CHAPTER XIV

Fred was eager to impart to her man of business her wonderful discovery that visits to Payton Street should be made, not because of "duty," but because they were of value to the world.

"Your premises were wrong, but your deductions were correct," she instructed him, and he roared with laughter.

"Fred, you'll discover the Ten Commandments next. It's the same old result, only you call it by a different name. But go ahead; run the universe! I don't care what kind of oil you use, so long as the gears don't stick."

Mr. Weston's metaphors confessed the fact that he had achieved a motor so that he might go thirty miles for a cup of tea. He used to come out to the camp two or three times a week, and, shading his eyes from the magenta lamp-shade, and the frieze of Japanese fans, and the yellow "Votes for Women" flags, listen dreamily to Fred's theories for the running of the universe, and also to that paper on which she was so hard at work. She wanted his criticism, she said, but, of course, what she really wanted was his praise. She got it—meagerly, and with so many qualifications that, when all was said, it hardly seemed like praise at all. That he was doing his best to make her carry her little torch so that it might shed its glimmer of[Pg 161] light, yet not set things on fire, never occurred to her. If it had, she would have resented it hotly. As it was, his temperance never checked her vehemence, but neither did it irritate her. Her arrogant and shallow certainties, on the contrary, did occasionally irritate him, and, of course, they never brought him any conviction; but they did oblige him to be intellectually candid with himself, and his candor brought him to the point of telling her that he thought her generation better than his, because it was not afraid of Truth. "So, perhaps you women may save civilization," he said.

"Hooray!" said Fred.

"Hold on," he told her, dryly; "cheers are premature. What I mean is that feminism, with its hideously bad taste and its demand for Truth, is here, whether we like it or not! It may make the world over, or it may send us all on the rocks."

"Nonsense!"

"The hope in it is your brand-new sense of social responsibility. The menace is your conceited individualism."

"Of course you are not conceited yourself," she said, sweetly.

"I wish you wouldn't interrupt me! I concede that your sense of responsibility needs the tool of the ballot, just as a farmer needs a spade when he wants to raise a crop of potatoes. That is why I am compelled to call myself a suffragist."

"Hooray!" she said again.

He looked at her drolly. "It's queer about you—not[Pg 162] you, but your sex; you are mentally, but not emotionally, interesting. You are not nearly as charming as the ladies of my youth; you have no sense of proportion, and you jolt the life out of a man, by trying to jump the track the minute you get tired of the scenery. Also you are occasionally boring. But you can't help that; you are reformers."

"Are reformers bores?" she said.

"Always!" he declared.

"Why?"

"Because," he said, dryly, "they never suffer from any impediment in their speech."

Yet he was not so much bored that he stayed away from Lakeville. The place itself seemed to him entirely funny. Its very respectable population was made up of hardworking, good-naturedly vulgar folk, whose taste was painful or amusing, as you might happen to look at it. Once Fred made him stay to supper, and afterward go to a party with her and Laura—whose presence had been secured by judicious pressure upon Billy-boy. This especial festivity was called a "can-can" because the guests' idea of humor consisted in wearing a string of empty tin cans over their shoulders, with a resultant noise when they danced which gave, it seemed, a peculiar joy. Frederica's man of business, sitting on a bench with several gentlemen who mopped themselves breathlessly after their exertions and were obviously comfortable in their shirtsleeves, laughed until, he said, his sides ached.

"You like it, Fred?" he asked, incredulously—she and Laura had taken him home with them to give him [Pg 163]something cool to drink before he started on his midnight spin into town.

"Love it!" she said.

"Well," he said, "it seems to be a case of 'give me heaven for climate, but hell for company!' It would bore me to death."

They were on the little front porch of Sunrise Cottage—Laura lounging on the lowest step, looking up at the stars, and Arthur Weston sitting on the railing, sipping ginger-ale. Frederica, standing up, began to expatiate on the woman's club she had organized. After the first meeting she had turned it into a suffrage league, under the admiring eyes of ladies who whispered to each other that she was the Miss Payton—"you know? Society girl. Why, my husband says the Paytons could buy up every house in Lakeville and not know they'd put their hands in their pockets!" Fred had constant afternoon teas for these ladies—which would have been pleasanter if Flora, when waiting upon them, had been less haughty.

"She calls all our neighbors 'common people,'" Fred said.

Laura laughed: "Wait till we get the vote and we'll have equality, won't we, Fred?"

"You bet we will!"

"You won't," Weston assured them, "because there ain't no such thing. My dear infants, the Lord made us different, and no vote can change His arrangements."

