CHAPTER XVII

As things turned out, Flora might have seen her "friend" in Payton Street Friday night, had devotion prompted him to call, for the festivity at the camp was postponed for three days. The morning mail brought Frederica a brief line from Howard Maitland; he had found, he said, after he left her office, that he had to run on to Philadelphia. Back Monday morning. If her invitation held good, he'd come out to Lakeville for supper Monday night. The letter ended with some scratched-out words, which looked like, "I may have something to tell you—" The obliterated line made her glow! But the delay was disappointing. Three whole days before she could hear that "something" he wanted to tell her—and she wanted to hear! Well, it would give her more time to fix things up in the cottage. With this in view, she and Zip and Flora went out to Lakeville Sunday morning, and Fred had a silent day to keep an eye on the dusting, and work on her suffrage paper, and jolly Flora, whose plaintive dullness was beginning to be rather trying.

"You must brace up, Flora," she said; "you haven't half dusted the legs of the table! I don't want Mr. Maitland to think we are not good housekeepers, just because we are 'New Women,' you and I!" But Flora did not[Pg 190] brighten. She had telephoned the "reg'ler invitation to the movies" before leaving Payton Street, but the "friend" had only said (she told Frederica) "he'd see 'bout it. He'll write to me, and I'll git it Monday," she said. But it was evident that she had very little hope of an acceptance.

All that pleasant, hazy Sunday Frederica followed the old, old example of her grandmother, the cave-dweller, and decked her little shelter. She went into the woods and brought back an armful of maple leaves and, with Flora's melancholy assistance, fastened them against the walls and over the doors, hiding, to some extent, the frieze of fans and the yellow pennons of the Cause. She even took down the muslin curtains and washed and ironed them herself, and put them up again, crisp and dainty. The little room bloomed with her joy. When she sat down to "polish" her article she kept jumping up every few minutes to move a bowl of flowers, or put an extra book on the mantelpiece.

"I wonder," she thought, "if he can read the titles from that morris chair?" She had decided in what chair he was to sit. She tried the visual possibilities of the chair herself and, by screwing up her eyes, found she could just make out the appallingly learned names on the backs of some of the books. "That will show him what I'm up to!" she said.

It was the old Life Purpose—the eternal invitation! The bird preens itself, the flower pours its perfume, the girl's cheek curves like a shell. A man can almost always see the beckoning of that rosy curve, or of a little curl nestling at the back of a white neck, or of soft, shy eyes;[Pg 191] for so, in all the ages, Life has invited. But it has never beckoned with a German treatise!

Frederica, giving Zip a lump of sugar and making a solitary cup of tea for herself, did not know that she was beckoning....

When, at five o'clock, a motor came chugging along the road, and Arthur Weston opened the door and demanded tea, he, at least, felt the invitation—which was not for him. The white curtains, the open piano, the warmth and fragrance and pleasantness, and, most of all, Frederica, sitting on a little stool by the fire, her face sparkling with welcome. Everything was beckoning!

Standing up, warming his hands at the fire while Fred ran out to the kitchen to make fresh tea for him, the caller read the names of the books lined up in a row between the lighted candles on the mantelpiece, and whistled.

"Is this your light reading?" he said, as she came back with the cream-pitcher. "For Heaven's sake, lay in some funny papers for the simple male mind!" Then he pulled Zip's ears, took his tea, and said he wished he could ever get enough sugar.

"I saw Maitland on Thursday," he said, reaching for another lump.

"Yes, he is on deck," Fred said.

Her man of business made a hopeless, laughing gesture, as if he gave up trying to solve a puzzle. "Are they engaged, or aren't they?" he said to himself. Her way of speaking of the cub was certainly as indifferent as it well could be! "But that doesn't prove anything," he thought, drearily.

[Pg 192]

He stayed a long time; he had a feeling that his call was a sort of last chapter. "In about a week I'll get one of those confounded engagement letters," he told himself. He settled down in the morris chair—the chair in which Howard was to sit the next evening—and started her talking. He did not need to make any replies. Once Frederica "got going" on her own affairs he could watch her in lazy, tender silence.... How soon it would be over—this watching and listening! How soon his plaything would be transformed into a happy, self-absorbed, quite uninteresting wife and mother! For Fred Maitland, he was cynically aware, would cease to interest him, because she would cease to be preposterous; she would be normal. Of course Fred Payton would always be a darling memory; she would never leave his heart. His heart ached at the thought of its own emptiness if he should try to turn Fred Payton out just because Fred Maitland was another man's wife. No, he would not even try to forget his wild, sweet, silly Freddy! She should always remain as, back somewhere in his memory, Kate remained, dark-browed and cruel. The Kate of to-day, whose presence in his heart would be an impropriety, was not even an individual to him! But the old Kate was his. He wondered if Fred would ever become as vague to him as Mrs. Kate——.... "What is her name! Oh, yes—Bailey. When I heard she'd married him, I didn't sleep for two nights; and now I can hardly remember his name! 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them—' ... Fred, almost all the houses out here are boarded up. I only saw a light in one house."

[Pg 193]

"I was telling you of the woman's movement in Sweden," she said, affronted.

"I'd like to see a woman's movement back to town from this cottage! You really ought not to be out here at night, just you and Flora. That one house which is open will be closed pretty soon, I suppose?"

