MR. SABLE STARTS SOMETHING
What Mr. Sable had counted on was that Gage, once away for the
Convention, with his wife travelling with him, would stay away for a
week or so. In any case, he had taken matters rather summarily into his
own hands in the case of Freda Thorstad. The presence of the girl in the
office was to him like an open scandal. He knew that she had to get out
of the office and the time to get her out was while Gage was away. Of
course Flandon might raise trouble when he came back but there would be
no scene with the girl and he could put it flatly and finally that
amours had to be conducted outside of the office if at all. He was
extremely correct and secure in his own position and he felt he was most
delicate.
So he was at the office a little earlier than usual the morning after
Gage left for the Convention. Freda was at her desk sorting the first
batch of mail. She looked very neat and capable, in her white blouse
open a little at the throat, her thick golden red hair pulled back
smoothly from her forehead, and her head industriously bent over her
letters.
“Will you come in my office for a moment, Miss Thorstad?”
Freda followed him obediently. He closed the door and, taking his arm
chair, left her standing a little dubiously before him.
“Miss Thorstad,” he said, “I think--er--that it will be best for you to
sever your connection with this office.”
His tone, wholly disapproving, weighted with meaning, told his reasons
with almost comic flatness.
Freda’s brow contracted and she looked sharply at him. Then she laughed.
A brazen laugh, he would have said. Truly a laugh with no more fear or
care or apprehension in it than the laugh of any child who comes upon
something ridiculous.
Mr. Sable frowned. She was a hussy, he thought. Might try to bulldoze
him a little--he became increasingly stern.
“I have no desire to go into our reasons for this but I think it will be
best for you to simply leave at once. You may find the work too heavy
for you. I am sure you understand that no office of this kind could take
the situation differently.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for me to wait until Mr. Flandon’s return?” she
asked.
He had feared that.
“Surely you understand that your presence here is embarrassing to Mr.
Flandon,” he said sharply.
If she had guessed what he suspected she might have contended. But all
that he said struck her as true. She evidently was being gossiped about
and if it did make it embarrassing for Mr. Flandon--Perhaps that was why
he had been so over courteous, to conceal a deep embarrassment.
“Very well, Mr. Sable,”--she straightened her shoulders a little--“I
shall not go on with my work here.”
“Exactly.” With victory so easily accomplished, Mr. Sable became
different, adept at smoothing things over. “Of course when a young lady
cannot typewrite, an office like this has hardly the right kind of
work--”
“I know that. I told Mr. Flandon that at the start.”
“Mr. Flandon being absent, I will give you a check for this week’s
work.”
“I’ve done only one day’s work, Mr. Sable. It is only”--she
calculated--“two and a half dollars.”
She took his check for that--he did not dare press the point--and left
his office. Mr. Sable smoothed his little white mustache, straightened
his papers with the air of having done a good day’s work already, and
pressed the buzzer for his own secretary.
It was only half past nine o’clock. Freda got her hat and coat from the
tiny dressing-room. Her desk was in order and there was no use in
fussing over it. She wanted to get out into the clean air. The pompous
little lawyer’s insinuations while they did not strike deep enough to
insult her, made her feel soiled and dirty.
Cele followed her into the dressing-room.
“Where you going?”
“Going out to look for a job.”
“He let you out?”
“That’s the substance of his message.”
“Well--I call that--” Cele stopped, a veil of thought coming over her
eyes. “Look here,” she went on, “if there’s anything I can do--” She
stressed the last word violently, as if the need for action pressed upon
her.
“Not a thing.”
“You aren’t going back to--what-you-may-call-it? The place you came
from?”
“Mohawk? No--mother’s coming here in a day or two. I’ll wait, and look
for a job.”
“A job,” said Cele, reflectively, “don’t worry too much, will you?
Say--I’ll be around to see you to-night. I think it’s rotten.”
Freda went out, wondering if the slanderous tongues had found even
Cele’s ear.
But she did not linger on thoughts of her dismissal. She was sorry to
leave Mr. Flandon so, but after all he knew and understood and the
whole business was so temporary anyway. Gregory should be back any day
now--and they would go away and never think of such ugliness any more.
It was like her that no thought of personal justification, of setting
people straight on the gossip, ever entered her head. She wanted to
shake them off--that was all. She wanted to get away into light and
clearness and cleanness with Gregory. And it seemed to her that merely
being with Gregory would make an atmosphere like that.
