THE CLEAN WIND
Freda felt that night that all her dreams, all her vague anticipations
of doing were suddenly translated into activity and reality. In the
strangest way in the world, it seemed to her, so naïve was she about the
obscure ways of most things, she had a room of her own and a job in St.
Pierre. Margaret Duffield had smiled a little at the news of her job but
at Freda’s quick challenge as to whether she were really imposing on Mr.
Flandon, Margaret insisted that she merely found Gage himself humorous.
She did not say why that was so. Together she and Freda went to see the
landlady about a room for Freda. There was one, it appeared, in an
apartment on the third floor. Freda could have it, if she took it at
once, and so it was arranged.
It was a plain little room with one window, long and thin like the shape
of the room, furnished sparsely and without grace, but Freda stood in
the midst of it with her head high and a look of wondering delight in
her eyes, fingering her door key.
Later she went down to Margaret’s apartment to carry up her suitcase.
She found Gregory there. He had not come for lunch as Margaret had
warned her. Seeing him now more clearly than she had the night before,
Freda saw how cadaverous his face was, how little color there was in his
cheeks. She thought he looked almost ill.
They did not hear her come in. Gregory was sitting with his eyes on
Margaret, telling her something and she was listening in a protesting
way. It occurred to Freda that of course they were in love. She had
suspected it vaguely from their attitude. Now she was sure.
She coughed and they looked up.
“It’s my damsel in distress,” said Gregory, rising, “did everything
clear up? Is the ogress destroyed?”
“If she is, poor Miss Duffield had to do it.”
“She wouldn’t mind. She likes cruelties. She’s the most cruel person--”
“Hush, Gregory, don’t reveal all my soul on the spot.”
“Cruel--and over modest. As if a soul isn’t always better revealed--”
“You can go as far as you like later. Just now you might carry Freda’s
suitcase upstairs.”
He took the suitcase and followed them, entering Freda’s little room
which he seemed to fill and crowd.
“So this is where you take refuge from the ogress?”
“It’s more than a refuge--it’s a tower of independence.”
He looked at her appreciatively.
“We’ll agree on many things.”
Margaret asked Freda to come down with them and she went, a little
reluctantly wondering if she were not crowding their kindness. But
Gregory insisted as well as Margaret.
Margaret sat beside a vase of roses on her table and Gregory and Freda
faced her, sitting on the couch-bed. The roses were yellow,
pink--delicate, aloof, like Margaret herself and she made a lovely
picture. Gregory’s eyes rested on her a little wearily as if he had
failed to find what he sought for in the picture. He was silent at
first--then, deftly, Margaret drew him out little by little about the
Irish Republic, and he became different, a man on fire with an idea.
Fascinated, stirred, Freda watched him, broke into eager questioning
here and there and was answered as eagerly. They were hot in discussion
when Walter Carpenter came.
There was a moment of embarrassment as if each of the men studied the
other to find out his purpose. Then Margaret spoke lightly.
“Do you want to hear about the Irish question from an expert, Walter?”
“Is Mr. Macmillan an expert?”
“He’s to lecture about it on Friday night.”
“It’s a dangerous subject for a lecture.”
“It’s a dangerous subject to live with,” answered Gregory a little
defiantly.
“Are you a Sinn Feiner, Macmillan?”
“I’m an Irish Republican.”
There was a dignity in his tone which made Walter feel his
half-bantering tone ill judged. He changed at once.
“We’re very ignorant of the whole question over here,” he said, “all we
have to judge from is partisan literature. We never get both sides.”
“There is only one side fit to be heard.”
Freda gave a little gasp of joy at that statement. It brushed away all
the conventions of polite discussion in its unequivocal clearness of
conviction.
“I was sure of it,” she said.
Gregory turned and smiled at her. The four of them stood, as they had
stood to greet Walter, Margaret by the side of her last guest, looking
somehow fitting there, Gregory and Freda together as if in alliance
against the others. Then conversation, civilities enveloped them all
again. But the alliances remained. Freda made no secret of her
admiration for Gregory. The openness of his mind, the way his
convictions flashed through the talk seemed to her to demand an answer
as fair. Her mind leapt to meet his.
Gregory Macmillan was Irish born, of a stock which was not pure Irish
for his mother was an Englishwoman. It had been her people who were
responsible for Gregory’s education, his public school and early Oxford
life. But in his later years at Oxford his restlessness and discontents
had become extreme. Ireland with its tangle of desires, its heating
patriotism, heating on the old altars already holy with martyrs, had
captured his imagination and ambition. He had gone to Ireland and
interested himself entirely in the study of Celtic literature and the
Celtic language, living in Connacht and helping edit a Gaelic Weekly.
