Chapter II: Freda

Freda met her father on the street three blocks from home. She saw him coming, laden as usual with books, a package of papers from the psychology class to correct--and the meat. The collar of his ulster was turned up around his ears but Freda knew him even in the gathering twilight, a block away. There was a dependency about Eric Thorstad’s figure--about the meat--that was part of her life.

“Liver or veal?” she asked gayly, taking the fat package from under his arm.

“It’s a secret.”

“Sausage,” she said, “I can tell by the feel and the smell.”

“Aren’t you late, Freda?”

“I went to the movies.”

“Again? I wish you wouldn’t go so often. What do you get out of them?”

“Thrills, father dear.”

“All unreal.”

She skipped into a stride that matched his.

“A thrill is a shiver of romance,” she declared, “it’s never unreal.”

“And what gives the shiver? The white sheet?”

“I’m open minded. Could be a well tailored garden, Nazimova’s gown, a murder on a mountain.”

He laughed and they went along briskly until they came to the third in a row of small yellow frame houses, and turned in at the scrap of cement walk which led up to the porch.

In the kitchen Mrs. Thorstad turned from the stove to kiss them both.

“How was your meeting?” asked her husband.

A kind of glow came over Adeline Thorstad’s face.

“It was a lovely meeting. I am sure that it is significant that so many women, even women like old Mrs. Reece will come to hear a talk on their civic responsibilities. You should have managed to come, Freda.”

Freda put an arm about her mother’s shoulders.

“I couldn’t,” she said. “I’d have spoiled the circle of thought. I don’t care whether women vote or not.”

She was six inches taller than her mother’s neat prettiness and at first glance not nearly so attractive. Her rather coarse hair was too thick and pulled back into a loose low knot and her features were heavier than those of her mother’s, her skin less delicate. The neat pyramid of her mother’s blond hair, her smooth, fair skin were almost as they had been fifteen years before. But Freda showed more promise for fifteen years hence. Her hair shaded from yellow to orange red, her eyes were deep blue and her loose-hung, badly managed figure showed a broad gracefulness that her mother’s lacked.

She had somehow taken the little qualities of her mother’s prettiness and made them grander, so that she seemed to have been modeled from an imperfect idea rather than a standard type. In her father was the largeness of build which might have accounted for her, though not too obviously for Mr. Thorstad stooped a little and days in the classroom had drained his face of much natural color. Still he had carried over from some ancestor a suggestion of power which he and his daughter shared.

“Don’t talk like that, Freda. It’s so reactionary. Women nowadays--”

“I know. But I don’t especially approve of women nowadays,” teased Freda. “I think that maybe we were a lot more interesting or delightful or romantic as we were when we didn’t pretend to have brains.”

But her mother ignored her.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said. “Set the table and then I must tell you my news.”

They were used to news from Mrs. Thorstad. She was full of the indomitable energy that created little events and situations and exulted in them. Victories in the intrigues of the district federated clubs, small entanglements, intricate machinations were commonplaces to her husband and daughter since Mrs. Thorstad had become district vice-president.

So now when the sausage, flanked by its mound of mashed potatoes, came sizzling to the table and Freda had satisfied her soul by putting three sprays of red marsh-berries in a dull green bowl in the middle, they looked forward to dinner with more anticipation than to Mrs. Thorstad’s surprise. But she began impressively, and without delay.

“I think that this entrance of women into politics may alter the whole course of our lives.”

Freda and her father exchanged a whimsical friendly glance in which no disrespect blended.

“No doubt,” said Mr. Thorstad.

“If I were called to public office, think what a difference it would make!”

“What difference?” asked Freda.

“Why--there’d be more money, more chances to better ourselves.”

Her husband seemed to shrink at the cheaply aspiring phrase, then looked at her with something like the patience of one who refuses to be hurt.

“So now you want to be the breadwinner too, my dear?”

Perhaps she took that for jocosity. She did not answer directly.

“I met Mrs. Brownley--the Mrs. Brownley--at a meeting not long ago. She said she thought there would be a future for me.”

“No doubt,” said her husband, again.

He gazed into the sausage platter reflectively.

Twenty years ago, he might have remembered, Adeline Miller had thought there was a future for him. She had intended to better herself through him. She was teaching then in a little town and he was county superintendent. They had met and been attracted and after a little she had condoned the fact of his Swedish name and of the two parents who spoke no English. She had exchanged the name of Miller for Thorstad, soberly, definitely determined to better herself and profit by the change.

Then there came Freda. Freda, who had stimulated them both as healthy promising babies are likely to stimulate their parents. Thorstad had become a High School instructor, then had left that position after eight years to come as assistant to the professor of psychology in the Mohawk State Normal School, at a slightly lower salary, but “bettering himself.” Ten years ago, that was. He was head of his department now--at three thousand a year. It was his natural height and he had attained it--not a prospector in his work, but a good instructor always. It had taken much labor to have come so far, nights of study, summers spent in boarding houses near the University that he might get his degrees. And Adeline had gone along her own path. During all these years in Mohawk she had been busy too. First with little literary clubs, later with civic councils, state federations, all the intricate machinery of woman’s clubdom.

She had her rewards. Federation meetings in the cities, little speeches which she made with increasing skill. She had been “speaking” for a long time now. During the war she fortified her position with volunteer speaking for Liberty Loans, War Saving Stamps. All this in the name of “bettering others.” All this with that guiding impulse to “better herself.”

Her husband made no demands on her time which interfered with any public work. If it was necessary he could cook his own meals, make his own bed, even do his own washing, and there had been times when he had done all this for himself and Freda. Not that Mrs. Thorstad ever neglected her family. The Family, like Democracy and the Cradle, were three strong talking points always. She was a fair cook and a good housekeeper, a little mechanical in her routine but always adequate. And when she was away she always left a batch of bread and doughnuts and cookies. It was never hard on Eric and he, unlike some men, was handy around the house. He was handy with Freda too from the time he dressed her as a baby until now. Now he was handy with her moods, with her incomprehensible unwillingness to better herself by sharing in her mother’s plans.

Leaning a little toward her mother now, Freda brought the conversation off generalities.

“But the news? We are all agog.”

“The news is that we are to have distinguished guests on Thursday. Mrs. Brownley, Mrs. Gage Flandon, and Miss Margaret Duffield of New York are making a tour of the country and they are to stop here for a day. I am to arrange everything for them. There is no telling to what it may lead.”

“They’re coming here?” Freda’s tone was disgusted. “A lot of women spellbinders. Oh, Lord, save us. I’m going camping.”

“It is a great privilege,” said her mother, with a tight little motion of her lips. “I shall need you, Freda.”