"That's what Mother said; I was quite astonished to have Mother pull off an opinion on me," Fred said.

"Your mother has a great many opinions, and mighty sensible ones, too."

[Pg 164]

She gave him a surprised look, like a child catching an older person in a foolish statement. "Oh, well," she said, "of course, it's hard for people of your generation to keep up with the procession."

If he flinched, nobody saw it. "You being the 'procession,' I suppose?" he said, raising an amiable eyebrow—but he did not feel amiable. Then he looked at his watch and said he must start.

"Oh, don't go!" Fred entreated.

"You two girls ought to be in bed," he said. They went with him and watched him crank his machine; as he threw in the clutch, he called back, a little anxiously, "Make her loaf, Laura! She's tired."

Indoors, while they were locking up, Laura giggled. "He's daft about you, Freddy!"

"Mr. Weston? My dear, you're mad! He looks on me as a granddaughter."

"Those aunts or cousins, or whatever they are, of his," Laura said, sleepily, "are at the hotel, and I went with Mother to call on them. The old one, who looks like an eagle, is perfectly sweet; but the pouter-pigeon one said that she did not think the young woman of to-day, who went into business, 'was calculated to make any man happy.' 'Course, I knew she was afraid you would catch 'dear Arthur'! But really—"

"Come on," Fred interrupted, starting up-stairs.

Laura stumbled along behind her. "Really, I think he is gone on you."

"Goose!" The idea was too absurd to discuss; instead, when she was combing her hair Fred called through[Pg 165] the partition that separated the tiny bedrooms and said she wanted to tell Laura something.

"Come in!" Laura called back; and Frederica, comb in hand, came in, and sat on the edge of the bed. At first she talked about Flora, who didn't like to come out to the camp, because it took her away from her beau. "The McKnight chauffeur is very attentive," Fred said; "fortunately for me, Jack's going off with the car for all of August, or I'm afraid she'd leave me, so as to get back to town. Isn't it funny how crazy women in the lower classes are to get married?"

Laura nodded, sleepily.

"Want me to read you Howard's last letter?" Fred said, and took it out of the pocket of her kimono.

Laura, curled up on the bed, listened. "He's right," she said, when Frederica, with due carelessness, read Howard's panegyrics on her brains; "you are terribly clever, Freddy."

"Go off!" Fred said. "Laura, he's awfully down on Jack McKnight. You wouldn't look at him, would you?"

"At Jack? The idea! If there wasn't another man in the world, I wouldn't look at Jack."

"I want you to do something," Fred said.

"All right. What?"

"It will take nerve."

Laura opened her eyes quickly. "If it's another parade—"

"No! No! Nothing like that. Parades are only to show the strength of the attacking army. I want you to attack!"

[Pg 166]

Laura sighed. "But Father and Mother are so opposed—"

"This is something personal I want you to do."

Laura was obviously relieved.

"It's about Jack McKnight. When he proposes to you—"

"He won't."

"Don't be silly! He will if you let him. And I want you to let him. Then, when you turn him down, tell him why."

"Why? He'll know why! Because I'm not in love with him."

"I want you to tell him the reason you're not in love with him."

Laura, flushing to her temples, sat up in bed. "It's none of his business! Or,—or anybody's!"

"It is his business—to know that a decent woman won't look at a fast man!"

"Oh," Laura said, tumbling back on her pillow, "I didn't know you meant that. I thought you meant ... something else."

"That's what I'm up to," Frederica said. "I'm going to get all the girls I know to promise, not only that they won't play with dissipated fellows, but that they'll tell 'em straight out why they won't!"

Laura was silent.

"Truth!" Fred said, flinging up her head, her hair falling back over her shoulders, and her eyes bold and innocent. "Truth is what we want! If we can get this bill through the Legislature—'no marriage without a clean[Pg 167] bill of health'—we'll accomplish a lot for the sake of Truth. I wish you'd signed the petition, Laura. You believe in it?"

"Of course I believe in it. But imagine trying to make Mama understand it!—and Father would have had a fit."

"That's the trouble with women!" Fred said, passionately. "We've been too much afraid of men having fits. Let 'em have fits! It will be good for them. We've let them demand that we should be straight, and we've never had the sand to demand that they should be straight, too. But we're going to do it now. We are going to demand Truth! Oh," she said, tears suddenly standing in her eyes, "just plain truth, between men and women, nothing more than that,—would make the world over!"

Laura sighed and shook her head. "As for playing only with the straight ones, I don't see how we can know? It doesn't seem fair not to dance with a man just because some other girl tells you she's heard something—you'd always hear it from a girl."

"General reputation," Fred began; but still Laura hesitated.

