Chapter XXIII: Respite

Freda was trying to mend a blouse. Her unskillful fingers pricked themselves and it was obvious that even her laborious efforts could do little to make the waist presentable. Its frayed cuffs were beyond repairing. However, it would do until they got to Mohawk and she could get the clothes which she had there. She had not written her mother to send her anything. Nor had she spent any of the money the Flandons had sent for such luxuries as new clothes. She had been uplifted when that check for a thousand dollars--not for six hundred--had slipped out of the envelope with Mrs. Flandon’s kind, congratulatory letter. Gregory’s three hundred had been put back in his purse and then, as it gradually came over her impractical mind that such a sum was totally inadequate to their need she had told him that she had some money of her own--a little reserve which had been sent to her. Naturally he had assumed her father had sent it and later she thought she would tell him that it was a debt they had assumed and make arrangements for paying it. Not now. He must not worry now about the money. She looked across the room at him--their shabby little hotel room, with its lace curtains pinned back for air and the shaky table desk dragged up before the window. He had not been quite fit enough to travel when they left the hospital, and she had insisted that he must try his strength before they made the journey to Mohawk, the first lap on the way back to Ireland. How eager he was to be off now--how impossible it was to check him! She forgot the blouse and sat looking at him, sitting there unconscious of her regard. His profile was outlined against the blank window opening, still so thin, and yet so restored.

“It’s getting dark. You ought to stop now, Gregory. You’ll be worn out.”

He did not hear her. That was one of the things she had found out could happen. Especially since this lot of mail had been forwarded from his bureau, letters full of such terrible news for him from Ireland. His friends were in prison--were killed. Devastation was spreading.

She rose, with a new air of maturity and crossed to him.

“It’s growing late.” This time she came behind his chair and bent her cheek to his.

He moved absently.

“Yes, sweetheart--I’ll be soon through. I was writing to Larry’s widow, poor girl. There seemed so much to say.”

“I know, but you must stop.” She used the appeal she had already learned to use when he was bound to tax his fragile strength. “You’ll never get back there unless you rest more.”

“Oh, yes I will. And when I do get back--how I’m going to start some things in motion. It will be a terrible swift motion too. I’ve lost a sad amount of time.”

Freda laughed and he looked at her. It was a laugh of pure amusement, and so contagious that he joined her, jumping up from the letter to kiss her.

“No--you laughing rogue--not time lost in winning my bride. Mocker.”

Freda held him at arms length teasingly.

“I have you for a minute now, haven’t I?”

“You always have me. You don’t mind, darling, that they need me? You wouldn’t--not share it with me?”

“Of course I share it. And I know I have you--when you remember me.”

He buried his lips in her hair and then drew her to his knees.

“Sweetheart, if you could know how they suffer--when you see--”

She composed herself to listen, knowing how it would be. He would hold her close like this and tighter and tighter his arms would feel as he explained and related. Then, in his excitement, he would loose her and leave her, gently, while he paced up and down the room and forgot the tenants in the next room and herself and everything in his impassioned oratory.

So he was. That was Gregory. When he put her down she turned on the light and picked up her sewing. It was not that she did not listen willingly. She did. If she could not kindle in his flame she was warmed in the glow of it. She too had come to care. Perhaps when they reached Ireland and she saw for herself she would kindle too--she rather hoped so.

He stopped talking and his mind, relaxed, shot back to her.

“Do you feel well to-night, darling?”

“Of course. I’m the most indomitably healthy person you ever knew. I can’t help it.”

“You’re so sweetly healthy that I keep forgetting to take care of you.”

She tossed the blouse from her restlessly and stretched her long arms back of her head to make a cushion.

“It doesn’t bother me when you forget,” she told him. “I’m very glad that it doesn’t, too. I’m glad I haven’t begun marriage by learning habits of dependency. I think we’re rather lucky, Greg. Being us, as we are, with a two day wedding trip and a crowning episode of typhoid and now a baby and an Irish question ahead of us, we’ve learned how to stand alone. Mind our own business instead of crowding into each other’s, you know.”

