It was extraordinary how much better Mrs. Payton was in the next few
weeks. Every day she sat in the entry outside Mortimore's door, and hour
after hour she and Miss Carter talked about Flora. Sometimes Mortimore
was troublesome, and laughed or bellowed--and then his mother retreated;
when he quieted down, she returned, and took up the story just where it
had been interrupted. After each detail had been recited, and they had
finally buried poor Flora, rehearsing every incident of the funeral,
they would reach the question of the disposition of her possessions.
Miss Carter had packed them up, and knew just how valueless they
were--"except that lovely collar you gave her. Now _I_ think that is too
good for the Salvation Army!"
At this point the discussion was apt to become heated, Miss Carter
contending that Flora's things should be sent to one of the negro
schools in the South, and Mrs. Payton standing firmly for the Salvation
Army. Frederica, asked to decide between them, said, briefly, "Burn
'em."
"Wouldn't that be wasteful?" Mrs. Payton objected, gently.
She was very gentle to Fred now. Her daughter's statement about being
"in love" had been a very great shock to her, not because of its
"indelicacy," painful as that was, but because it awoke in her an
entirely new idea: _Freddy was unhappy!_ It had never occurred to Mrs.
Payton that Freddy could be unhappy about anything--Freddy, who was
always so strong and self-sufficient! That she should suffer, made her
mother feel nearer to her than she had since Frederica was little, and
had scarlet fever, and Mrs. Payton hadn't taken off her clothes for four
days and four nights. So, when her daughter's drooping lip expressed
what she thought of that endless gossiping about Death outside
Mortimore's door, Mrs. Payton was very gentle, and only said that it
would be wasteful to burn Flora's things. Then she tried to explain that
she sat near Morty to cheer Miss Carter. (Freddy must not think it was
on Morty's account! It would be too dreadful if now, "on top of
everything else," she should be brooding over those impatient words,
repented of the minute they were spoken!)
But Fred displayed no signs of brooding over anything. She took up her
interest in Life just where it had paused for a moment at the touch of
Love. But before she settled down into the commonplaces, of real estate,
and dances, and league work, she had that Pause out with herself....
She told her mother that she was going to the bungalow to put things to
rights. (This was about five days after Flora's death.) "Everything is
just as we left it. She hadn't even washed the dishes. And I left a few
things there that I must bring home."
"Take Anne to help you."
"Anne would have a fit--she's so superstitious! No; I don't need
anybody."
"I'll go with you," Mrs. Payton ventured.
Fred was frankly amused at the suggestion. "You! No; much obliged, but I
don't want any one."
Mrs. Payton did not urge; back in her mind there was a dim memory of a
time when she, too, had been alive--and suffered, and wanted to be
alone. She said something, hesitatingly, to this effect to Arthur
Weston, who dropped in that morning to know how they were getting along.
"Freddy has gone out to that awful place, to pack up," she said; "I'm
sure it's very damp, and I'm terribly afraid she'll take cold. But she
would go. Sometimes a person likes to be by themselves," she ended.
He was surprised at such understanding; but he only said, quietly, that
he would drive out late in the afternoon and bring her home in his car.
"She can have eight hours to herself," he said. (He had had some hours
to himself in the last few days; hours of pacing up and down his
library--saying over and over, "If Maitland isn't in love with her, why
shouldn't I at least tell her that I--? No! I have no chance. But if she
_should_ forget him? No, no. I mustn't think of it!")
For the eight hours alone Frederica had been thirsting:
Solitude.
Lapping--lapping--lapping water.
Wind in the branches.
Shadows traveling across distant hills.
And no human face! No human sound!
So, with Zip under her arm, she took the early train to Lakeville.
From the station she walked along the sandy road where dead leaves had
begun to fill the wheel-ruts, down to the huddle of boarded-up cottages
on the shore. The last time she had gone over that road, how thick the
fog had been! Now, the lake was a placid white shimmer against the
horizon's brooding haze, and the glimmering October sunshine lay like
gilt on the frosted ferns and brakes. She did not meet a single soul.
Except for Zip, dashing along in front of her, or an occasional crow
cawing, and flapping from one tree-top to another, there was only the
wide silence of the sky. The sense of getting away from people gave her
a feeling of relief that was almost physical.
When she reached Lakeville the sight of Sunrise Cottage was like a blow;
she stopped short, and caught her breath. The lamp Howard had left
outside the house had fallen over--perhaps a squirrel had upset it; the
solferino shade was in fragments; leaves had blown up on the porch. But
the flinching was only for a moment--then she turned the key in the
lock.