Then had come the war, and conflict for Gregory. The fight for Irish
freedom, try as he did to make it his only end, had become smaller
beside the great world confusion and, conquering his revulsion at
fighting with English forces he had enlisted.
Before the war Gregory’s verse had had much favorable comment. He came
out of the war to find himself notable among the younger poets,
acclaimed even in the United States. It seemed preposterous to him. The
machinations of the Irish Republican party absorbed him. Intrigue,
plotting, all the melodrama, all the tragedy of the Sinn Fein policy was
known to him, fostered by him. He had been in prison and after his
release had fallen ill. They had sent him to convalesce in Wales. It was
while he was there that there had come an offer from an American lecture
bureau to go on tour in the States telling of Irish literature and
reading his own verse. He laughed at the idea but others who heard the
offer had not laughed. He was to come to the States, lecture on poetry
and incidentally see and talk to various important Americans who might
have Irish sympathies. The Republic needed friends.
He came reluctantly and yet, once in New York, he had found so many
young literati to welcome him, to give him sympathy and hearing if not
counsel that his spirits had risen. And he had met Margaret Duffield and
drawn by her mental beauty, her curious cold virginity, he had fallen in
love with her and told her he loved her. For a few ardent weeks he wooed
her, she explaining away his love, denying it. Then she had come West
and he had sought his lecture bureau, making them include a lecture in
this city which held her. He had come and found her colder, more aloof
than ever, and now sitting in this room of hers he found a quiet,
controlled, cultivated, middle-aged man who seemed to be on terms of
easy and intimate friendship such as he had not attained.
After a little they divided their conversation. Margaret wanted to talk
to Walter about some complication in local politics--something affecting
Helen’s election. And Freda wanted to hear Gregory talk.
He told her about Ireland, of the men and women who plotted secretly and
constantly to throw off every yoke of sovereignty. He told of the beauty
of the Gaelic tongue, translating a phrase or two for her--talked of the
Irish poets and his friends and she responded, finding use now for all
the thoughts that had filled her mind, the poems she had read and loved.
The light in his deep set eyes grew brighter as he looked at the face
turned to his, meeting his own enthusiasm so unquestioningly. Once he
looked at Margaret curiously. She was deep in her discussion and with a
glimmer of a smile in his eyes he turned again to Freda.
At eleven he took her to her room. They went up the stairs to the door
of her apartment.
“Shall I see you between now and Friday night?”
“I’m going to work to-morrow.” Freda came back to that thought with a
jolt. “I don’t know.”
“To-morrow night? Just remember that I’m alone here--I don’t know any
one but you and Miss Duffield and I don’t want the people in charge of
my lecture to lay hands on me until it’s necessary. You’ve no idea what
they do to visiting lecturers in the provinces?”
“But hasn’t Miss Duffield plans for you?”
“I hoped she might have. But she’s busy, as you see.” His tone had many
implications. “So I really am lonely and you made me feel warm and
welcome to-night. You aren’t full of foolish ideas about friendships
that progress like flights of stairs--step by step, are you?”
“Friendships are--or they aren’t,” said Freda.
“And this one is, I hope?”
They heard a sigh within the apartment as if a weary soul on the other
side of the partition were at the end of its patience. Gregory held out
his hand and turned to go.
But Freda could not let him go. She was swept by a sense of the cruel
loneliness of this strange beautiful soul, in a country he did not know,
pursuing a woman he did not win. She felt unbearably pent up.
Catching his hand in both of hers, she held it against her breast,
lifted her face to his and suddenly surprisingly kissed him. And,
turning, she marched into her room with her cheeks aflame and her head
held high. Groping for the unfamiliar switch she turned on her light and
began mechanically to undress. It seemed to her that she was walking in
one of her own storied imaginings. So many things had happened in the
last twenty-four hours which she had often dreamed would happen to her.
Adventures, romantic moments, meetings of strange intimate congeniality
like this with Gregory Macmillan. She thought of him as Gregory.
Gregory went down the stairs quickly, pausing at Margaret’s door to say
good night. The other man was leaving too and they walked together as
far as Gregory’s hotel. They were a little constrained and kept their
conversation on the most general of subjects. Gregory was absent minded
in his comments but as he entered the hotel lobby he was smiling a
little, the immensely cheered smile of the person who has found what he
thought was lost.
