is open will be closed pretty soon, I suppose?"
"To-morrow," she teased him. "And Flora and I are such fragile flowers,
it's dreadful to think of our losing the protection of Mr. and Mrs.
Monks! He is a paralytic, and she weighs two hundred and twenty-five
pounds."
"You'll move in town to-morrow, won't you?" he said, really disturbed.
She had to admit that she expected to. "Not that I'm nervous, but Howard
Maitland is coming here to supper to-morrow night, and I'm going to make
him take us back in his car because I've got such a lot of stuff to
carry home."
"Oh," he said, blankly. "He's coming out to supper?" He stared into the
fire for a while; then he got on his feet. "I must start," he said, and
stood looking down at her. "Fred," he said, suddenly--in the uncertain
firelight his face seemed to quiver--"you're a good fellow. And if your
husband, when you get him, isn't the finest thing that ever happened,
I'll punch his head!"
His voice was so moved that she, sitting on her little stool, close to
the hearth, looked up at him, quickly. "Why, he's _fond_ of me!" she
thought. Her own deep experience made her heart open into generous
acceptance of any human affection. She jumped up and put both impulsive
hands into his. "You are the dearest friend I have!" she said; then
hesitated, laughed--and kissed him.
Her lips against his cheek were softly cool, like the touch of flowers.
Nothing that she had ever said or done removed her more completely from
the possibility of passion. He was able, however, to make a
grandfatherly rejoinder to the effect that he had dandled her on his
knee when she was a brat--which was not strictly true, for he had had no
inclination to dandle the gawky fourteen-year-old Freddy Payton on knees
that were bent before the cruel Kate. He put a friendly--but
shrinking--hand on her shoulder as she went with him to the front door,
and a minute later waved good night from his car. As he drove home in a
bothering white fog from the lake, he was very unhappy. "It hurts more
than I supposed it could," he told himself. "I don't like this kind of
'amusement!' Damn it, I wish she hadn't kissed me."
As for Frederica, going back into the cottage, her eyes were very kind.
"He's an old dear to bother with me; I'm awfully fond of him." Then she
forgot him. "Twenty-four hours more," she was thinking, "and Howard will
be here!" Twenty-four hours seemed a long time! She was glad when the
moment came to blow out the candles and look into the other room to say
good night; ("only twenty hours now!").
Flora, at the kitchen table, was listlessly shuffling a pack of cards by
the light of a little kerosene-lamp; as Fred entered, she dropped her
head in her hands and sighed. Frederica sighed, too. "I suppose I've got
to cheer her up," she thought, resignedly. "What's the matter?" she
said, kindly.
"Nothin'."
"Come in the other room and I'll play for you."
Flora shook a dreary head. Fred, with a shrug of impatience, sat down at
the other end of the table. The fire in the stove was out and the
kitchen was cold and damp; except for the lisping wash of the lake and
the faint fall of Flora's cards, everything was very still. Fred watched
the cards for a moment without speaking, then abruptly brushed them all
aside and clapped her warm young hand on Flora's thin wrist. The
movement made the lamp flicker, and on the opposite wall two shadowy
heads nodded at each other.
"Now, Flora," she said, "we'll have this out! What _is_ the matter?"
"I tell you, Miss Freddy, there ain't nothin' the matter."
"There is! You're awfully depressed."
"I'm used to that."
"But why? Come now, you've got to tell me!"
Flora dropped her head on her arms and began to cry.
"Flora! Flora! What shall I do with you? You are so silly!"
The woman sat up and wiped her eyes. The little hysterical outburst
evidently relieved her; she smiled, though her lips still trembled. "I
was tellin' my fortune to see what kind of a letter I'd git to-morrow
mornin' from my friend about goin' to the movies. I like 'em, but 'pears
he ain't stuck on 'em. An'--an', I'm bettin' he'll say he won't go. The
cards make out I ain't goin' to have no luck."
"Nonsense! You've got too much sense to believe in cards."
"Miss Freddy, Mr. Maitland'll think the house real pretty the way you
fixed up them leaves. Some of 'em is as handsome as if they was
hand-painted!"
Fred preserved a grave face, and said yes, the leaves were lovely.
"An' he's comin' out to-morrow night?" Flora said, nodding her head.
"Well, I guess _you're_ happy." Her opaque black eyes gleamed with
unshed tears. Frederica, rising, put an impulsive arm around her; Flora
suddenly sobbed on her shoulder.
"Is it because your beau has been unkind?" Fred said. She used Flora's
own vernacular.
"I 'ain't never had a real beau. Oh, well, I don't care! I'm glad you
got a beau, anyhow."
"I don't know that I have," Fred said, smiling. "But you'll get one some
day." Under her friendly words was a good-natured contempt--Flora was so
anxious for a "beau"!
"An' your gentleman'll come out here to-morrow night," Flora
repeated,--it was as if she turned the knife in her own wound; "an' you
and him'll set in the living-room. And you'll talk. And he'll talk. An'
he'll ... kiss you."
"Oh," Fred said, laughing, "Mr. Maitland and I are not interested in
_that_ kind of thing! We are trying to give women the vote, and to make
the world better--that's what we are going to talk about. And, Flora,
remember, you've got to give us an awfully good supper! Come, now!
you're tired. You really must go to bed."
She laid a gently compelling hand on the frail shoulder, and Flora,
sighing miserably, took the lamp from its bracket and followed Miss
Freddy up-stairs to the cubby-hole under the roof where she slept.