Margaret Culkin Banning

“ The house didn’t seem big enough to hold her and Gage. She went about her work trying to be normal, directing the maids, playing with the children, unpacking her bags. All the time she felt him watching her even if she were not in the same room, felt his brooding concentration on her, knew he was wondering what she thought about, whether she was glad to be back, what she was going to do about Freda Thorstad. For the first time in her married life, she had the sense of marriage as a trap. ”

“ Her voice was blurred into appreciations.
“Why let them starve?” asked Gregory.
“Perhaps because practical meat-and-drink body needs always claim the nourishment the things of your mind need—and you let the mind go hungry.”
“That’s it—that’s what people do—but you won’t. I hear it in your voice—see it in your face. The things in you are too vital to be starved. You can cripple them but you can’t kill them.”
“I do not know.”
“You must set yourself free.”
Freda smiled ruefully.
“That’s what women are always talking about and what they mean is a washing machine.” ”

“ It was as if she had somehow stepped over the phase of altercation, doubt and experiment into a manner which did the unusual easily, but only if the unusual came in her path, which accepted new rules, new customs without a flush, and most of all was able to merge the best of feminism into a fine yet unchristened ease of sex. She did not need either the little fears or defenses of her mother or the larger ones of Margaret Duffield. It did not occur to her that she was very complete in herself and satisfying to herself. ”

“ Freda contrasted it with some amusement with the cold classicism of Margaret’s attitude. To Mrs. Nesbitt they were obviously slightly inferior in the sight of God and man, being female, to be cherished indeed, frail perhaps, and yet not made in the exact image of the Creator.
They were headed for the Nesbitt flat. Freda had no letter from Gregory, had had none for two days and her heart felt as if it were thickening and sinking. She would not let it be so. She set to work to make herself interested. She would not mope. ”

“ He saw no direction in which she might go away from him where she would not meet destruction, where false, incomplete ideas would not ruin her. It was making him a reactionary.
For, because he had no solution himself, he was forced to fall back on negations. He denied everything, sank back into an idealism of the past.
“I liked that girl,” he said to his wife about Freda, “no fake.”
“None,” answered Helen. “I hoped you’d like her, Gage.”
“She says that the trouble with women is that they’ve lost the spirit of romance and that they’ve dug the romance out of men’s souls too.” ”

“ He was disgusted with the result of the convention—not that he had hoped for much but{244} the flatness of the political outlook, the beating of the old drums irritated him. There were times when the exhilaration of the chance he was taking lifted him up and if he had been drinking less steadily he might have turned the exhilaration to much advantage. But his mind was too nervous to plan steadily or well. It shot restlessly past immediacies into dreams of a future when he would have justified every action to himself and the world and particularly to Helen. ”

“ It was soft warm darkness but the swift car made a wind which blew back upon them, laden with clover smells, deeply sweet. All the elaborate mental approaches which Walter had made to the girl he wanted to marry were abandoned. He stopped the car and put his arm around her, not supplicating but as if the time had come for concession.
“About ourselves. We talk too much impersonal stuff, Margaret. It’s great fun but there’s more to be done than talk. We must begin on the other things. We know each other’s minds now. Let’s know each other’s feelings.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clandestine—”
“Don’t say that,” cried Freda, her voice rising, “don’t use that word.”
And then as if some gate had been opened her words poured out. “Can’t you understand something being too beautiful to be anything except secret? It was something I couldn’t have let even those who love me know about. And to have her ugly devastating hands on it! It soils it. I feel her finger marks all over me. It was mine and she’s stolen it.”
Her head went down on her arms on the desk in front of her. Gage watched her with curiosity, embarrassment and pity. ”

“ ADVENTURE I ALL the time, under that motivating anger and determination not to go back, ran the two threads of thought—one quickly sifting the practicalities of a situation for a bare headed young girl in the streets of a city at two o’clock in the morning, the other analyzing, jeering at the melodrama of her position.
“It’s a warm night,” she thought, “I’ll probably get nothing but a terrific cold in my head if I do sit in Lincoln Park all night. That young devil! She planned all that. She deliberately didn’t tell Ted they were not coming straight home. There’s no way of proving it. ”