"To-morrow," she teased him. "And Flora and I are such fragile flowers, it's dreadful to think of our losing the protection of Mr. and Mrs. Monks! He is a paralytic, and she weighs two hundred and twenty-five pounds."

"You'll move in town to-morrow, won't you?" he said, really disturbed.

She had to admit that she expected to. "Not that I'm nervous, but Howard Maitland is coming here to supper to-morrow night, and I'm going to make him take us back in his car because I've got such a lot of stuff to carry home."

"Oh," he said, blankly. "He's coming out to supper?" He stared into the fire for a while; then he got on his feet. "I must start," he said, and stood looking down at her. "Fred," he said, suddenly—in the uncertain firelight his face seemed to quiver—"you're a good fellow. And if your husband, when you get him, isn't the finest thing that ever happened, I'll punch his head!"

His voice was so moved that she, sitting on her little stool, close to the hearth, looked up at him, quickly. "Why, he's fond of me!" she thought. Her own deep experience made her heart open into generous acceptance of any human affection. She jumped up and put both[Pg 194] impulsive hands into his. "You are the dearest friend I have!" she said; then hesitated, laughed—and kissed him.

Her lips against his cheek were softly cool, like the touch of flowers. Nothing that she had ever said or done removed her more completely from the possibility of passion. He was able, however, to make a grandfatherly rejoinder to the effect that he had dandled her on his knee when she was a brat—which was not strictly true, for he had had no inclination to dandle the gawky fourteen-year-old Freddy Payton on knees that were bent before the cruel Kate. He put a friendly—but shrinking—hand on her shoulder as she went with him to the front door, and a minute later waved good night from his car. As he drove home in a bothering white fog from the lake, he was very unhappy. "It hurts more than I supposed it could," he told himself. "I don't like this kind of 'amusement!' Damn it, I wish she hadn't kissed me."

As for Frederica, going back into the cottage, her eyes were very kind. "He's an old dear to bother with me; I'm awfully fond of him." Then she forgot him. "Twenty-four hours more," she was thinking, "and Howard will be here!" Twenty-four hours seemed a long time! She was glad when the moment came to blow out the candles and look into the other room to say good night; ("only twenty hours now!").

Flora, at the kitchen table, was listlessly shuffling a pack of cards by the light of a little kerosene-lamp; as Fred entered, she dropped her head in her hands and sighed. Frederica sighed, too. "I suppose I've got to[Pg 195] cheer her up," she thought, resignedly. "What's the matter?" she said, kindly.

"Nothin'."

"Come in the other room and I'll play for you."

Flora shook a dreary head. Fred, with a shrug of impatience, sat down at the other end of the table. The fire in the stove was out and the kitchen was cold and damp; except for the lisping wash of the lake and the faint fall of Flora's cards, everything was very still. Fred watched the cards for a moment without speaking, then abruptly brushed them all aside and clapped her warm young hand on Flora's thin wrist. The movement made the lamp flicker, and on the opposite wall two shadowy heads nodded at each other.

"Now, Flora," she said, "we'll have this out! What is the matter?"

"I tell you, Miss Freddy, there ain't nothin' the matter."

"There is! You're awfully depressed."

"I'm used to that."

"But why? Come now, you've got to tell me!"

Flora dropped her head on her arms and began to cry.

"Flora! Flora! What shall I do with you? You are so silly!"

The woman sat up and wiped her eyes. The little hysterical outburst evidently relieved her; she smiled, though her lips still trembled. "I was tellin' my fortune to see what kind of a letter I'd git to-morrow mornin' from my friend about goin' to the movies. I like 'em, but 'pears he ain't stuck on 'em. An'—an', I'm bettin' he'll say he[Pg 196] won't go. The cards make out I ain't goin' to have no luck."

"Nonsense! You've got too much sense to believe in cards."

"Miss Freddy, Mr. Maitland'll think the house real pretty the way you fixed up them leaves. Some of 'em is as handsome as if they was hand-painted!"

Fred preserved a grave face, and said yes, the leaves were lovely.

"An' he's comin' out to-morrow night?" Flora said, nodding her head. "Well, I guess you're happy." Her opaque black eyes gleamed with unshed tears. Frederica, rising, put an impulsive arm around her; Flora suddenly sobbed on her shoulder.

"Is it because your beau has been unkind?" Fred said. She used Flora's own vernacular.

"I 'ain't never had a real beau. Oh, well, I don't care! I'm glad you got a beau, anyhow."

"I don't know that I have," Fred said, smiling. "But you'll get one some day." Under her friendly words was a good-natured contempt—Flora was so anxious for a "beau"!

"An' your gentleman'll come out here to-morrow night," Flora repeated,—it was as if she turned the knife in her own wound; "an' you and him'll set in the living-room. And you'll talk. And he'll talk. An' he'll ... kiss you."

"Oh," Fred said, laughing, "Mr. Maitland and I are not interested in that kind of thing! We are trying to give women the vote, and to make the world better—that's what we are going to talk about. And, Flora, remember,[Pg 197] you've got to give us an awfully good supper! Come, now! you're tired. You really must go to bed."

She laid a gently compelling hand on the frail shoulder, and Flora, sighing miserably, took the lamp from its bracket and followed Miss Freddy up-stairs to the cubby-hole under the roof where she slept.