He did not know. A great deal of modern difficulty and problem making had slipped by him. “You are an obscure young person,” he told her, “and most divinely beautiful. I am going to get Francis Hart to paint you--like that, with your head thrown back. I want a hundred paintings of you just to compare with you, so that I can show that no painting can be as lovely as you are.”

* * * * *

They spent a week in Mohawk and because Gregory found that Mr. Thorstad knew Irish history with unexpected profundity and sympathy he was content to spend much time with his father-in-law. They met on many points, in the simplicity of their minds, the way they wound their thoughts around simple philosophies instead of allowing the skeins of thought to tangle--in the uncorrupted and untempted goodness of them both and their fine appreciation of freedom--the freedom which in Mr. Thorstad had bade his daughter seek life and in Gregory had tried to unloose the rigors of Margaret Duffield. Gregory did not talk so much to Mrs. Thorstad. He was apt, in the midst of some flight of hers, to look a little bewildered and then become inattentive. She, however, took it for genius. The chastening which she had suffered after that mistake of blackening Gregory’s name in connection with Margaret had still some effect. She was anxious to wipe that error out and to that end she worked very hard to establish the fame and name of Gregory. His books were spread over the library table and she had already, in characteristic method, started a book of clippings about him.

She spent a good deal of time with Freda. Freda was rather more gentle than she had been, and interested honestly in many of the details of child bearing that her mother dragged up from her memory on being questioned. If Mrs. Thorstad felt disappointment in Freda, she tried very honestly to conceal it but now and again there cropped out an involuntary trace of the superiority which she as a modern woman was bound to feel over a daughter who took so little interest in the progress of politics and listened so much to her husband’s talk. She spoke of it once only and most tactfully.

“You must be careful not to be a reactionary, my dear. You are going from the land of freedom and the land in which women are rising to every dignity, to a country which may be--of course is bound to be--comparatively unenlightened. I hope indeed that you have your children. Two--or even three children--are very desirable. But you must not forget that every woman owes a duty to herself in development and in keeping abreast of the times which may not be neglected. I don’t want to hurt you, dear. Of course I myself am perhaps a little exceptional in the breadth of my outlook. But it is not personal ambition. It is for the sex. Did I tell you that Mrs. Flandon talked to me when she saw me in St. Pierre about doing much of the state organizing for the Republican women? She says she needs some of my organizing ability. I shall help her of course. In fact I hope I may be able to prevail upon your father to apply for a position at the University in St. Pierre. I feel we have rather outgrown Mohawk.”

“But, mother, that means an instructorship again for father, and it’s a step backward.”

“Not exactly that. Think of the advantages of living in the city--the cultural advantages. And there is a great field open in municipal politics. I have some strong friends there--and one gentleman--an editor--even went so far as to say there might be a demand for me in public life in St. Pierre, if I established residence there.”

“It would be pretty rough on father to pull up stakes here--”

The hint came again.

“My dear child, you must not be a reactionary. I do not like to see you start out your married life with the idea of subordinating your life as an individual to a husband, no matter how beloved he may be. It is not wise and it is not necessary. Look back over our life. Have I ever for one moment failed in my duty towards the home or towards my husband or child and has it not been possible at the same time for me to keep progress before me always and to remember that the modern woman owes it to herself to go out of the home and keep abreast with the times?”

But it was not a question. It was a statement. Freda made no reply and her mother changed the subject with the satisfied air of the sower of seed.

“When you come to Ireland,” she told her father laughingly that night, “you will sit on the doorstep and learn to smoke a pipe. And Gregory will be president of the Republic. And I will be--(ask mother)--a model housewife, chasing the pigs--”

They laughed with an abandonment which indicated some joke deeper than the banality about the pigs.

“It’s a worthy task,” said her father. “I’ll come--and I’ll enjoy learning to smoke a pipe and see Gregory run the government--and as for you--whatever you do you’ll be doing it with spirit.”

She nodded.

“I’ve just begun to break my trail.”

Then the day came when they must leave the little frame house and after the excitement of getting extremely long railway tickets at the station and checking all Freda’s luggage through to New York, they said good-by to the Thorstads and left them standing together, incongruous even in their farewells to their daughter.