The bungalow, with its shut-up smell, was just as they had left it,
except that, in some indescribable way, it had lost the air of human
habitation. Perhaps because Death had been there. In the faint draught
from the open door a sheet of music slipped from the piano to the floor
and some ashes blew out of the fireplace. The cottage was absolutely
silent.
Frederica felt cold between her shoulders. She did not want to go in,
she did not want to have to turn her back on the stairs that led up to
the vacant rooms--Flora's room! She shivered; set her lips and
entered--but she left the door open behind her into the living world.
The emptiness of the house clamored in her ears. She found herself
looking, with a sort of fascination, at the disorder of the
chairs--which stood just as Howard had pushed them aside when they
brought Flora in. On the arm of the morris chair was a brass plate
heaped with cigarette-ashes. For some obscure reason those ashes seemed
to her unendurable--how they had glowed, and faded, and glowed again,
filling the room with warm and lazy smoke, while she and Howard--She
lifted the little tray and threw the ashes, almost with violence, into
the fireplace. The movement broke the spell that had held her there
looking at things--at the learned books, filmed with dust, at the
half-burned candles, at the withered roses on the table. Zip nosed about
at that water-soaked spot on the rug, and she spoke to him sharply; then
went over and closed the piano.
After that, it was easier to go out to the kitchen, though there was
still a tremor at the thought of those empty rooms overhead. Spread out
on the table were the cards, just as Flora had left them. In the sink
was the clutter of unwashed dishes.... Fred drew a long breath, opened
all the windows, lighted a fire in the stove, and went to work.
Of course the exertion of packing and cleaning was a relief. There was a
great deal to do. So much that she felt at first that she should need
another day to get through with it. But her capability was never more
marked--by noon she began to see the end. She ate her luncheon walking
about, holding a sandwich in one hand and packing books with the other.
She had arranged with her landlord to send a van to the cottage for the
piano, and it was also to carry her things back to town; she had thought
of every detail. It was the way she did all her work--drawing up leases,
or talking to women's clubs, or, of late, "making things pleasant" at
Payton Street. Even now, shrinking from the work that must be done
up-stairs, where it was all so empty--so full of Flora!--she was
efficient, methodical, thorough. She scanted nothing. Yet no amount of
busyness dulled the ache of misery which had goaded her out here to be
alone--but she was impatient at herself for feeling the ache.
It was so unreasonable to be miserable!
When everything was done--the kitchen tidied, books and clothing and
personal odds and ends packed, even the little white curtains in the
empty rooms up-stairs, all limp and stringy from the creeping October
fogs, pressed and folded and put away--it was still early afternoon. But
there was no train into town until five; she would give herself up to
the silence.
She went out on the porch and sat down on the lowest step in the
sunshine. Zip ran about, chased a squirrel, then, curling up on her
skirt, went to sleep. Sometimes she rubbed his ears, sometimes stared
out over the lake--
_She had been refused._ "I am hard hit," she admitted, and her face
quivered. However, she could stand being hit! She could take her
medicine, and not make faces. Arthur Weston had said that about her,
and she liked to remember it.
Suddenly her mind veered away into all sorts of unrelated things. Queer
that Howard cared so much for shells. He had found that pearl in a
shell; the pearl that she had thought--_oh_, what a fool she had
been!--was meant for her. That old seed-pearl set of her mothers', pin
and ear-rings, would make a dandy pendant. She believed she'd ask her
mother for it. Except on this shell-digging business, how entirely
Howard and she agreed about everything! Few men and girls were so in
accord, mentally. Imagine Howard trying to talk to any of the girls of
her set--even to Laura--as he talked to her! Why, Laura would be dumb
when he got on the things that were worth-while. He had once said that
he would rather talk to her than any girl he knew; no--it was to "any
man" he knew. For a moment the old pride rose--then fell. She almost
wished he _had_ said to "any girl." Well; no girl--or man, either--could
have done better than she did on that poster scheme. Howard would say so
when she would tell him about it, and she was going to tell him; she was
going to talk to him just as she had always talked--about everything on
earth! She _must_; or else he would think that she was ... hard hit; and
that she simply couldn't bear! The poster scheme reminded her of some
league work she had neglected in these five days of tingling emptiness,
and she frowned. "Gracious! I must attend to that," she said. She did
not know it, but her bruised mind was fleeing for shelter into
trivialities. Suddenly she took her purse out of her pocket, thrust a
thumb and finger into the place where she kept her visiting-cards, and
took out a burnt match. She looked at it for a moment with a grunt of
bitter laughter; then, finding a little stick, dug a hole in the path,
laid the match in, covered it, and stepped on it, hard.
