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.”