She had received no letter from him in five or six days now and she
missed one sadly. She needed that written touch of vigor and sweetness
which set her days aflame with happiness. Especially now, with the
knowledge that she was probably to bear his child. The lack of an
address so she might send him that delightful information was
distressing. She could have reached him through his lecture bureau but
she had a dread of the letter going astray if it were not sent directly
to him. Not a word or thought of resentment did she allow to penetrate
her love. She kept herself free from that. It was harder to keep fear
away.
She was strolling along, passing through the shopping district, now and
then stopping to look idly at something in the window when she heard
herself greeted. Looking up she saw Ted Smillie. He was quietly affable
and there seemed no escape from speaking to him.
“How are you, Freda?” he asked calmly.
She resented his use of her name though he had come to using it before
their disastrous evening.
“Quite well,” she said, and looked at him evenly, waiting for him to
pass her.
He did not pass. He lingered, showing in his face the return of that
avid attraction which he had felt so strongly before. She was thinner
than she had been when he had seen her last and the shadows under her
eyes made her face more delicate--more interesting!
“I wanted to see you again and luck’s come my way. You know that I did
call on you the next day at the Brownleys’ and found you’d gone. I’m
afraid I acted like an awful fool that night. Didn’t I?”
“Worse than that.”
“But it truly wasn’t my fault. I had been drinking. I know I can’t stand
the stuff. And you made me quite lose my head.”
She reflected that of course it hadn’t been his fault as much as
Barbara’s. And not knowing or dreaming that he was the agency which had
violated the privacy of those two days at the Roadside Inn, she did not
persist in great resentment. She disliked him of course but she was very
idle and ready for distraction.
He went on talking, eagerly.
“It’s been on my mind ever since. I hated to let you think I was like
that. Look here, Freda, I’ve got a free afternoon. Come in and have a
cool drink somewhere with me--won’t you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Freda.
“Please.”
“I might hurt your reputation,” she said, with a scornful little laugh.
“I understand I’m causing a lot of talk among your friends.”
“They always talk about every one--especially if a girl has the courage
not to be conventional--”
She did not trust him in the least. Nor did she like him. It was sheer
ennui which made her consent. She needed company.
They went to the tea room of a hotel, a cool place, furnished with
abundant white willow and great palms. Freda had not been in such a
place before and she, as ever, was esthetically responsive to the oasis
of comfort and coolness it made in the sweltering city. Ted ordered for
her--a tall glass of cool Russian tea with mint leaves and thin lettuce
edged sandwiches. His solicitude for her comfort dulled the edge of
whatever resentment she had towards him--she had never bothered to
preserve much.
“And what are you doing? Did I hear you were working--like all modern
women?”
“Working I was--like all women who need the money,” she answered, “but
I’m not working now.”
“You’re not going back to Mohawk?”
She remembered part of his proposition that she need not go back to
Mohawk, made some weeks ago, glancing at him guardedly, thinking with a
certain amount of interest that this was the very young man who had made
suggestions which should have barred him permanently from her presence.
Here she was, taking his iced tea. Things were queer. She didn’t even
feel particularly angry at him. There wasn’t any use pretending false
rigors.
“I don’t know,” she said, as she had said before.
“I’m glad you left the Brownleys’ anyhow. Are you living with other
friends?”
“No--I’ve a room by myself.”
Obviously he liked that and the visible signs of his liking amused her.
“Can I come to see you once in a while?”
“Oh, no, indeed. I shouldn’t in the least like you as a caller.”
He was undisturbed.
“I’ll have to make you change your mind somehow.”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly, delicately, in negation.
“Do you know how much I’ve thought about you since that night?” he
asked, bending a little closer to her.
“How much?”
“All the time.”
She pushed her glass away from her.
“Don’t be silly. I’m not a half-wit, Ted. I think you ought to be
ashamed of yourself. You know quite well you’re engaged to Barbara
Brownley. Her mother told Miss Duffield that.”
His face darkened.
“Well,” he said, “I thought you were above a lot of silly conventions.”
She smiled serenely. “I am.”
“Then--just because a man is engaged to a woman is no reason why he
should never speak to any one else.”
“No--that would put a pretty high penalty on such things, wouldn’t it?”
“People are getting over their old fashioned notions about such things.
Men and women aren’t simpletons as they used to be, you know. We’re
regarding these things in a modern way. More like the French,” he said
largely.