"That is the end," she said.
After a while she realized that she was cold, and went back into the
house and kindled a fire. She sat down on a hassock, and stretched out
her hands to the blaze. The sunshine came through the uncurtained window
and laid a finger on the soot on the chimney back; its faint iridescence
caught her eye. Was it only Monday night that she and Howard had sat
here by the fire, and he had kicked the logs together on the andirons,
and the sparks had caught in the soot and spread and spread in marching
rosettes? Why, it seemed years! It was then that she had--asked him.
She wasn't ashamed of it! She had proposed and been refused. "He thought
it was stunning in me to do it; he said so! He feels as I do about the
equality of men and women in this kind of thing, as well as everything
else. Of course, he may have said so just to--to make it easier for me?
If I thought _that_--"
The blood rushed into her face. She would not think that! It would be
unendurable to think he had not been sincere. "He felt it was perfectly
all right for me to be the one to speak. And it was!"
Of course it was. There was nothing for her to be ashamed of. She
herself had once refused an offer of marriage, and certainly the
rejected suitor had not seemed to suffer any pangs of shame! He had
displayed a rather mean anger: "He wanted my money, and he was hopping
mad when he couldn't get it. I didn't want to get anything. I only
wanted to give! So why don't I brace up? I had a right to 'give.'"
She was quite certain that she had a right, so why was she so miserable?
So--ashamed.
In spite of herself she said the word. She had shied away from it, and
refused to utter it, a dozen times; but at last, here, alone, she had to
tell herself the truth.
She was ashamed.
It is only when Truth speaks to us, as in the cool of the day the Voice
of God spoke in the Garden, that the human creature knows he is ashamed.
Not to feel Shame is to be deaf to that Voice. Frederica was not deaf;
but the Voice was very faint, very wandering and indirect. She could
hardly hear it. It spoke first in her vague wish that Howard had said he
would rather talk to her than any "girl" he knew; and then it spoke in
the wonder whether a man does like to be "asked."
"If he doesn't, it's just idiotic tradition. It belongs to the days of
slavery!"
But how did the tradition grow up that a woman mustn't ask a man to
marry her? She tried to remember something Arthur Weston once said about
men being "born hunters." Her lip drooped, angrily; "Rot!" she said;
"when it comes to love, a woman has as much at stake as a man. No, she
has more at stake! She has the child. Queer," she thought, "the woman is
always the one who sticks to the child." She wondered if that was
because women pay such a price for children? It occurred to her, with a
sense of having made a discovery, that all through nature, the mother
cares for her offspring just in proportion to what it costs her to bring
it into the world.
She rolled Zip over on his back and pulled his ears, her mind dwelling,
with the ancient resentment of her sex, upon the unfairness of
nature--for the father pays no price! "I wonder if that explains
desertion? I wonder if men desert girls, after they've got them into
trouble, simply because the child costs them nothing? But how the girls
stick to the babies, poor things! _They_ hardly ever go off on their own
bat. And yet" (thus the Voice was speaking!), "the child needs a father
to take care of it, as much as a mother, so the man and the woman ought
to keep together.... But _he's_ the one who goes off! It ought to be tit
for tat! Women ought to do the deserting," she said, passionately; but a
moment later came the cynical admission: "Men wouldn't mind being
'deserted.' They'd probably like it. They ought to be _made_ to be
constant. When we get the vote, we'll make laws to stop their
'deserting'!"
Then she wavered; as far as laws go, there were enough now. The fact
was, men were naturally faithless! "I hate men," she said, between her
set teeth. Arthur Weston was right, they were "hunters." They are
constant--in pursuit. "We ought to keep them on the hot-foot, then
they'd be more keen to stay with us!" In a flash came the rest of
Weston's comment: "They won't bag the game, if it perches on their
fists." Her face reddened violently. She had come, head on, against a
biological fact, namely, that reluctance in the woman makes for
permanence in the man.
_Reluctance!_...
Her mother's tiresome talk about "cheapness" was suddenly intelligible.