“ She decided to take a taxi to the hospital and chose at random one from a row of disheveled looking “For Hire” machines waiting for the daily debouch of passengers from the Flyer. She climbed in with her bag and closed the shaky door, and the driver started his motor. Freda’s heart was racing. The cab could not go fast enough—nor slow enough. It seemed to her as if she could not bear what might be waiting of joy or sorrow, as if emotion was welling up so strong that it would burst its bounds and overcome her. ”

“ AT THE BRONWLEYS’ I GAGE FLANDON put his wife’s fur cloak around her and stood back, watching her as she took a final glance into the long mirror in the hall.
“I’m quite excited,” she said. “Margaret always excites me and I do want you to meet her. She really must come to stay with us, Gage.”
“If you like. I’m not so keen.”
“Afraid of strong-minded women?”
“It’s not their strong minds I’m afraid of, Helen.”
“Their alluring personalities?” She slipped an arm into his and led him to the door.
“Not even that. Their horrible consciousness—self-consciousness. Their nervousness. ”

“ Once in the car, with Margaret bundled in robes he turned to the boulevards and they fell into talk again. They liked to talk to each other. They elucidated things between them. They liked the calmness of each other’s reactions, the sense of mutual control they had as they held a subject poised on their reflections, as they explored the sensitive delicacy of some thought. Politics, people, books—but always their talk strayed back to men and women. ”

“ Ted chuckled. “Not a flirt.”
“You know what I mean. A girl who has been brought up as I have—can’t let herself go the way other girls of a different class can. I can see that those girls have an advantage. We’re just as—we’re just like they are only they’ve been brought up differently.”
She paused for a moment in her fumbling, in the pleading to be admitted to the class of women of easy virtue whom she fancied held her lover in their toils, trying to convince him that she was ripe for abandonment. ”

“ Thompson patted her affectionately on the arm. Her contacts were all warm and intimate. With men and women alike, she seemed to get inside their minds and look out on the world as they saw it.
“You’re a dear girl,” she told her, “but you must remember that humanity is a bigger thing even than feminism, Margaret. Be a little more tender towards the poor men. After all, they can’t all be transported.”
All afternoon the crowds swelled. In the evening the great hotel dining-rooms were filled with people who represented almost everything—power, wealth, notoriety, ambition. ”

“ And then to her immense relief she heard the limousine outside.
“The others are here,” she said to him.
“Damn the others,” he said mumblingly, and, without apology, forced himself into his overcoat. In the hall he seemed to recover himself. Perhaps his sense of social convention struggled and overcame his amorousness temporarily. He went out, past the entering girls, vaguely speaking rather at them than to them.
Nothing of what happened after that seemed quite real to Freda. She was fairly worn out from her trying day and hour of struggle and embarrassment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were always young men who were ready to be nice to Freda in Mohawk. But much as they had liked her they had not, as she would have said, “made love to her.” Ted did that. In his own way, he was good at it and Freda was collecting experiences and naïve in spite of her power to get a perspective on her own situation. He had singled Freda out as capable of giving him a fresher thrill than any of the girls of his own “crowd.” And he had ended by being pushed a little more than he expected by his own emotions. The prospect of Freda’s return to Mohawk had annoyed him. ”

“ Margaret, in immaculate white linen, looking as cool and competent as an operating surgeon, had listened. She heard the whole of the story, how Gage had changed—for that Helen insisted upon.
“He’s simply not himself. I suppose it’s the feeling he has towards the girl.”
“Don’t ‘the girl’ her, Helen. I’m not a bit sure of that part of the story. Somehow it’s too preposterous that Freda should be languishing somewhere waiting for Gage’s casual attention. I tell you that girl doesn’t languish. She’s not that kind. She’s the most magnificently unconscious modern you ever saw. ”

“ She went to Margaret’s hotel and found her in her room, lying on her bed and her head buried in the counterpane. It was the nearest to abandonment that Helen had ever seen in her friend so she ventured to try to comfort.
“It’s the awful blackness of his mind that I can’t bear,{276}” said Margaret, “the feeling he must have had that there was no way out.” She sat up and looked at Helen somewhat wildly. “It frightens me too. For he had such a good mind. He saw things straight. Perhaps there isn’t any way out. Perhaps we are battering our heads against life and each other like helpless fools.” ”

“ 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.” ”