CHAPTER XVIII

The next day it rained and the little house was dark and damp. Across the sodden beach-grass Fred and Flora could see the fat woman in the next bungalow moving her trunks and her paralyzed husband back to town; when they had gone, the owner of the bungalow came to give a look around and see how much damage his tenants had done. Then he closed the shutters and boarded up the front door. By noon the sound of his hammering ceased, and the shore, with its huddle of cottages, was entirely deserted. The only human sign was the wisp of smoke from Fred's chimney. All the morning it rained heavily. At ten o'clock Flora put on her things and walked nearly a mile to the post-office. She came back soaking-wet, and empty-handed.

"Didn't he write?" Fred asked, cheerfully.

Flora shook a forlorn head. But when she had had a cup of tea there was a rally of hope. "Them postmen! They're always losin' letters. I shouldn't wonder if my friend's letter was stickin' in a mail-box, somewheres."

"Very likely!" Fred said. She really didn't know what she said; her joyous preoccupation was only aware of Time—"six hours more, and he'll be here!" At noon the rain ceased and the fog crept in. Some yellow[Pg 199] leaves blew up on the porch; a squirrel ran down the chestnut-tree at the corner of the cottage, lifted an alert tail, looked about, then ran up again. After that everything was still.

The lake was smothered in a woolly whiteness that muffled even the lapping of the waves. It muffled one's mind, Frederica thought. She wished she had something to do—housework or anything! "I haven't the brains to work on my article; I'm only intelligent enough to be domestic!" But there was nothing domestic to be done; everything was swept and garnished. She tried to read; she tried to write; said "darn it!" to both book and pen, then got up to walk about and stare out of the window into the wetness. At last, in desperation, she put on her things, called Zip, and went out into the mist to tramp for an hour under the dripping branches. When they came back, Zip horribly muddy, Fred was as fresh as a rain-wet rose, and full of the joy of living. "Only four hours now!"

In the kitchen she wiped Zippy's reluctant paws, and told Flora, who was sitting motionless, her hands idle in her lap, to hang her sou'wester up to dry. "Now, Flora, come to life!" she said. "If you come into the living-room I'll play for you."

Flora shook her head. "There ain't no use listenin' to music. There ain't no use in anything. You get up in the morning and button your boots. Well, you gotta do it the next day," Flora said, with staring eyes, "an' the next. An' the next. What's the use? There's no use." But after serving her young lady with a somewhat sketchy[Pg 200] luncheon, she did go into the other room, and after helping to start the dying fire, crouched on the floor, her head against the piano, and listened to Fred's friendly drumming.

"Trouble with you," said Frederica, looking down at the crouching figure, "is that you've nothing to do that you care awfully about doing."

Flora was silent, and by and by Fred forgot her, for, velvet-footed, through the fog, the hour when Howard should arrive came nearer, and her own life grew so vivid that the moping brown woman ceased to exist for her—except, indeed, for momentary pangs of fear that Flora would make some blunder—roast the duck a minute too long, or forget to put pieces of orange on the sizzling breast just before serving it!

He had said he would come at five. But it was nearly six before she heard the car panting in the road. She opened the door, and, holding a candle above her head, told him he needn't expect anything so swell as a garage. "Just run her up under that big chestnut!" Then she put the candle down on the porch, and went out to help him lift the top, for the moisture was dripping like rain from the branches.

"But the fog is clearing," she said, with satisfaction. She did not add that she had been anxious at the idea of his poking back on the wood road in the thick mist. Such concern was an absolutely new sensation to Frederica. She had never in all her life felt anxious about anybody!

The top up, they went into the fire-lit room, warm and fragrant and comfortable, with the candles burning on the[Pg 201] mantelpiece on either side of the learned books. The supper was a great success. Flora had "come to life," and the duck was perfect; indeed, she even brightened, for an instant, under Mr. Maitland's appreciation: "Flora, I take off my hat to that duck. You are a bully cook!"

"She is!" Fred said, heartily. But Flora's face gloomed again.

"Bully!" Howard repeated. His vocabulary was never very large, and hunger made it smaller than usual. He was, however, able to tell Fred that he had missed Laura in Philadelphia.

"Strikes me she's gadding about a good deal; she's gone to Boston. What's the clue?"

"Just a good time. Lolly is rather young still, you know," Fred excused her. Howard made no comment, and she had an uncomfortable feeling that he did not appreciate Laura. "I pretty nearly went with her, myself!" she declared, boldly. She wasn't going to have even Howard think Laura was frivolous! "She's the sweetest thing going," she said.

"You bet she is," Howard agreed, and began to talk about shells.

