Margaret Widdemer

“ They walked out of the little office, and through the long aisle down the center of the floor of the office-building, Marjorie, still miserably conscious of the eyes, and the emotions behind the eyes, and quite as conscious that they were emotions that she ought to be ashamed of minding.
"Now where shall we go for luncheon?" demanded Francis joyously, as they got outside. He caught her hand in his surreptitiously and said "You darling!" under his breath. ”

“ One hand was clenching and unclenching itself where Miss Kaplan, fortunately a young person whose own side of emotions occupied her exclusively, could not see it.
Miss Kaplan kissed her, quite uninvited, again, said "Dear little war-bride!" and—just in time, Marjorie always swore, to save herself from death, fled out.
It is all very well to be a war-bride when there's a war, but the war was over. ”

“ Don't talk to me that way, Marjorie. It's cruel. Not that you haven't the right to be cruel."
It was Marjorie's time of triumph, that she had planned for so long, in those days when the work was hard and things were lonely sometimes. But she did not take it. She only put out one shy hand, for it was a little hard for her to go on talking, she was getting so tired, and said timidly:
"But it is true, Francis. I—I am fond of you. And if there's anything to forgive, I have. You know you can't be so dreadfully angry with people when—when you like them. ”

“ Mr. Logan was imminent at any moment, and a great deal of disagreeableness might be looked for when he turned up and had it out with Francis. Altogether the Sabine lady felt that she ought to be in a state of panic terror. But she had slept well,—it was an excellent cot—the air was heavenly bracing, Mrs. O'Mara was a joy to think of, with her brogue and her affectionate nature, and altogether Marjorie Ellison found herself wondering hungrily what there would be for breakfast, and dressing in a hurry so that she could go down and eat it. ”

“ Everybody likes to be admired and appreciated. She could not help casting a glance of triumph over at Francis, where he sat maritally at the other end of the table, the most silent person present.
Pennington helped her clear away after supper. Indeed, competition to help Marjorie clear away was so strong that Pennington had to use his authority before the men settled down to their usual routine of card-playing or lounging about on the grass outside. She accepted his help gratefully, for she was beginning to feel as if she had always known him. She did not think of him in the least as a man. ”

“ Marjorie put out one hand mutely, and Francis took it and held it closely. It was more really their marriage day than the one in New York, when they were both young and reckless, and scarcely more than bits of flotsam in the tremendous world-current that set toward mating and replacement. They belonged together now, willingly and deliberately; set to go forward with what love and forbearance and earnestness of purpose they could, all the days of their life. ”

“ That's a queer thing, isn't it? You've known all your life that other people think if they care enough the other person will care, and you know they're idiots. And then your time comes, and you go and are the same old idiot yourself. . . . Queer. Well, I'm sorry, Marjorie. Shall I go now? We can think about what we'd better do next time we talk it over."
"Oh, please, please!" begged Marjorie. "Oh, Francis, I feel like a dog—a miserable, little coward-dog. ”

“ Miss Kaplan, for instance, she of the exuberant emotions and shaky English, had a record for accuracy and speed in her particular line which was unsullied by a single lapse. And Lucille, lazy, luxury-loving Lucille, concealed behind her fluffinesses an undoubted and remorseless executive ability. Compared to them Marjorie had always felt herself a most useless person. That was why she always was meeker in office hours than out of them. And to find herself swinging this work, even for one meal, without a feeling of incapacity and unworthiness, made her very cheered indeed. ”

“ Peggy answered spiritedly. "None of your insinuations about his honor, please. And shame on you to malign a sick man!"
"Oh, is Mr. Logan sick?" asked Marjorie, forgetting other interests. She turned to Francis, forgetting their feud again, in a common and inexcusable curiosity. "Francis! Now we'll know what it really was that ailed him—the nervous spells, you know? I always told you it wasn't fits!"
"How do you know it isn't?" said Francis. "Peggy hasn't said."
"She wouldn't be so interested if it was," said Marjorie triumphantly.
"It takes an old and dear wife to stand that in a man." ”

