Chapter XIII: Life Entrusted

I

Freda worked until noon the next day. Saturday was a half holiday with the employees of the firm so there was no question of her remaining in the office longer. All morning she worked steadily, almost absorbedly. It was as if she held her ecstasy off from her, unwilling to even think about it yet.

She had spent the night before, after the lecture to which she went alone, in writing a letter to her father. It was a long intimate letter, telling of the kind of work she was doing, the way she was living and of what she was thinking. She wrote as if she were talking to him, on and on, and her ending was like the conclusion of a talk, as if she asked for his blessing. “So you see, father dear, I’m all right. And I want you to know that I never forget what you’ve said to me--that I must live so that I’ll never be ashamed of having had life entrusted to me.”

She was really not afraid at all. Her demurring had been only the mechanical reactions of conventions which sat lightly on her. In her heart she knew that she was at home with Gregory and that the completeness of their mutual understanding could mean only that they belonged together. Gregory, like her father, reassured her. In the midst of his impetuousness, his driving thinking, she felt the purity without which he could not have been quite so free. She felt his kindness too, and the gentleness of his hands. He was like her father, she thought. Her father had perhaps had the glory of adventure in him too once, but it had been made submissive to circumstance. It had left its residue of understanding. She felt very sure that when he knew he would be glad.

Physically her fine fearlessness and eager nerves kept her from any reaction, or from any of the terrors, real or assumed, which women have come to believe right and modest at the approach of marriage. And minor faults of Gregory she never paused to consider. It would not have occurred to her that it was a fitting time to look for them. Little problems, living difficulties troubled her serene health not at all. She would have been ashamed to measure them up against her love. The latent spirit of adventure in her, her fine romantic training, taken from books and preserved because of her limited knowledge of people, were like winds blowing her on to the heart of her romance.

With all this strength and surety, this Ali Baba’s cave of beauty to explore, it was yet characteristic of her that she could work. She had been in the office four days and already her place was made. It was easy to see that she was intelligently competent and to know that her efficiency was not a matter of making a first impression. They all liked her and she already was beginning to lighten work for various people.

Flandon was not at the office at all on Saturday. He called up in the course of the morning and speaking briefly to Freda told her to tell Mr. Sable that he was going out of town over the week-end and would be back for the hearing of the Kraker case on Monday morning. That made it easier for Freda. She had a little fear that there might have been some extra duty for her on this Saturday afternoon which would wreck the golden plans. So at noon she put her desk in order--she was beginning to feel her proprietorship in a desk now--and went back to her room to get her bag, packed the night before.

She had meant to leave a note for Miss Duffield, but by chance she met her on the stairs. Margaret looked at the bag and made her own quick deduction.

“Going home for the week-end?”

“I’ll be back Monday,” said Freda, feeling rather rotten as she let Margaret’s misunderstanding pass.

But she forgot about that. She forgot everything as she went out in the street full of May sunshine and ran for the street-car which would take her to the railway station. There, in the noon crowd, she put her bag between her feet and hung on to the strap above her head, unable to keep the smile from her face any longer.

Gregory was there waiting for her. And at the first word he spoke, his spirit of exalted happiness carried Freda up into the heights. He had a word of endearment for her and then with her bag and his held in one hand, he managed with the other to hold her close to his side and they went to find their train.

There was an empty seat. That was the first piece of luck, when the train already looked impossibly full of men and women and families, setting out with baggage which overflowed from the seats to the aisles. But there was the seat, at the end of the coach, undiscovered yet, or perhaps miraculously set apart for them--made invisible to other searchers--its red plush surface cleanly brushed for the journey and a streak of sunlight like a benison across the back of it.

Freda slipped in beside the window and, placing their baggage in the little rack, with a touch that was almost reverent for Freda’s bag, Gregory sat down beside her.

“We have an hour and forty minutes,” he declared, “and look, my darling.” He took out of his pocket a tiny white box, but, as she stretched her hand, he put it away again.

“You mustn’t see it. Not yet. But I wanted you to know I had it. It’s the most divine circlet of gold you ever saw. The halo of my wife.”

His voice was very soft and tender, the contact of his body against hers caressing.

A boy went by with sandwiches. They surprised each other by regarding him intently and then it occurred to Freda why they did so.

“Did you forget lunch too?” she cried.

So they lunched on ham sandwiches and Peters’ milk chocolate and water in sanitary paper cups and the train creaked into action, joltingly, as befitted a day coach in a local train.

Little stations twinkled by with sudden life and between them lay fields and valleys where life pushed quietly to the sun. They watched the villages with tenderness. Each one unexplored was a regret. There were so many things to be happy with. A child came running up to get a drink of water and leaned on the edge of their seat, staring at them curiously. They liked that. It seemed as if the child guessed their riot of joy and peace.

They had found that it was necessary for the haste of their marriage to go over the borderline of the state, a matter of forty miles. And they alighted in a little town of which they knew nothing. It was impressive as they looked about. Straight neat roads led away from the red roofed station.

