CHAPTER VII

At the jar of the banging door, Andy Payton's hat moved slightly on the hat-rack, and something snarled at the head of the stairs.

"It's nothing, Morty—only sister," a motherly voice said; and Miss Carter leaned over the baluster:

"I'm just bringing him down to his supper; he's a little nervous this evening."

"Oh," Fred said, shortly; "well, wait till I get out of the way, please." She stepped into the unlighted parlor, and stood there in the darkness, between the piano and the bust of Mr. Andrew Payton; as she waited, her hand fell on the open keyboard, and she struck a jangling chord. "Flora has been playing on the sly," she thought; "poor old Flora!" Then for a moment her fingers were rigid on the keys—the scrabbling procession was passing through the hall down to the room where Mortimore's food was given to him. When the door closed behind him she drew a breath of relief. She never looked at her brother when she could avoid it. As she went up-stairs she paused on the landing to call out, "Hello, Mother!"

Mrs. Payton answered from the sitting-room: "Don't you want some tea, dear?"

[Pg 83]

Frederica hesitated; she didn't want any tea, but—"I suppose it pleases her," she thought, resignedly; and went into the pleasant, fire-lit room, with its bubbling teakettle and fragrance of Roman hyacinths blooming on the window-sills. "Finished your puzzle?" she asked, good-naturedly.

Mrs. Payton, grateful for a little interest, said: "No; I've been doing up Christmas presents most of the afternoon. I'm pretty tired! Tying all those ribbons is dreadfully hard work," she ended, with an air of achievement that was pathetic or ridiculous, as one might happen to look at it. Her daughter, glancing at the array of white packages tied with gay ribbons, did not see the pathos. That slightly supercilious droop of the lip which always made Mrs. Payton draw back into herself, showed Fred's opinion of the "hard work"; but she only said, laconically:

"Mr. Weston took me to call on the old maids. No, I don't want any tea, thank you."

"You oughtn't to call them 'old maids'; it isn't respectful."

"It's what they are—at least, the younger one is. The other one is very nice. But they are both of 'em of the vintage of 1830."

Mrs. Payton was sufficiently acquainted with her daughter's picturesque, but limited, vocabulary to know what "vintage" meant, so she said: "Oh, no; they are not so old as that. I don't think Miss Graham is much over seventy."

"I waked Miss Mary up!" Frederica said, joyfully.

[Pg 84]

"I am sorry for that," Mrs. Payton sighed.

Fred shrugged her shoulders. "Grandmother will tattle,—yes, she was there; deaf as a post, and all dolled up like a plush horse;—so I suppose I might as well tell you just what happened." She told it, lightly enough. "Old Weston threw fits in the taxi, coming home," she ended.

"I should think he might! Freddy, really—"

Her daughter looked at her with narrowing but not unkind eyes. "I wish I knew why people fuss so over nothing," she said.

Mrs. Payton put her empty cup back on the tray with a despairing sigh: "If you can't see the impropriety—"

"Oh, of course, I see what you call 'impropriety'; what I don't see is why you call it 'improper.' What constitutes impropriety? The fact that, as Grandmother says, 'it isn't done'? I could mention a lot of things that are done, that I would call improper! Wearing nasty false fronts, as Grandmother does, and silly tight shoes. A thing is true, or it's a lie. That distinction is worth while. But what you call 'impropriety' isn't worth bothering about."

"Truth and falsehood are not the only distinctions in the world. Things are fitting, or—not."

"Howard and I talked, in an empty flat," Fred said; "I suppose if it had been in our parlor, with the Egyptian virgin out in the hall chaperoning us, it would have been 'fitting'?"

Mrs. Payton wiped her eyes. "There's no use discussing anything with you. When I was a young lady, if my mother had reproved—"

[Pg 85]

Fred made a discouraged gesture: "Oh, don't let's go back to the dark ages. As for Howard—I'll see him at my office, if it makes you any happier."

"Why can't he call on you in your own house? You cheapen yourself by—"

"Mother, there's no use! I couldn't stand it. Mortimore—"

"Frederica!"

Mrs. Payton's gesture of command was inescapable. Involuntarily Fred's lips closed; when her mother spoke to her in that tone, the childish habit of obedience asserted itself. But it was only for a moment:

"Of course you don't mind him," she said; "you are fond of him. But you can't expect me to feel as you do." She drew in her breath with a shiver of disgust.

"I love you both just the same!" Mrs. Payton said, emphatically.

Frederica was not listening. "Oh, by the way," she said, "I've heard of a little bungalow, at that camp place, Lakeville—you know?—that I can rent for twenty-five dollars a month. I'm going to hire it for next summer—rather ahead of time, but somebody might grab it. I want to have a place to go, when I have two or three days off. I hope you'll come out sometimes. And—and Miss Carter can bring Morty," she ended, with generous intention.

Mrs. Payton was silent. She was saying to herself, despairingly, "She's jealous!"