“The French--oh, yes,” said Freda, gravely, “you mean having wives and
mistresses too. I’ve often wondered if the French couldn’t sue us for
libel for the things provincial Americans think about them.”
He flushed. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Gracious, no.” But he knew from her laugh that she was. “Why should I
make fun of you?”
She was enjoying herself. She felt so secure, so strong. It was fun to
bait this temperish young man, make him scuttle about for phrases which
had no effect on her at all.
“Anyway you know how I feel.” He pushed aside the glasses and plates
between them and bent himself over the tiny table towards her. She sat
back in her chair promptly.
“You know how I feel,” he persisted, “I never cared for a girl as I’ve
cared for you.”
“Then,” said Freda, with an air of great simplicity, “why not ask me to
marry you?”
He threw out his hands in a theatrical gesture of despondency.
“I’m tied hand and foot. This marriage of mine has been cooked up by our
families. It’s all arranged for us.”
“I know,” said Freda wisely, “as in France.”
He glanced sharply at her.
“But,” said Freda, “the modern way is not to let your parents put that
sort of thing over. Truly. One simply says, ‘Mother--I will wed the girl
of my choice.’”
“You are making fun of me.”
“Well--who wouldn’t?” Freda collapsed into a laugh. “Here I sit,
listening to you make the funniest clandestine love in the world. You
feel you’ve got to do it--to uphold your reputation as a--Frenchman! And
if you slipped into a serious situation you’d be aghast. You don’t care
a thing about me and you know it.”
“Ah, don’t I?” He looked for a moment as if he did.
“You probably care a little about corrupting me. Now look here, Ted,
please stop talking such nonsense. You can’t shock me and it’s pretty
hard to insult me--I am a little ashamed of not being more insulted--but
you probably could make me very angry by persisting in trying to involve
me in petty vice. In the first place I don’t like it. In the second
place, if I ever went in for vice, it would be on a larger scale than
you could dream of. I haven’t the slightest intention of--being French!
You’d better go along and make love to Bob Brownley. She’ll bring some
excitement into your life, I think. The reason I’m not more angry with
you is that you were, indirectly, the cause of the greatest bit of luck
that ever happened to me.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t dream of telling you. But I’m awfully obliged for the
tea--truly. It set me up. Shall we go?”
He was not so easy to repulse. He got up and pulled his chair around to
her side of the table.
“Freda,” he tried to take her hand, “if I gave up Bob would you let me
see you?”
“I wouldn’t if you gave up the world.”
She rose a little impatiently, feeling that this was going too far, and
started for the door of the dining-room.
“At least you’ll tell me where you live?” he pressed her. “Let me go
home with you now.”
“Don’t you have to work in the middle of the afternoon?”
“Nobody’s working much. It’s too hot.”
“Then go play with Barbara. I’ve other things to do.”
Possibly it was the heat and the sense of effort which got nowhere that
made Ted’s face intense and angry. He saw her about to slip away again.
“You can’t go like this, Freda, I’ve only just found you.”
“You’d better let me,” answered Freda, “because I see Maud Dubonnet
looking at you and she knows you and obviously isn’t intending to speak
to me though I lunched at her house, so you see it will be hot with you
when Barbara hears this.”
Against his will Ted looked up and saw Maud truly, with two other girls
and three young men coming into the room. They had to pass Ted and Freda
as they stood there, discussing. Maud Dubonnet was the only one of the
group whom Freda knew. The others all evidently knew Ted and glanced at
him with some interest. Maud did not look at Freda. She held her head
stiffly as she passed, then said something to the others which made them
turn with an attempt at casualness to look at the man and girl. Ted
delayed no longer. He followed Freda out.
“You see it doesn’t pay to do things Barbara won’t like. This will get
back to her before to-morrow and she won’t be pleasant.”
Ted’s mouth set in an rather ugly line.
“I’ll manage Bob all right.” He looked at Freda. Her face under the
plain white hat she wore was mocking, insubordinate, fascinating. “But I
want to see you again. To-night?”
“Nonsense. Good-by, Ted. Be good and make your peace with Bob.”
She turned and went in the opposite direction from the one in which they
had started, going into the first big department store and retiring to
the ladies’ waiting-room where she wrote a letter to her father, and
mailed it. Then, having made sure she was rid of Ted she went home. The
afternoon dragged along. She read and thought and on an impulse went out
again to go to the railway station and get some time tables. She wanted
to see just how far Gregory had been away from her when he last wrote.