How foolish the word had sounded! Yet, perhaps, under its foolishness
lay a primitive fact: that the welfare of the child demands a permanent
relation between the father and the mother. But in proportion as she is
"cheap," he is temporary, and the relationship is jeopardized!
She did not put it into words, but she realized, amazed, that woman,
whether she knows it or not, acts upon this old race knowledge. For the
child's sake, she tries, by every sort of lure, to hold man to
permanence which she will herself acquire by the fierce welding of
agony. The surest "lure" is based upon the fact that man pursues that
which flees; but all the lures spring from Nature's purpose to safeguard
the child by giving it the care of two instead of one. For the "child"
is the most important thing in the world!
Fred was thinking hard. Sometimes she put a stick on the fire, and once
she got up and paced about the room. It came over her, with a rush of
surprise, that all the talk of what girls must and mustn't do, "all the
drivel about 'propriety'!" was based on this same Race instinct.
She saw that for a girl to love a man, unasked, is neither ignoble nor
immodest. It is divine to love--always! Such love is a jewel, worn
unseen above a girl's heart; to offer it, is to take it out of its white
shelter and fling it into hands that, not having sought it, will soon
let it drop between indifferent fingers. She saw how this Race instinct
has gradually--and oh, so painfully, oh, so foolishly, with failure, and
agony, and tragic absurdities of convention, taught women the value of
the reticence of modesty.
Taught them that they must not be "cheap"!
It came to her that it was the business of women like herself--the "new"
women, who are going to set Woman free!--it was their business to
discard the absurdities, but keep the beauties and dignities; for beauty
and dignity are "lures," too. "They _attract_. I suppose that is what
Grandmother means by 'charm,'" she reflected; "she said I hadn't any."
Her face suddenly scorched; to discover a temperamental deficiency made
her wince; it was like discovering a physical blemish. She understood,
now, what Arthur Weston meant when he "rowed" about her being in the
apartment alone with Howard. She had been "cheap." She had "perched on
his fist." He had had no inclination to bag the game....
It was all very loose and incoherent thinking; she caught at one fact,
only to find it contradicted by another fact. But in all her mental
confusion one anguished wish stood fast:
"Oh, if I _only_ hadn't asked him!"
In her futile shame, her head fell on her knees and she caught her
breath in a sort of sob--then sat upright, listening intently: a motor!
_Howard?_ In spite of reason, a leap of hope made her gasp.
She rose quickly, and stood, her hand over her lips--waiting.... Then
she saw the car, and her heart seemed to drop in her breast; it was only
Arthur Weston.
He came in, saying, cheerfully, he had heard she was packing, and had
come out to bring her back to town. "We can load the tonneau with
anything you want to take home," he said; "I suppose you haven't any tea
for a wayfarer?" He was very matter-of-fact; he saw the tremor and heard
the catch in the breath.
There was some tea, she said--but no cream; she would boil some water.
He sat down, and she waited on him, getting herself in hand, even to the
extent of some pitiful little impertinences. Then, by and by, they
carried her things out to the auto. "My landlord is going to send for
the piano," she said; "all I have to do is to close the shutters."
He went about with her, helping her, teasing her, and scolding her
because she was tired. When everything was done, and they were just
leaving the house, she paused abruptly, and her hands went up to her
eyes.
"Poor Flora!"
He was standing beside her, gentle and pitying, longing to draw those
shaking hands down from her hidden face: "You were always good to her,"
he said.
"No!" she said, in a smothered voice; "no." Then, suddenly, she turned
toward him and sank against his shoulder. He felt the sob that shook her
from head to foot. Instinctively, his arms went about her, and he held
her close to him; he was silent, but he trembled and those passionate
and sensitive eyebrows twitched with pain. It was only for a moment that
he felt her sobbing weight--then she flung her head up, her face
quivering and smeared with tears. "What a liar I am! I'm not crying
about Flora at all. I'm just--unhappy. That's all."
He took her hand and held it to his lips, silently.
"I'm tired," she said; "--no! no! I _won't_ lie--I _won't_ lie! I'm not
tired. I've been a fool! That's all. A fool."
"We all have to be fools, Fred, before we can be wise."
She had drawn away from him, with a broken laugh. "You don't know
anything about it! _You_ don't know what it's like to be a fool!"
"Don't I? I was a very big fool myself, once. But I'm so wise now that
I'm glad of all the blows my folly gave me then. I'll tell you about it,
one of these days."
He told her as they drove back to town. "And," he ended, "I can see that
the best thing that ever happened to me was to have Kate jilt me."