“ Marjorie forgot everything; home, husband, problems, life in general—what were they all to the chance at a real bathtub? She followed Peggy down the hall as a kitten follows a friend with a bowl of milk.
"O-o! a bathtub!" she said rapturously.
Peggy threw open a door where, among wooden floor and side-wall and ceiling and everything else of the most primitive, a real and most enticingly porcelain bathtub sat proudly awaiting guests.
"It'll not be so good as you've been used to," she said with more suggestion of Irishry than Marjorie had yet heard, "but I guess you'll be glad of it." ”

“ She knew she should have stood up there, and told Francis how unkind and unjust and bad-tempered and jealous he was, and defend herself from his accusations. But she was too tired to do it; and besides, words seemed so far away, and feelings seemed far away, too. Francis and the work at the cabin and Pennington, with his kind, plump, rueful face, and even the O'Maras and Logan, seemed suddenly unreal and of little account. The only thing that really mattered was a chance to go somewhere and lie down and sleep. Perhaps she could lean back a little in the side-car as he took her over. ”

“ Once in a long while an old bear comes and sniffs through the cracks of the lean-to in hopes of lunch, and goes away again disconsolately like the snake. But only once since I can remember. I tell you, Marjorie, I don't ever remember having a better time than when I'd built a fire out there in an open spot near the trees, and just lay on the ground with my hands behind my head, all alone, and everything in the whole world so far away that there wasn't a chance of its bothering me! ”

“ She missed everything acutely and all at once—New York, the little apartment, Lucille, being free from Francis—even the black kitten seemed to her something that she could not live one moment longer without. She turned and looked at Francis, trim and alert as ever, just steering the car around the side of the house, and found herself hating him for the moment. He was so at home here. And she hadn't even carfare to run away if she wanted to!
"Well, now, you poor lamb!" said somebody's rich, motherly voice with a broad Irish brogue. "You're tired enough to die, and no wonder. ”

“ Francis wasn't a relentless Juggernaut, or a tyrant, or a cave-man, or anything like that really. That is, he probably did have moments of being all of them. But besides that—it was a totally new idea—he was a human being like herself. Sometimes things embarrassed him; sometimes they were hard for him; he didn't always know what to do next.
She had never had any brothers, and not very much to do with men until she got old enough for them to make love to her. The result was that it had never occurred to her particularly that men were people. ”

“ The place had rows of bunks in various stages of untidiness. It was lighted by two very smoky kerosene lamps, and had in its middle a table with cards on it. Three men sat about the table, as if they did not quite know whether to come forward and be included in the conversation or not. At the further end Marjorie could see the door that led to the cooking-place, and eyed it with interest.
"These are all of the men who are here," Francis explained. "There is another camp some miles further in the forest." ”

“ And I tell you this, Marjorie, if I can help it you shall never do another stroke of work as long as you live!"
"That's going too far, as usual," said Marjorie calmly. "You certainly are a tempestuous person, Francis Ellison! I'd be unhappy without something to do. . . . May I play on the banjo sometimes in the evening, and will you stay quite close to me when I do?" ”

“ Francis seemed unaccountably relieved by her pleasantness. This had been something of a strain on him, after all, though it was the first time such a thought had occurred to Marjorie. His thin, dark face lighted up.
"Everything, including thermos bottles," he called back. "We won't stop to build a fire, because we have to hurry; but Lucille——"
"Lucille!" said Marjorie. "Well, I certainly never knew what a wretch that girl was."
"Oh, not a wretch. Only romantic," said Francis, grinning. "I tell you again, Marjorie, you have a fatal effect on people. ”

“ If Francis knew that the little aproned figure, with flushed cheeks and high-held head, was terrified and homesick under the pride, he said nothing. Nothing, that is, beyond the ordinary courtesies. He offered to help her on with her cloak. After one indignant look at him she let him. The indignation would have puzzled him; but Marjorie's feeling was that a man who would doom you to this sort of a life, put you to such a test as Francis had, was adding insult to injury in helping you on and off with wraps. ”