Each time the postman approached the house there was a leap of her
heart. Four times a day he came and each time he brought fresh hope. She
would play tricks on herself as she went down to look in the mail box
she shared with the people who rented the apartment in which she stayed.
Each time she put her hand in the box she hesitated before she looked,
then looked quickly as if to catch fate before it tricked her. But it
would be an advertisement of a corset firm for Mrs. Miller, an envelope
with unmistakable savor of a bill about it, a postcard, a white
Louisine envelope with a woman’s handwriting on it. How she hated all
the flatness of the Miller mail.
Each envelope she took in her hands seemed to be mischievously
metamorphosed into one of these stupid envelopes which represented such
dull contact with the outside world. Nothing to do but to go upstairs
and read all over again the old messages of love from him--to wear her
wedding ring in the privacy of her room--to make endless computations on
the presumable date of her child’s birth--to read with unfailing zest
and yet slight nausea the rather mawkish pages of “What Every Mother
Should Know” which she had shamefacedly but defiantly bought at a book
shop, feeling the necessity for some practical knowledge of marriage.
* * * * *
The next day, breaking through her apprehension and her waiting, cutting
across her vague fears, came the letter. It lay between an announcement
of the opening of a new hair dressing parlor and Mr. Miller’s water and
light bill. How could she hope that the other white envelope would be
anything more interesting? Then she turned it over and the address
stared at her blackly. It was addressed to Mrs. Gregory Macmillan, in an
unfamiliar hand, postmarked at the town from which Gregory had last
written. Gregory always addressed her letters to Freda Thorstad to avoid
any explanations to the Millers. A quick faint fear came over her. She
almost crushed the letter as she flew up the stairs and with her back
against her door faced the envelope again.
Then steeling her mind and her heart, presenting only outer senses to
what blow it might contain, she opened it. The written words made their
sense clear, like some amazingly vital story that thrilled every nerve.
“MY DEAR MRS. MACMILLAN:
I obtained your address from your husband and I am writing you to
tell you that he is extremely ill. We have done our best for him
and he has a nurse with him constantly but I feel that you should
come to him if it is at all possible. I do not know what
responsibilities of family may hold you but I think it my duty to
inform you that your husband is very sick. He lectured here on the
fourteenth and the next morning the proprietor of this hotel called
me to attend him. I found him in the first stages of typhoid and
had him removed to a hospital here which is comfortable and where
we have given him every attention. At a time like this his family
should be with him. I regret that I must be the agent of such
distressing news.
Faithfully yours,
L. D. MERRITT, M.D.”
She read it through twice carefully. The thing struck her as quite
unreal, although she had speculated on the possibility of his illness.
Then her mind, working reasonably, went on. She thought of trains and
money. She had fifty--no forty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. It
wasn’t enough, she knew.
She had the time tables which she had obtained the day before. She
studied them, her body held tautly, her face calm, showing a control
which had come unconsciously. She could leave at three fifteen that
afternoon. She’d have to change trains at midnight. She’d get there at
noon next day. There was money. She must have money. No one to get it
from unless she wired her father--better not--Miss Duffield away--Mr.
Flandon away--Cele had none. She thought even of Ted Smillie. Better
not--she’d pawn something. That was what people did when they needed
money.
Like most girls she had a small collection of semi-precious
jewelry--nothing of great value. She opened the little mock-ivory box
on her dressing table and considered the contents carefully. Then she
closed it, put on her hat and stuck the box in her pocket.
Pawning was unlike any experience she had ever had and not as exciting
as books had led her to believe. She felt no shame--only a vague
hostility to the pawnbroker. She hated his having so obviously the best
of the transaction. He was scornful in her array of articles to
sell--the gold bracelet that had cost her father thirty-five
dollars--the little one carat diamond ring that had been her
mother’s--the opal ring--the seal ring--the little silver locket.
In the end he gave her thirty-three dollars, and with the money in her
hands she immediately got his point of view. She had exchanged a lot of
things which meant little to her for the boundless power of thirty-three
dollars which added to forty-nine made eighty-two.
She bought a ticket to Fairmount, Montana. It cost her twenty-eight
dollars and sixty-four cents. She put it in her purse and went home, a
splendid sense of action stirring her.
It took her a very short time to pack her bag. There remained two hours
before the train. She spent it sitting in her room and letting the
knowledge of what she was doing penetrate her mind. It occurred to her
that she should let some one know where she was going but in the face of
Gregory’s illness it seemed even less possible to confide the news of
her marriage. That was to have been a glorious revelation to a few
people. She could not turn it into tragedy, so she decided to tell no
one.