Freda reported for work at the office of Sable and Flandon at half past
eight the next morning. She had not been sure at what time a lawyer’s
office began operations and thought it best to be early so she had to
wait a full hour before Mr. Flandon came in. The offices were a large,
well-furnished suite of rooms. There were three young lawyers in the
office, associated with Mr. Sable and Mr. Flandon, and three
stenographers, in addition to a young woman, with an air of attainment,
who had a desk in Mr. Sable’s office and was known as Mr. Sable’s
personal secretary. Freda got some idea of the organization, watching
the girls come in and take up their work. She became a little dubious as
to where she could fit into this extremely well-oiled machinery and
wondering more and more as to the quixotic whim which had made Mr.
Flandon employ her, was almost ready to get up and go out when Gage came
in.
He saw her in a minute and showed no surprise. Instead he seemed to be
anxious to cover up any ambiguity in the position by making it very
clear what her duties were to be. He introduced her to the rest of the
office force as my “personal secretary” at which the Miss Brewster who
held a like position in Mr. Sable’s employ lifted her eyebrows a little.
She was given a desk in a little ante-room outside of Gage’s own office
and Gage, with a stenographer who had done most of his work, went over
her duties. She was to relieve the stenographer of all the sorting of
his correspondence, take all his telephone messages, familiarize herself
with all of his affairs and interests in so far as she could do so by
consulting current files and be ready to relieve him of any routine
business she could, correcting and signing his letters as soon as
possible.
At five o’clock she hurried back to her little room to find a letter in
her mail box. It was from her father and at the sight of it she was
saddened by the sense of separation between them. Every word in it,
counsel, affection, humor breathed his love and thought for her. She was
still poring over it when Gregory came to take her to dinner, and forgot
to be embarrassed about the night before.
Gregory had never intended to be embarrassed evidently. He considered
that they were on a footing of delightful intimacy. His voice had more
exuberance in it to-night than she had previously heard. As they went
past Margaret’s door they looked up at her transom. It was dark.
“I hoped she was coming with us,” said Freda.
“She doesn’t want to come with me,” answered Gregory, “and that has hurt
me for a long time, it seems to me, although perhaps it is only weeks.
But it may be just as well. For I could never make her happy.”
“Would it be so hard?”
“I could never make any woman happy,” said Gregory with extraordinary
violence. “Happiness is a state of sloth. But I could live through
ecstasy and through pain with some one who was not afraid. For this
serene stagnancy which seems to be the end-all of most people, I’m no
good. I couldn’t do it, that’s all.”
His head was in the air and he looked, thought Freda, as if he would be
extremely likely to forget about any woman or anything else and go
sailing off in some fantasy of his own, at any time. She remembered him
as he had been, despondent, when she had first met him, last night full
of blazing enthusiasms, to-night blithely independent. It delighted
her. She had never before met a person who adjusted to no routine.
“Let’s walk in peace and watch the clouds and I’ll tell you what an old
Irish poet said of them.”
He could see her chin lift as she listened.
“To have in your mind such a wealth of beauty--what it must mean--to
feel that things do not starve within you for lack of utterance--” Her
voice was blurred into appreciations.
“Why let them starve?” asked Gregory.
“Perhaps because practical meat-and-drink body needs always claim the
nourishment the things of your mind need--and you let the mind go
hungry.”
“That’s it--that’s what people do--but you won’t. I hear it in your
voice--see it in your face. The things in you are too vital to be
starved. You can cripple them but you can’t kill them.”
“I do not know.”
“You must set yourself free.”
Freda smiled ruefully.
“That’s what women are always talking about and what they mean is a
washing machine.”
“That’s no freedom--that’s just being given the run of the prison. Don’t
you see that what I mean is to keep yourself free from all the petty
desires--the little peeping conventions--free for the great desires and
pains that will rush through you some day? You have to be strong to do
that. You can put up wind breaks for emotion so easily. And you don’t
want them.”
“It means being very fearless.”
“I have never yet met anything worth fearing except cowardice.”
He stopped. They were in the middle of some sidewalk, neither of them
noticed where.
“Why did you kiss me last night?”
“I wanted to. I’ve not been sorry,” answered Freda. “By all the rules
I’ve learned I ought to be abashed, but you don’t live by rules, so why
waste them on you?”
Her smile was faintly tremulous. His strange, unfamiliar eyes looked
into hers and rested there.
“And we won’t have to spend time talking about love,” he said, half to
himself, “we shan’t wear it threadbare with trying to test its fabric.
It comes like the wind--like God.”
Again they breasted the wind and her hand was fast in his. It was a
clean, cool clasp. Freda felt oddly that she had saved her soul, that
she had met an ultimate.