When they had finished the last scrap of dessert, the young man put what was left of his beer on the mantelpiece, and, his pipe drawing well, stood up with his back to the fire, and told her about the pearl he had found.

"I want to show it to you," he said; and, digging it up out of his pocket, dropped it into her extended hand. "I'm going to have it set in a—a ring," he explained, as it lay, round and shimmering, in Fred's palm. "Of course,[Pg 202] I could buy a bigger one, and more perfect. But there's a kind of association in a pearl you pick up yourself—don't you think?"

"Of course there is!"

"Put it there, on your finger, and let's see how it looks," he said, his head on one side, his eyes anxious. She balanced it as well as she could on the back of her hand, then returned it to him hurriedly. "Pretty good?" he said.

"Fine!" she assured him. Then, resolutely, changed the subject; there must be no talk about rings—yet!

Howard, a little disappointed at her indifference, put the pearl, in its wisp of tissue-paper, into his pocket, and listened to the outpouring of her plans for the winter work of the league. In the midst of it, he kicked the logs together in the fireplace, and, sitting down, smoked comfortably. Once he said that one of her arguments was bully, and once he called her attention to the way the sparks marched and countermarched in the soot on the chimney back; "I used to call 'em 'soldiers' when I was a kid."

"I meant to read you my paper," Fred was saying, "but I guess it will keep. Let's talk. Howard, Laura and I are going to get all the girls we know to take a stand—this is a pretty serious thing!—against playing around with men we know are dissipated. The idea grew out of this bill we're trying to get before the Legislature."

"Good work!" he said, lazily, and leaned forward to knock the ashes out of his pipe. Zip yawned and curled up on the skirt of Freddy's dress. It was a warm, domestic scene, full of peaceful certainties.

[Pg 203]

"You see," she said, "women are facing facts, nowadays. They believe in freedom, but they believe most of all in Truth. There'll be no more hiding behind a lot of conventions! That is what has held us back. We have as much right to say what we—feel, as men. Don't you think so?" Her voice was a little breathless.

Howard, looking dreamily at the "soldiers," said, absently, "You bet you have!"

"I want to tell you just what we're up to about turning down the rotten fellows," Fred said. "I want to talk it out with you and get your advice. But not now, because—because there are other things I want to say. But sometime."

"Any time! I've just been laying for a jaw with you, Fred. I don't know any other woman I can talk to just as I can to a man!"

At that, she couldn't help a little proud movement of her head, and to hide her pride she stooped down and stroked Zippy; as she did so the firelight fell on her face, smiling, and quivering a little. Her good gray eyes brimmed with joy. "Yes, we are pretty good friends," she said.

"You see," he said, "you understand! Why, those letters of yours—I can't tell you what they meant to me!" He paused and laughed: "That reminds me. I told Leighton—you know the man I wrote to you about?"

"The anti man?"

"Yes; Tommy Leighton—"

"I'll send him a bunch of literature—if he has any kind of mind?"

[Pg 204]

"Oh, well; so-so. He's an anti, so what can you expect? I told him that you had the finest mind of any woman I had ever met. I told him that mighty few men could talk back to you—" He paused to fumble about in his pocket for his tobacco-pouch. "Laura gave me that," he interpolated; "Leighton said—"

She leaned forward and laid her hand on his arm; the suddenness of her grip made him drop the little pouch, and as he stooped to pick it up, she said:

"I've missed you—awfully."

He did not see that she was trembling. He put the pouch in his pocket and retorted, gaily:

"I bet you haven't missed me as much as I've missed you!"

"I've missed you," she said, in a whisper, "more!"

Howard Maitland stopped midway in a breath. But instantly the thought that leaped into his mind vanished in shame. He actually blushed with consternation at his own caddishness. He tried to say, again, something about her letters—but she was not listening; she was saying, calmly:

"You see—I love you."

He was dumb. His brain whirled. He said to himself that he hadn't understood her—of course he hadn't understood her! What had she said? Good Lord! what had she said? Of course she didn't mean—what you might think! She only meant—friendship. If he let her know what, for just one gasping moment he had thought she meant, somebody ought to kick him! But the shock of her words brought him to his feet. She rose, too, and[Pg 205] stood smiling at him. "Of course," he began, "we are—you are—I mean, I don't know what I would have done without your let—"

"I love you," she said. She held out both her hands—"will you marry me, Howard?"

He had it, then, between the eyes. His boyish stumbling ceased. He caught her hands in his.

"Fred," he began—a door banged in the kitchen and they both started, "Fred," he said, again—his throat was dry, and he stopped to swallow. Instinctively she was drawing away from him; the smiling offer was still in her eyes, but a frightened look lay behind it. He did not try to hold the withdrawing hands.