To her father she wrote a letter.
Yet even to him she could not tell the facts. It seemed now when
circumstances seemed to imperil her secret that she clutched it even
more tightly to herself. She could not bear the thought of comment
breaking in like a destructive barrage on the secret glory and beauty
she cherished. In her absorption she did not think much of consequences
or possible worry for any one. Only as she told Mrs. Miller that she
wanted to pay up for her week and that she had been called out of town,
did it occur to her from a comment of Mrs. Miller’s, that her mother was
coming in a day or two. The complication puzzled her--then she overrode
it boldly. It was one of the things that had to be. So she wrote a note
for her mother and entrusted it to Mrs. Miller. It was only a few lines
to tell her that she had left the city--“I’m sorry that I can’t be more
definite about my plans. There’s nothing to worry you, mother. It’s
quite all right and I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t. So please don’t
worry about me. Only trust me, won’t you? I know you will.” She sent her
love and for all her assurances on paper that she knew her mother would
trust her she sealed it with a dubious look.
In the letter to her father she was, if not more informative, at least
more expansive.
It was incoherent, reassuring, happy, sad--the kind of letter that
carries with it great fear to the one who reads it and who sees how
delicate the balance is on which the future is being weighed.
Freda mailed the note to her father, left the one for her mother with
Mrs. Miller and went to the station. Almost before she knew it the long
train, with a jerk of its loose hung body had gathered itself together
and moved out of the yards through the scattering, blackened railroad
district. She watched the little houses and let her mind sink into a
blur of remembrance and anticipation. She was going to Gregory. No more
waiting for letters, no more dreams. Whatever it was that was to come,
it was reality--something to feel and to do--not to wait for.
She slipped her wedding ring on her finger and displayed her hand a
little absurdly on the edge of the window casing. Marvelous symbol--that
ring, she thought. Too bad that people had come to regard it so
disdainfully. How ill it must have been treated to have sunk into such
disrepute. Across the aisle of the day coach she saw a like ring on the
hand of a woman. It was a fleshy hand and the coarse pink skin pushed
itself up on either side of the encircling band but Freda felt kinship
and friendliness. With this unknown woman, with the unintelligent face
she almost felt it possible to converse intimately--as if she might
cross to her and say, “I am Mrs. Gregory Macmillan. Are you going far?”
When the shadows fell thick across the prairie and a white-coated
waiter, a shade more important in his manner that he had been in passing
through the Pullmans, had intrigued a fair number of the day-coach
passengers into the diner, Freda rose a little stiffly. Her chin had red
marks on it where she had cupped it in her hand for so long and there
were streaks of coal dust under her eyes. She made a perfunctory and
inadequate attempt to look presentable and faced a new adventure. She
had never eaten on a train in her life.
The warm bustle and luxury of the place stirred her senses and brought
her out of her lonely rhapsody into an appreciation of what went on
around her. The adventure spirit came to the surface. Freda
Thorstad--sitting at a tidy table in a dining-car, on the way to her
husband. There was no disloyalty to Gregory’s illness that she could not
resist the enchantment of shining dishes which looked like silver and
warm and savory smells and smiling, interesting travelers, with above
and around it all the clatter and rush of the train, moving on to a
hundred destinations, a hundred tragedies and comedies and romances.
Her thoughts at least admitted no staleness as a possibility.
The meal stood out in her memory. She never forgot it. Tentatively she
ordered, tea, biscuits and lamb chops. When the lamb chops came they lay
on a platter with little sprigs of parsley offering them up and made her
very hungry. They looked delightful but inadequate. She ate hungrily,
for these last few days she had had little food.
Four--five--dragging hours. She bought a magazine with a flaring girl on
its cover and read avidly, her mind sinking into its soporific fiction
with weariness, getting respite from her own sharp and vivid thoughts.
The conductor came to tell her that this was her station. He lifted her
heavy bag for her and carried it to the foot of the steps of the coach.