They were to stop at St. Pierre over night. Mrs. Flandon had written to urge them to do so and Freda would not have refused, if she had been inclined to, bearing the sense of her obligation to them. She had not told her father of that. It amused her to think that her father and Gregory each felt the other responsible for those Fortunatus strings of railway ticket. But she wanted Gregory to meet the Flandons again that the debt might be more explainable later on.

St. Pierre was familiar this time when they entered it in mid-afternoon as she had on that first arrival with her mother. It was pleasant to see Mrs. Flandon again and to taste just for a moment the comfortable luxury of the Flandon house. Freda felt in Mrs. Flandon a warmth of friendliness which made it easy to speak of the money and assure her of Gregory’s ability to pay it a little later.

“You’re not to bother,” said Helen, “until you’re quite ready. We were more glad to send it than I can tell you. It’s a hostage to fortune for us.”

Then she changed the subject quickly.

“I wonder if you’ll mind that I asked a few people for dinner to-night. You married a celebrity and you want to get used to it. So many people were interested in the news item about your marriage and wanted to meet Gregory and you. I warned them not to dress so that’s all right.”

“It’s very nice,” said Freda, “I’ll enjoy it and I think--though I never dare to speak for Gregory--that he will too. I remember having a beautiful time at dinner here before. When I was here visiting the Brownleys you asked me--do you remember?”

“I asked the Brownleys to-night. They were in town--all but Allie. I asked the elder two and Bob and her young man--Ted Smillie, you know.”

She looked at Freda a little quizzically and Freda looked back, wondering how much she knew.

“Think they’ll want to meet me?” she asked straight-forwardly.

“I do, very much. I think it’s better, Freda, just to put an end to any silly talk. It may not matter to you but you know I liked your father so much and it occurred to me that it might matter to him if any untrue gossip were not killed. And it’s so very easy to kill it.”

“You take a great deal of trouble for me,” protested Freda.

Helen hesitated. She was on the verge of greater confidence and decided against it.

“Let me do as I please then, will you?” she said smilingly and Freda agreed.

Helen felt a little dishonest about it. The dinner was another hostage to fortune. It was gathering up the loose ends neatly--it was brushing out of sight bits of unsightly thought--establishing a basis which would enable her later to do other things.

She had an idea that it would please Gage, though he had been non-committal when she had broached the idea of having Gregory and his wife for a brief visit. Helen had seen but little of Gage of late. She knew he was working hard and badly worried about money. They had sold a piece of property to raise that thousand for the Macmillans and he had told her definitely of bad times ahead for him. She offered to reduce the expenses of the household and he had agreed in the necessity. They must shave every expense. But it invigorated Helen. She had amends to make to Gage and the more practical the form the easier it was to make them. Neither of them desired to unnecessarily trouble those dark waters of mental conflict now. Helen guessed that Gage’s mind was not on her and that the bad tangle of his business life absorbed him. Brusque, haggard, absorbed, never attempting or apparently needing affection, he came and went. Never since Carpenter’s death had they even discussed the question of separation. That possibility was there. They had beaten a path to it. But hysteria was too thoroughly weeded out of Gage to press toward it. Without mutual reproach they both saw that separation in the immediate future was the last advantageous thing for the work of either of them and flimsy as that foundation seemed for life together, yet it held them. They turned their backs upon what they had lost or given up and looked ahead. Helen heard Gage refer some political question to her for the first time, with a kind of wonder. She suspected irony, then dropped her own self-consciousness as it became apparent that he really did not have any twisted motive behind the query. She began to see that in great measure he had swung loose from her, substituting some new strength for his dependence on her love. And, when some moment of emotional sorrow at the loss of their ardors came over her, she turned as neatly as did he from disturbing thought to the work, which piled in on her by letter and by conference.

* * * * *

They sat at dinner in the long white-paneled dining-room, twelve men and women. The three Brownleys and young Ted Smillie--Jerrold Haynes because Helen wanted to have him meet Freda and Emily Haight because she fitted in with Jerrold now that Walter Carpenter was gone. To these Helen had added the young Harold Spencers because they were the leaders of that group of young people who made or destroyed gossip. It was a dinner party made up hurriedly on the excuse of Gregory’s celebrity and such little intrigue as was hidden in its inception made it no less a pleasant company.