"Fred, I care for you so much—" He was white with pain. Frederica was silent. "I care for you so terribly, I—I have to be—straight. I never thought—" She made a gesture, and he stopped.

"It's all right. I understand. You needn't go on."

"Fred! Look here—I care for you more than I can tell you. You are—you are simply stunning; but—"

She laughed: "Cut it out, Howard; cut it out! I understand."

"You don't!" he said, greatly agitated; "you can't understand how—how I appreciate—I shall never forget—"

She motioned him back to his chair, and dropped into her own. "You needn't worry about me. I've made a mistake, that's all. Many a man has done the same thing and lived through it. I assure you I sha'n't pine!"

She was very pale, but smiling finely. He sat down.[Pg 206] His confusion was agonizing. He was trying to think how he could tell her what she meant to him; how he respected, admired—yes, loved her! Only not—not just in the way she meant. He tried to say this, then stopped, realizing, dazed as he was, that his explanations only made things worse.

"I am not worthy of the friendship of a woman as noble as you are!"

"Oh, nonsense! Let's talk of important things."

"No, but listen," he entreated, with emotion. "You won't turn me down? You're the best friend I have—we won't stop being friends?"

"You'll 'be a brother to me'?" she quoted; it was her only bitter word; and she covered it with a laugh. "'Course we are pals, always! Howard, I want to tell you what I accomplished here this summer. And oh, by the way, did you give 'Aunty Leighton' the pamphlet on the New Zealand situation?" She pulled Zip up on her lap, and teased him, kissing him between his eyes, and squeezing his little nose in her hand.

Howard said, as casually as his breath permitted, that Tommy Leighton was a fine chap—"but no mind, you know. One of those people you can't argue with on any really serious subject like suffrage. Opinions all run into molds. Can't bend 'em." Now that he had got started talking, he couldn't stop; he talked faster and faster; he told her everything he had ever heard or surmised about Mr. Leighton; "his ideas belong to the dark ages—"

"Believes in sex slavery, I suppose?" Fred interposed.

"Exactly! I—I guess I'd better be getting along," he[Pg 207] said, with a sort of gasp. Her instant acquiescence, in springing to her feet, was at once a relief and a stab.

"Would you mind," she said, easily, "putting a basket into your tonneau and leaving it at our house? Flora and I will have such a lot of things to carry in town to-morrow."

As she spoke, she was listening with satisfaction to her own voice—calm, matter-of-fact, friendly.

He said he would be delighted to take the basket—"or anything else! Load me up, and I'll deliver the goods in Payton Street to-night!"

"Oh, no; it's too late," she said, laughing; "but if you'll take it around in the morning—"

"Of course I will; delighted!"

"I'll tell Flora to take it out to the car," she said; and went into the kitchen: "Flo—" she began, and stopped. The kitchen was empty. "Flora!" she called, looking at the unwashed dishes in the sink, and at Flora's untasted supper set out on the kitchen table in the midst of a clutter of cards. She said a single distracted word under her breath; went to the foot of the stairs and called up to the little cell under the eaves.... No answer. She ran up and looked into each room.... No Flora.

"She seems to have vanished," she said, coming into the living-room with a puzzled look. "She isn't in the house. Do you suppose she can be wandering about in the woods at this time of the night?" In her own mind, frantic at Howard's delayed departure, she was saying to herself: "I'll die if I don't get rid of him! I could kill Flora!" She sat down again by the fire, and said that[Pg 208] she was bothered about Zippy's eyes; that made a momentary diversion. Howard examined the little dog's eyes and said they were all right; then made desultory remarks about dogs in China. He was trying, wildly, to find something—anything!—to say. Both were listening intently for Flora's step. "I'll see if I can find her now," Frederica said.

He followed her into the empty kitchen. "Bird flown?" he said. He, too, was pleased to find he could speak so casually. Frederica opened the back door and strained her eyes into the mist.

"It's awfully funny," she said; "why should she go out into the fog? Flora!" she called loudly—and they held their breaths for an answering voice. But there was only the muffled lapping of the waves and an occasional drop falling from the big tree. They went back to the living-room, and looked at each other, blankly.

"Can she have started to walk into town?" he asked.

"Thirty miles? Howard, I am sort of worried about her! Do you remember? the door slammed, and—" she stopped short, remembering just when she had heard that slamming door. "Do you think she can have been ill, and gone out to one of the other houses for help? No," she corrected herself. "She knows every house in Lakeville is closed!"

Again she ran up-stairs, calling and looking; then they both went out on the back porch, and called.

Again the lake answered them, lapping—lapping.