“ There's something in the air here that keeps you feeling so alive all the time, and so much like having fun. In spite of all our tragedies, and your very bad temper"—she laughed up at him impertinently—"I'm enjoying myself as much as Peggy is, though I probably don't look it."
"There isn't so much of you to look it," explained Francis. Their eyes both followed young Peggy, where, magnificent in her green gown and gold slippers, she was frankly flirting with a French-Canadian who was no match for her, but quite as frankly overcome by her charms. ”

“ You know, for a good many years things won't be the same, even for us in America, who suffered less, perhaps, than any other nation in the world. Life's harder, and it will be."
"Oh, always?" demanded Marjorie. "You know, Francis, I always wanted good times worse than anything in the world, but that isn't saying I had them. I didn't. Won't I ever have any more? That few weeks when I raced around with you and Billy and Lucille was really the first time I'd been free and had fun with people I liked, ever since I'd been born. ”

“ She got along excellently without Lucille, Cousin Anna, and the girls in the office. And, thinking it over sometimes at twilight, in those rare moments when there weren't from one to three of the men grouped adoringly around her, and Francis wasn't chaperoning her silently in the background, she felt that the work was a small price to pay for the pleasantness of the rest of her life there. Always before she had been a cog in the machinery, wherever she had been. At Cousin Anna's she was a little girl, loved and dominated. ”

“ Until now, Pennington had carried her in and out, while Francis felt a deadly envy in his heart.
"See, I'm all well!" she said triumphantly, looking exactly, as he told her, like a doll, with her lacy draperies and her shoulder-length curls, and her slim arms thrown out to balance herself. ”

“ Marjorie almost ran back to the davenport—she was beginning to feel as if the davenport was the nearest she had to a mother—and flung herself on it in a storm of angry tears. He was unjust. He was violent. She didn't want a man like that—what on earth had she humiliated herself that way for, anyway? What was the use of trying to be honorable and good and fair and doing things for men, when they treated you like that? Francis had proposed and proposed and proposed—she hadn't been so awfully keen on marrying him. ”

“ Marjorie tried to focus harder than ever. She wanted to be unselfish, and tell him the thing that was right to do, at any cost—though she had not realized how much Pennington's help and society had been to her. She felt a terror at the idea of his going, the more because she felt ill. But that didn't count—that mustn't count. You have no right to let a man stay where he may fall in love with you, merely because you need him for a maiden aunt or something of the sort. ”

“ This last matter-of-fact touch almost set Marjorie off again in hysterical laughter. Being eloped with by a gentleman who thoughtfully set towels and water outside her door was really too much. She pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped off some of her clothes—it did not seem enough like going to bed to undress altogether, and she mistrusted the balsam boughs with blankets over them that pretended to be a bed in the corner—and flung herself down and laughed and laughed and laughed till she nearly cried. ”

“ Francis shook his head. He had a good mind, and a quick one, but he did not use it as something to amuse himself with, as Marjorie did with hers. He used it to work with.
"I beg your pardon for startling you," he said. "But——"
"I know. It looked queer. I was just thinking how different everybody and everything is since the war. We're all so much more grown up, and responsible. And I was hearing myself talk to Lucille's grandchildren, and tell them all about the days before the war, when everybody said they just didn't care. . . . Aren't things different?" ”

“ But after all she should have expected this.
"In the flat you and Lucille had. Lucille likes it."
"How can she?" sighed Marjorie. "Well, she's never tried this. . . . I wonder what I'd better do? I think I heard something about a place where they have flats just for business women. Perhaps Billy could arrange for me to get one before they're all gone. He always loved attending to things like that for people. I can't go back to Cousin Anna. I've been through too much. Why, you mayn't think it, but I'm grown up, Francis! I'm about twenty years older than that foolish little girl you married. ”