"Well, then, when we do know it of ourselves, let's hold together and turn 'em down. Everybody knows Jack drinks. I've seen him when he was pretty well loaded," Fred said, her lip drooping with disgust. "He's crazy about you, Laura; give him a leg up by telling him why you wouldn't look at him!"

"Oh, Freddy, really—"

[Pg 168]

"This is what I'm going to work for," Frederica said, "to teach women to teach men! It's our job, because women are more intelligent than men."

"I don't think Mother is more intelligent than Father," Laura demurred.

Fred swallowed her opinion of the collective Childses' intelligence; "I've thought it all out," she said; "I'm going to give my life up to urging women to set the pace! And we've both of us got to marry men who will join our crusade."

"They won't," Laura prophesied; then added, with sudden, frowning decision: "anyhow, so far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to marry anybody."

Fred gave her a quick look. "Why?"

"Well, I don't want to."

"Of course, marriage generally hampers a woman," Frederica conceded. "Perhaps because most of us are tied down to the old idea that it's got to be permanent,—which might be a dreadful bore! I suppose that's a hold-over from the time that we were chattels, and men taught us to feel that marriage was permanent—for us! They didn't bother much with permanence for themselves! But I admit that marriage—as men have made it, entirely for their own comfort and convenience, with its drudgery of looking after children—is stunting to women. Queer, though, how they don't mind it! Look at the girls we know—Rose Marks and Mary Morton, and the rest of our class who are married—they haven't a thought above their babies and their owners—they call 'em 'husbands'! Did you know Rose has resigned from the[Pg 169] league? She says she hasn't time to attend the meetings; but I know better. It's because that perfectly piffling Marks man (how could she marry him?—he has no nose, to speak of, and such a silly chin!) doesn't approve of us. I suppose you think it's better for a woman not to marry if she really wants to accomplish anything?"

"Well, no; not just that. Men marry, and yet they accomplish things," Laura said.

Frederica frowned. The suggestion of a fundamental difference in men and women annoyed her. "Of course, it doesn't follow that a woman stands still when she marries. If she and the man are in absolute sympathy, intellectually, she needn't vegetate. For my part, I expect to marry,—I want children. But I shall go on with my work. I consider my work of more importance than putting babies to sleep!"

"Everybody can't afford to have somebody put their babies to sleep for them," Laura objected.

"Fortunately I can! I shall have a trained nurse. When a child is well, a trained nurse is every bit as good as a mother. And when it is ill, she's better."

"Suppose your husband doesn't think so?"

"Then he won't be my husband! But I sha'n't run any such risk! I shall marry a man who absolutely agrees with me in everything."

"Maybe he'd like you to agree with him."

"I will, after I've pulled him up to my level," Fred said, grinning.

"I suppose Mr. Howard Ferguson Maitland doesn't need any pulling up?" her cousin said, softly.

[Pg 170]

Fred's face burned red. "My dear, he is not the only pebble on the beach!"

"He gets home in November," Laura said. "Freddy, it's nearly one, and I'm perfectly dead with sleep!"

Frederica laughed and got up; then hesitated. There was a little droop in Laura's face that she didn't like. "Lolly," she said, "you're bothered. Is it—Jack?"

"Darn Jack!" Laura said. "I loathe him."

"Good girl!" Fred said, with a relieved look. "You scared the stuffing out of me for a minute!"

"You needn't be worried," Laura told her, dryly. "Jack has not played with my young affections. Oh, no; I'm cut out for an old maid! I'm not clever like you."

Frederica, in genuine relief from that moment of anxiety, was betrayed into reassuring truth-telling: "Mother says men don't like clever women."

"If Aunt Bessie could hear H. M. talk about you she'd change her mind."

Fred threw an impulsive arm about her and kissed her. "Oh, Laura!" she said. Laura laughed, and kissed her back again, and said if she didn't get out she'd fall asleep in her arms.

But when Fred, blushing like any ordinary girl, had left her to those deferred slumbers, Laura Childs lay awake a long time....

Frederica, alone in her tiny room, had a very sober minute. As she thought it over, Laura's "loathing" did not seem quite convincing. "She's got something on her chest," Fred said. Even when they were little girls she had loved her cousin more than any one in the world, and[Pg 171] to have Laura depressed disturbed her sharply. "Can it be Jack?" she asked herself. "I wish Payton or Bobby would kick him!" That she should hand the infliction of such chastisement over to a brother showed that Fred could revert to the type she despised. But she was so troubled about Lolly that she almost forgot her satisfaction in being told—what she already knew!—that Howard appreciated her cleverness.