Interest was concentrated on Freda and Gregory of course and under Helen’s deft manipulation the story of their marriage and its secrecy was told, lightly, but with a clearness of detail that sent Ted’s eyes rather consciously to his plate once or twice as he avoided Barbara’s glance. Ted was sitting beside Freda and paying her open homage when he could get her attention. But Gage had much to say to her.

“Are you still chasing romance?” he asked. “I always remember your startling me with your belief that women were more attractive when they believed in romance.”

“Yes--I’m still after it. I feel the least bit guilty towards Gregory. Because while he goes back to Ireland with his heart in his hands ready to offer it to the country, the whole revolution is to me not as great tragedy as it is adventure. It is tragedy intellectually but not emotionally as far as I am concerned while to Gregory”--she turned her head to glance at Gregory.

“And marriage is adventure too, isn’t it?”

She forgot Ted and leaned a confidential elbow towards Gage, resting her chin in her cupped hand.

“I wouldn’t dare say it in the hearing of my mother or the feminist feminists but that’s what it is. They talk of partnerships and new contracts--but they can’t analyze away or starve the adventure of it. All this talk--all the development of women changes things, but its chief change is in making the women type different--stronger, finer, you know, like your wife and Margaret Duffield. But even with women like that when it comes to love and to marriage it is adventure, isn’t it? You can’t rationalize things which aren’t rational and you can’t modernize the things that are eternal.” She became a little shy, afraid of her words. “Mother thinks I’m a reactionary. I don’t think I am. I want women to be stronger, finer--I’ll work for that--but that’s one thing, Mr. Flandon. It hasn’t anything to do with the adventure between men and women, really.”

He started at that. But Ted claimed Freda’s attention and reluctantly she turned to him.

“I think you treated me rather badly not telling me you were married. I thought all along that I had a chance, you know.”

The brazenness did not make her angry. Nothing could anger her to-night. She was all warm vigor, pervading every contact between her and every one else.

“Barbara looks very well to-night,” she answered with cool irrelevance.

Barbara did. She had dressed with her customary skill but with the wit to avoid her usual look of sophistication. To-night she was playing the artless simple girl for Gregory’s benefit, listening to him with only an appreciative comment now and then. It was clear that Gregory was talking to her as he talked to one in whom he felt there was intelligence.

“And how clever she is,” added Freda reflectively.

The talk grew more general. Barbara called the attention of every one to something Gregory had said, a concession for one who did not usually share her dinner partners or else a successful attempt to break up other conversations. Irish problems led to a discussion of general politics. Helen was in the talk now--vigorously. Mrs. Brownley gave the retailed opinion of Mr. Brownley before he could quote himself.

Gage heard without contributing to what was being said. He was listening with amusement to Mrs. Brownley’s platitudes and half unconsciously letting his admiration rise at the clarity of Helen’s thought and the deftness of her phrases. What presence she had! In the contemplation of her he felt the problems which had been harassing him all day--deadlocks in plans, money shortage, fall away. As they had used to--he slipped into memories and amazingly they did not cause him pain, though even as he looked he saw upon her the marks of the work she had done and would do, the new definiteness, the look of being headed somewhere. But his rancor seemed to have burned itself out and with it had gone the old possessive passion. He stirred restlessly. Some phœnix was rising.

Mr. Brownley turned at his movement, offering sympathy.

“Nothing for us to do, Gage,” he chuckled tritely, “except to talk about recipes. The women talk politics now.”

Gage did not laugh at the old joke.

“Women and men may get together on a subject yet,” he answered, with heavy awkwardness.

Instantly it seemed to him that it was what he had meant to say for a long time. He caught the incredulous, almost pitiful look on Helen’s face as she heard and pretended not to hear, met the quick, wondering glance she snatched away from him.

Her tremulousness gave him confidence. Impatient of his guests now, he looked across at her, his eyes kindling. Whether they could work it out through his storms and hers ceased to gnaw at his thought of her. He saw her strong, self-sufficient, felt his own strength rising to meet hers, also self-sufficient. The delight of the adventure, the indestructible adventure between man and woman remained. His mind moored there.

THE END

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

rose with the bawn=> rose with the dawn {pg 149}

what a beneficient=> what a beneficent {pg 183}