Chapter IX: Work for Freda

I

It was on that morning that Gage Flandon made his last appeal to his wife not to let herself be named as a candidate for Chicago at the State Convention. He had been somewhat grim since the district convention. As Margaret had realized would happen, certain men had approached him, thinking to please him by sounding the rumor about sending his wife to the National Convention. Many of them felt and Gage knew they felt that he had started, or arranged to have started, a rumor that his wife would be a candidate and that he meant to capitalize the entrance of women into politics by placing his own wife at the head of the woman’s group in the State. It was a natural enough conclusion and its very naturalness made Gage burn with a slow, violent anger that was becoming an obsession. It began of course with the revolt against that suspicion of baseness that he could capitalize the position of his wife--that he could use a relation, which was to him so sacred, to strengthen his own position. Yet, when these men came with their flattery he could not cry down Helen without seeming to insult her. There was only one way, he saw, and that was for Helen herself to withdraw. If she did not, it was clear that she would be sent.

So he had besought and seemed to always beseech her with the wrong arguments. He knew he had said trite things, things about women staying out of politics, the unsuitability of her nature for such things, but he had felt their triteness infused with such painful conviction in his own mind that it continually amazed him to see how little response he awoke in her.

She had said to him, “You exaggerate it so, Gage. Why make such a mountain out of a molehole? I’m not going to neglect you or the children. I’ll probably not be elected anyhow. But why not regard it as a privilege and an honor and let me try?”

“But why do you want to try?”

She looked as if she too were trying vainly to make him understand.

“I’d like to do something myself, Gage--something as myself.”

“You were content without politics two months ago.”

“I’ve changed--why begrudge me my enthusiasm?”

“Because I can’t bear to see you a waster like the rest of the women. Because you’re so different. Everything about you is true and sound, dear, and when you start deliberately using yourself for political effect, don’t you see how you become untrue? There’s nothing in it, I tell you. The whole thing’s cut and dried. There’s no big issue. If the women want to send some one, let them choose some other figurehead!”

He had not meant it so but of course he seemed disparaging her.

“Perhaps,” she said rather frigidly, “perhaps I’ll not be such a figurehead as you think.”

“But I didn’t mean to say that to hurt you.”

“I’m not sure what you do mean. It seems to me we’re actually childish. You’ve chosen, quite deliberately, to be a reactionary in all this woman’s progress movement. I’m sorry. But there is a loyalty one has to women, Gage, beside the loyalty one has to a husband and I really cannot share your prejudice against progress, as it applies to women.”

The unexpressed things in Gage’s mind fairly tore at him.

“If you really had one sensible objection, Gage--”

“There’s just one objection,” he said, doggedly, “you desecrate yourself. Not by entering politics particularly. But by using yourself that way. You mutilate your sex.”

She did not get angry. But she put one hand on his shoulder and they looked at each other helplessly.

“Don’t you see,” said Helen, “that I want, like these other women, to once in a while do something that’s clean of sex? That’s just me--without sex?”

His eyes grew very hard. She struck almost mortally at the very thing he loved most. And he moved away, as if to remove himself definitely.

“I’m sorry you feel so. It’s a pleasant remark for a man’s wife to fling at him.”

Irony was so unusual in Gage that Helen stood looking after him after he went out of the room. Her mind ached with the struggle, ached from the assertion of this new determination of hers. Never had she wanted so to give him comfort and be comforted herself. She saw the weeks ahead--weeks of estrangement--possibly a permanent estrangement. Yet she knew she would go on. It wasn’t just wanting to go on. She had to go on. There was a principle involved even if he could not see it. Clearer and clearer she had seen her necessity in these past two weeks. She had to waken her own individuality. She had to live to herself alone for a little. She had to begin to build defences against sex.

Gage was right. Margaret had sown the seed in his wife. Helen had not watched her for nothing. She had seen the way that Margaret made no concessions to herself as a woman, fiercely as she was working for the establishment of woman’s position. It seemed paradoxical but there it was. If you were truly to work for woman’s welfare you had to abandon all the cushions of woman’s protected position, thought Helen--you couldn’t rest back on either wifehood or motherhood. You couldn’t be lazy. You had to make yourself fully yourself.

Here was her chance. She hadn’t wanted it but they had insisted. The women wanted her to go to Chicago--not because she was Mrs. Flandon but because she was Helen Flandon, herself. A little quiver of delight ran through Helen as she thought of it. She would see it through. Gage would surely not persist in his feeling. Surely he would change. He would be glad when she proved more than just his wife.