“I’d like to walk into the country,” said Freda.

“So we shall. But first we must be married.”

He left her in the parlor of the little hotel while he went to find the justice of the peace. In half an hour he was back, exultant.

“Nothing dares to hamper us,” he declared. “Now, beloved.”

So they were married, in the little bare office of the justice of the peace, with a clerk from the court called in to witness that they were made man and wife by law. Gregory slipped the “circlet of gold” on the finger of his wife and as he made answers to the questions put to him, his eyes were on Freda as if he spoke to her alone, as if to her alone was he making this pledge of faith and loyalty and love. Freda did not look at him. For the moment she was fulfilling her pledge to life and Gregory was its instrument.

Then they were out again in the sunlight, choked with emotion, silent. Vaguely they walked back to the hotel. It was mid-afternoon.

“Shall we stay at the hotel?” asked Gregory.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Only it would be nicer in the country, wouldn’t it?”

“There should be inns,” said Gregory, frowning for the first time that day as he looked at the square, ugly, frame building which was before them, a knot of curious loafers on the porch. “In Ireland we have inns. They’re somehow different.”

“I truly don’t care where we are,” smiled Freda and for that his eyes glanced down to hers with admiration.

None the less he went to inspect the little rooms of the hotel and came down depressed.

“I don’t want you to go up there, darling. Let’s see if there isn’t some other place.”

The hotel keeper, clerk and manager, reflected on the inquiry which Gregory tried to make polite.

“Of course there’s the Roadside Inn if you’re looking for style. Five miles out. Jitney take you there.”

“I know that place,” said Freda, “That’s lovely, Gregory. Oh, I think you’d like it. Only it may be noisy. They dance there at night.”

The proprietor misunderstood.

“So far as dancing goes here we dance here till midnight too,” he said, full of pride.

Gregory laughed.

“Well, sir, we think we’d like to be in the country to-day. We’ll try the inn you so kindly speak of.”

The jitney ride gave them further sense of adventure and when they stopped in front of the little inn with its quiet air and its stiff little flowerbeds aglow with red geraniums, they were enchanted. Their room pleased them too. A little low-ceilinged room with bright chintzes and painted furniture and a casement window that stood a little open. The colored man who played the fiddle at night, carried up their bags. When he had left them, Gregory kissed his wife.

Ten minutes later they went down the brown road where the dust lay soft under their feet. White birches and young elders all fresh and green with early summer foliage surrounded them. Then from the road a little trodden path slipped back into the woods.

“Shall we try it?”

The woods closed behind them. The little path led a faltering way between trees where long streams of sunlight fell. Under their feet grass rustled. Branches leaned to touch them. All the woods seemed to know that lovers were passing and whispered tremulously.

Gregory heard the whispers and turned to the girl at his side. Each heart heard the other as he stopped to hold her in his embrace until they grew faint with joy.

“I love you, Freda,” said the man, ever restless.

Freda smiled at him. It was all she could do. Demonstrations of love were new to her. She was unbent, ready for caresses but not yet quite responsive except in the fine clarity of her mind. It was Gregory who must stop to bring her hand to his lips, to hold her against him for a silent moment.

The woods grew thinner.

“Ah, look,” cried Freda, “the enchanted woods end in a farmhouse yard!” She was standing on a little knoll and beneath them could be seen the farmhouse and its buildings, a group of children, perhaps the very ones who had trodden the path on their daily way to school.

“I like it,” said Gregory. “It’s love bending into life. Don’t you like to see it from here--like a pastoral picture? Children, kittens, the thin woman going to carry the scraps to the chickens. See, Freda--isn’t life beautiful?” Freda saw it through his poet’s vision for a moment. It was truly beautiful--the group held together by the common interest of procreation and maintenance--but she saw that more beautiful still were the eyes of Gregory. She had a sudden feeling that she must never dim his vision. Whatever might come she must protect that vision even though, as now, she might see that the farm below was full of signs of neglect and that the children quarreled.

They turned back and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and he took off her hat and stroked her hair gently as she lay against his arm. They did not talk much. Incomplete little phrases in constant reiteration of their own happiness. Those were all.

The dusk came early and damply in the woods. They went back to the Inn, a little chilled, and Freda brushed her hair into neatness and went down to meet her husband in the dining-room. It was a strange and familiar feeling to see him standing by the door waiting for her. They were very hungry and talkative now. With the darkness outside, intimacy pressed closer upon them and they were shy of it, deliciously shy, enticing it closer to them by their evasion of it.

So after their dinner they sat in the little guest parlor of the Inn and watched each other, talking about irrelevancies until the whiz of a motor outside made Freda start.

“You know, Gregory, I’d sooner go upstairs. I know some of the people who sometimes come here. I’d rather not see them to-night.”

“Yes, darling.”