"Well, I must go and dress," Frederica said, and got herself out of the room, acutely conscious of her mother's averted face. "'Cheapening' myself—how silly!" she[Pg 86] thought, as she closed her own door. When she took her cigarette-case out of her pocket, Miss Graham's words came into her mind and she smiled; but she lighted a cigarette and, standing before her mirror, practised knocking off the ashes. Was it this way? Was it that way? How does the "kid boy" do it? She tried a dozen ways; but she could not remember the entirely unconscious gesture which had pleased Howard Maitland. "How funny and old-fashioned old Miss Graham was! But quite sweet," she thought. It occurred to her, as she took out her hair-pins, that Miss Graham's antiquated ideas did not irritate her, and her mother's did. For a moment she pondered this old puzzle of humanity: "Why are members of your family more provoking than outsiders?" After all, Miss Graham, with her "roses," was just as irrational as Mrs. Payton with her fuss about propriety and "cheapness"—or Arthur Weston, gassing about "relations which are not markedly intellectual." She was angry at him, but that phrase made her giggle. She sat down on the edge of her bed, her brush in her hand, her hair hanging about her shoulders; it had been very interesting, that "cheap" and entirely "intellectual" hour alone with Howard in the darkening flat....

She put her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and smiled. Of course she knew what her mother, and Mr. Weston—"poor old boy!"—and her grandmother, and the Misses Graham all had in the back of their minds. "Idiots" she said, good-naturedly. If they could have heard the plain, straight, man-to-man talk in the empty apartment, they would have discovered that nowadays men and[Pg 87] girls are not interested in those unintellectual relations at which her man of business had hinted. She remembered Howard's look when he said he would rather talk to her than to any man he knew—and she lifted her head proudly! No girly-girly compliment could have pleased her as that did. It was just as she had always said, the right kind of man knows that a woman wants him to talk horse sense to her, not gush. If the tabbies, and Mr. Weston, and her mother had heard that talk, they wouldn't worry about sentiment! Suddenly, she recalled that strange feeling she had had below her breastbone as she looked at Howard sprawling in the arm-chair. She remembered her curious impulse to touch him, and the rosy warmth that seemed to go all over her, like a wave; she thought of that pang of pleasure when his hand crushed hers so that the seal ring had cut into the flesh and hurt her. "I wonder—?" she said; and bit her lip. Then her face reddened sharply; she flung her head up like a wild creature who feels the grip of the trap.

Love?

For an instant she felt something like fright. "Of course not! He's just a bully fellow, and I like him. Nothing more; I don't—" She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and the image held her eye. The vivid, smiling face, a little thin, with the color hot, just now, on the high cheek-bones; dark, wavy hair, falling back from a charming brow which, pathetically enough (for she was only twenty-five), had lines in it. "Heavens!" she said, "I believe I do!" She laughed, and, jumping to her feet, shook the mane of hair over her eyes. But before she began to[Pg 88] brush it she lifted the hand Howard Maitland had gripped, and kissed it hard, once—twice!

"I do—care," she said; "I didn't know it was like this!" She glowed all over. "I am in love," she repeated, amazed.

While she tumbled the soft, dark hair into a loose knot on the top of her head she tried to whistle, but her lips were unsteady. She did not know herself with this quiver all through her, and the sudden stinging in her eyes, and something swelling and tightening in her throat. She forgot the shocked old maids, and the disgusted trustee. She was in love! She began to sing, but broke off at a faint knock.

"Dinner's ready, Miss Freddy."

"Come in, Flora," Frederica called out; "and hook me up." She smiled so gaily at the silent creature, not even scolding when the slim, cold finger-tips touched her warm shoulder, that the woman smiled a little, too. "I thought this was your afternoon out?" Fred said, kindly.

"I 'ain't got no place in partic'lar to go. Anyway, I knew your ma wasn't goin' to be in, and—"

"I bet you played on the piano," Frederica said, smiling at herself in the glass.

"Well, yes'm, I did," the woman confessed. "I picked out the whole of 'Rock of Ages.'"

"Flora! Don't look so low-spirited; I believe you're in love. Have you got a new beau? I've been told that people are always low-spirited when they're in love."

Flora simpered; "Ah, now, Miss Freddy!"

"Come! Who is he? You've got to tell me!"

"Well, Mr. Baker's got a new man on. That there snide[Pg 89] Arnold's been bounced. Good riddance! He never did 'mount to nothing. Me, I'm sorry for the girl he married; she'll just slave and git no wages. That's what marryin' Arnold'll do for her!"

"That's what marrying any man does for a woman," Miss Payton instructed her; "a wife is a slave."

But Flora's face had softened into abject sentimentality. "This here new man, Sam, he's something like. Light, he is; and freckled." Then her face fell: "Anne says he's got a girl on the Hill. Don't make no difference to me, anyhow. It's music I want. If I was young, I'd git an education, and go to one of them conservmatories and learn to play on the piano."

"I'll give you some lessons, one of these days," Fred promised her, good-naturedly. "Poor old Flora," she said to herself, as the maid, like a fragile brown shadow, slipped out of the room. "'He's got a girl on the Hill'! I wonder how I'd feel if Howard had 'a girl on the Hill'?" Again the tremor ran through her; she could not have said whether it was pain or bliss. "I certainly must teach Flora her notes," she said, trying to get back to the commonplace. Then she forgot Flora, and, bending forward, looked at herself in the glass for a long moment. "I'll get that hat at Louise's," she said, turning out the gas; "it's the smartest thing I've struck in many moons."