She had a strange feeling of having doffed all the years which had passed since she had left college, a feeling of youth and energy which had often dominated her then but which had changed in the seven years of her marriage. Since her marriage she had walked only with Gage and the children--shared life with them very completely. Now it was not that she cared less for them (she kept making that very clear to herself) but there was none the less a new independence and new vigor about her. She felt with them but she felt without them too.

It hurt her that Gage should feel so injured. But her exhilaration was greater even than the hurt, because she could not sound the depths of her husband’s suffering.

Gage went out of the house with no more words. He managed to focus his mind on the work of the day which was before him but the basic feeling of pain and anger persisted.

In the middle of the morning Helen called him, reminding him of his promise to see if Freda Thorstad could be placed. She ignored, as she had a way of doing, any difference between them.

“Are you going to drag that child in too?” he asked, ungraciously, and then conscious of his unfairness for he knew quite well that the object was to place Freda so she could earn her own living, he capitulated.

“Drummond gets back this afternoon. Send Miss Thorstad in about four and I’ll take her to see him.”

“You’re a dear, Gage,” Helen rang off.

Gage tried to figure out whether something had been put over him or not. There he let it go and sat in at the club with a chosen crowd before lunch. It pleased him immensely to see Harry Harris stuck for the lunch. He kidded him, his great laugh rising and falling.

II

At four Freda came and at her, “You’re sure I’m not too early, Mr. Flandon?” Gage felt further ashamed of his ungraciousness. Freda was a little pale, after her difficult night, and it made her rather more attractive than ever to Gage. He thought she might be worrying over the chance of getting the new work and was eager to make it easy for her.

“So you want to get into politics like all the rest?” he asked, but smilingly.

“I want some work to do,” said Freda, “I’d just as soon do anything else. But I really will have to work or go back to Mohawk and there isn’t anything for me to do in Mohawk. I don’t much care what I do, to tell you the truth, Mr. Flandon, so it is work. And I’ve a theory that I might be better at washing windows than doing anything else.”

“This isn’t much of a job, you know.”

“Probably it’s all I could handle. I’m really a little nervous. Will they ask for all kinds of qualifications?”

“There’s no ‘they’ There’s only one man and I think all he is looking for is some one who is discreet and pleasant and can do ordinary secretarial work.”

“I’m going to learn typewriting evenings,” said Freda.

It was so pleasant to be free from controversial conversation, or from conversation which glossed over controversy that Gage found himself feeling much warmer and more cheerful than he had for days. Together they walked over to the office of the man who had the district chairmanship. Mr. Drummond was embarrassed. Clearly he was embarrassed by the necessity of refusing a favor Flandon asked. But he was put to it.

They left the office and at the street corner Freda stopped and held out her hand.

“Pretty lucky for them that young Whitelaw got there first, I fancy.”

“Have you something else in mind?”

“I’ll try to find something. Maybe I can get a place as somebody’s companion. Or maybe Miss Duffield will know--”

A tight little line came around Gage’s mouth. He didn’t want Margaret Duffield running this girl. His dislike was becoming an obsession.

“I wonder,” he said slowly, “if you’d like to come into my office. I could use another clerk, as a matter of fact. I’m away a great deal and I find that since my assistant has been handling more law work he is too busy to do things around the office--handling clients, sorting correspondence and such things. The ordinary stenographer just messes up everything except a sheet of carbon paper, and the last good one I had got married, of course. There wouldn’t be much in it--maybe sixty a month, say--but if you’d like to try--”

Freda looked at him straightly.

“If you’re just trying to find a job for me, I’d rather not, Mr. Flandon.”

He liked that, and gave her back honesty.

“Of course I would like to see you fixed. I thought this other thing would work out better. But in all seriousness I could use another clerk in my office and I’ve been wondering whom I could get. What do you say to trying it for a month--”

“Let me try it for two weeks and then if I fail, fire me then. Only you’ll surely fire me if I don’t earn my money?”

“Surely.”

III

Gage went home that night more cheerful than he had been for some time. He had a mischievous sensation of having rescued a brand from Margaret Duffield. At dinner Helen asked him if he had attended to Freda’s case.

“Drummond had other arrangements already.”

“What a shame,” she said, “I wonder where we can place that girl. She is too good to go back and do nothing in Mohawk. And she really wants to earn money badly.”

“I placed her,” said Gage, hugging his mischief to himself.

“You did? Where?”

“I took her into my office.”

Helen looked at him in surprise.

“You know that she can’t typewrite?”

“I know. But I can use her. She has a good head and--a nice influence. I think I’ll like to have her around. Since she has to work she’d be better there than grubbing in politics.”

“As if your office wasn’t full of politics!”

“Well they’re not Duffield-politics.”

“Whatever you mean by that is obscure,” said Helen, “but don’t eat the child’s head off, will you?”