In their bed-room the muslin curtains were tugging at their sashes, trying to pull themselves free. A breeze of thick soft coolness came through the room. Freda felt as if her heart would burst with very wonder. Life to be known so deeply--so soon. And, as was strange and frequent with her she lost the sense of everything except Life, a strange mystery, a strange progress, of which she was an inevitable part, spreading about her, caressing her, absorbing her. She was not thinking of Gregory, until he came, knocking so absurdly, so humbly on the fragile door that her mind leapt into sudden pity, and personal love.

“You are like a white taper before the altar of love,” breathed Gregory.

Around them in the soft darkness the breeze played lightly. Beneath was the sound of dance music, of occasional laughter. They heard nothing to distress them in their complete isolation. Only when the music became tender, falling into the languorous delicacy of a waltz it added witchery to their rapture.

II

In the morning it was Gregory who was the practical one--Freda the mystic. Her mind was filled with mystery and dulled with the pervading sense of her husband. He was inconceivably more to her than he had been. She was infinitely rich with thought and revelation and too languorous to think. Gregory overwhelmed her. In his spirited tenderness, declaring her the miracle bride of the world, talking an unending poem of love to her, he was active now--she dreamy and spent. He brought her breakfast and sat beside her while she ate it. And suddenly it became clear to them that their time was slipping quickly by.

It had been the plan to return to the city that night but they found it impossible to leave each other.

“If we rose with the dawn, we could motor back,” said Gregory, “and I could take the train of abomination that is bearing me somewhere or other into a barren country and you could be rid of me for a little. Oh, my darling, the eternity of the next weeks!”

“The eternity that will come after!” she said smiling.

So they decided to spend another night in the little inn. There were several other guests there but they had a feeling of owning the place. The lean, colored waiter in the dining-room smiled at them and their absorption, and gave them the attention he usually reserved for those too drunk to tip wisely. The chambermaid found pins for a forgetful Freda and smirked at her as she gave them, with full knowledge of the honeymoon. Even the manager on being told they would stay another night, smiled.

Every one smiled. They went for a long walk in the evening and a carter gave them a ride back to the inn. What was that but the charm of luck which was upon them?

It was Sunday night but though there was no dancing, people dropped in on motoring parties, ready to be warmed by hot suppers before they took the last stretch of the ride back to the city. And it was as Freda was going upstairs, still in that rapt absorption which had held her day that one of the incomers saw her and stopped still in amazement. She was in profile before him, her head held high and she was turning the curve of the stairs, walking slowly.

The observer walked up to the desk and spoke to the manager who sat making out bills behind it. There was no visible register, though his eyes cast about for one.

“Who was the lady who was going upstairs?” he asked unwisely.

His manner did not recommend him.

“A lady who is stopping here,” said the Swedish lady with some hostility, affronted by the casual question of this young gay fellow. She had observed Freda and was unlikely to give out information to young loafers.

“I thought I knew her.” Ted Smillie tried to get on firmer ground.

His interlocutor seemed to grunt in dubiousness.

He gave it up and went into the dining-room, trying to find out more from the waiter. But the waiter was not too free. He had not been in a roadhouse inn three years without learning a kind of discretion.

“Lady and her husbun’, suh. Several couples here. Couldn’t make sure, suh.”

But Ted knew whom he had seen. He knew there had been no mistake. After all, except for a flare of jealousy, even that not too keen in his increasingly tasteless emotions, he would have felt that the man did not matter. But if she was that kind, why on earth had she turned him down? That would be his reasoning. And, flavoring the whole, that vitiated detective instinct which makes gossips of little minded men, was interested, and he was anxious to tell his story. He did not choose the two men with whom he was supping for confidants. He managed to get one of them to ask to see the register, just on the chance that it might throw light on Freda’s companion. But it did not help him. A party of young men and women had sprawled twenty or thirty names on the register last night. Ted did not know them and where that party began or ended he could not tell. There was not a recorded name familiar to him for the last three days. He went back to the city with his friends and the Roadside Inn grew quiet.

Freda and Gregory could not sleep. There seemed a million new thoughts in the mind of each of them, contending with the few hours they were to be together.

“I can’t bear to have morning come--and the end--” said Freda softly. She was more dependent now.

“Say the word and I’ll cancel the contracts.”

“You couldn’t. You know you said there’d be a forfeit. We’d be paying your bureau the rest of our lives. No--you must go. And I’ll be happy. But when you come back you’ll never go again. I’ll be no modern woman, I feel. I’ll be the sort of woman who cries when her husband goes to work.”

It was delightful nonsense.

“I don’t understand modern woman,” said Gregory, “you’re not modern. Modern is fashionable--that’s the most of it. You are eternal, darling. You only happen once in a thousand years and then only in the dream of a poet. I hate your modern woman, living by her little codebook of what she shall give and what she shall not give--what children she will bear, what income she must have--who shall earn it. One can’t measure life that way. It’s got to be measured by freedom or slavery. Either you’re free and brave, ready to sound depths of life if they’re worth sounding or you’re a slave and too cowardly to do anything but obey the rules.”

She did not answer. She was in no mood for discussion.