Then came the excitement of the swoop and pause of the Flyer. Freda was
bundled aboard, hat awry, nervously watching for her bag, taken from her
hands by some one, porter or conductor. The curtains swung from all the
berths. The porter’s voice was low and lazy. He showed her to lower
six--a little cubby hole with curtains drawn aside, revealing the
delightful neatness of the berth. Freda knew even less of sleeping on
trains than she did of eating there. Awkwardly she managed to undress
and crept in between the thick white sheets. In the darkness she lay
awake, wondering. Wondering at the rush and sound and the mysteries
shrouded behind green swinging curtains. When the train shrieked a
signal or stopped lurchingly at some station she pushed up the curtain
beside her and, propped on her pillows, lay looking into the night
tasting the full delight of inexperience. At last she fell asleep and
dreamed of Gregory. It was a frightening dream. He did not know who she
was, did not remember her. Towards dawn she pushed her way out of it and
woke up to see the rain falling lightly over the even country and to
realize that she was begrimed with the coal dust and sticky with heat.
At noon she reached Fairmount and stood in the station looking about her
for information. The excitement of the last lap and approaching climax
of her journey overcame her fatigue and her eyes were brilliant. She
decided to take a taxi to the hospital and chose at random one from a
row of disheveled looking “For Hire” machines waiting for the daily
debouch of passengers from the Flyer. She climbed in with her bag and
closed the shaky door, and the driver started his motor. Freda’s heart
was racing. The cab could not go fast enough--nor slow enough. It seemed
to her as if she could not bear what might be waiting of joy or sorrow,
as if emotion was welling up so strong that it would burst its bounds
and overcome her. Through the dusty cab windows she saw Fairmount--ill
developed wooden houses with unhealthy looking trees giving little
shade--a business district of twelve or fifteen squares with all the
machinery of business being conducted as it was at this hour in hundreds
of other First National Banks and Gilt Edge Stores and Greek Restaurants
and brick office buildings. The cab whisked through it rapidly and came
to a section of broader streets where more impressive looking houses of
brick or stone appeared at leisurely intervals. A little park with a
dusty looking playground adjoining it. A row of apartments and there on
the corner where a “Silent Zone” sign, awry and disregarded by a group
of boys playing in the street made a vain appeal, was St. Agatha’s
Hospital.
Inside the little entry was an office with three or four glass windows,
behind which she looked for an informant. A slim, weary looking nun came
at last, looking at her from behind steel rimmed glasses without
curiosity.
“Macmillan--yes,” she said, “you’re--?”
“I’m his wife.”
The nun accepted the fact simply and as if she yielded Freda certain
rights and privileges. Freda felt frightened. She wanted to go into
Gregory’s room, kneel down by his bed and tell him to get well. She
could see it wasn’t going to be as direct as that.
A buzzing, muffled bell, sounded by the nun, had summoned a nurse, who
came into the office thumping heavily on her flat rubber-heeled shoes.
She was commissioned to take Freda to the last room in corridor “A”--the
“typhoid case.” Freda left her bag in the office and followed the nurse,
as she clumped indifferently along. The presence of the nurse bothered
her. She wanted to get rid of her--tell her she would go on alone but
she did not dare. In corridor “A” the nurse gave her a chair.
“I’ll find his nurse and see if you can see him now.”
“I’m his wife,” said Freda.
The nurse nodded.
“I’ll get the nurse first. She wouldn’t like me to bring any one in
without calling her first, you see.” She smiled a little as she
explained this convention of the hospital and her smile angered Freda.
It seemed an intrusion.
Gregory’s nurse came to her. She held out a friendly hand.
“I’m glad you’ve come. We’re doing our best but I was glad when the
doctor wrote you,” she said simply.
Something in her tone pricked the adventure spirit in Freda. It lay
flat, useless, a bit of torn balloon. She saw herself as this other
woman saw her--a wife, come in time of stress to a sick husband, not a
lover to a meeting. That was what she herself had colored her worry
with.
Panic seized her. She followed almost resistingly. The door, with its
printed “No Visitors” sign was opened softly. She had to accustom her
eyes to the darkness. A smell of disinfectants, clean and pungent, came
to her. There was the bed, white and high. She made her way towards it
falteringly. The head, bandaged for coolness, did not turn to her. It
was only when she stood by the bedside that it moved a little,
restlessly. He did not look real to her, not like himself.
“Gregory,” she said mechanically.
His fever-dulled eyes looked up at her--lighted. He made one motion
permeating his whole body as if he would rise in spite of the quickly
detaining hand of the nurse.
“Angel,” he said huskily, “you angel of God--Freda.”
The sound of his voice was a release. All her frightened feelings,
reassured, warmed into life, flooded Freda. She sank down by his side,
her head bent over the hot hand, which lay so impotent on the gray
blanket.