She shook her head and gazed musingly at the window where the sunshine fell.

  “There are the propositions; this is the problem, Mr. Cleland. Now, let us look at the conditions which bear directly on it. Am I boring you?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s very necessary to consider this matter. I’m just beginning to realize that I’m really not fitted to guide and control Stephanie.”

  She laughed.

  “What a confession! But do you know that, all over the world, men are beginning to come to similar conclusions? Conditions absolutely without precedent have arisen within a few brief years. And Stephanie, just emerging into womanhood, is about to face them. The day of the woman has dawned.

  “Ours is a restless sex,” continued Miss Quest grimly. “And this is the age of our opportunity. I don’t know just what it is that animates my enfranchised sex, now that the world has suddenly flung open doors which have confined us through immemorial ages — each woman to her own narrow cell, privileged only to watch freedom through iron bars.

  “But there runs a vast restlessness throughout the world; in every woman’s heart the seeds of revolution, so long dormant, are germinating. The time has come when she is to have her fling. And she knows it!”

  She shrugged her trim shoulders:

  “It is the history of all enfranchisement that license and excess are often misconstrued as freedom by liberated prisoners. To find ourselves free to follow the urge of aspiration may unbalance some of us. Small wonder, too.”

  She sprang to her feet and began to march up and down in front of the fireplace, swinging her reticule trimmed with Krupp steel. Cleland rose, too.

  “What was all wrong in our Victorian mothers’ days is all right now,” she said, smilingly. “We’re going to get the vote; that’s a detail already discounted. And we’ve already got about everything else except the right to say how many children we shall bring into the world. That will surely come, too; that, and the single standard of morality for both sexes. Both are bound to come. And then,” she smiled again brightly at Cleland, “I have an idea that we shall quiet down and outgrow our restlessness. But I don’t know.”

  “What you say is very interesting,” murmured the young fellow.

  “Yes, it’s interesting. It is significant, too. So is the problem of making something out of defectives. After a while there won’t be any defectives when we begin to breed children as carefully as we breed cattle. Sex equality will hasten sensible discussion; discussion will result in laws. A, B and C may have babies; D, E and F may not. And, after a few generations, the entire feminine alphabet can have and may have babies. And if, here and there, a baby is not wanted, there’ll be no sniveling sectarian conference to threaten the wrath of Mumbo-Jumbo!”

  Miss Quest halted in her hearth-rug promenade:

  “The doom of hypocrisy, sham and intolerance is already in sight. Hands off and mind your business are written on the wall. So I suppose Stephanie will think we ought to keep our hands off her and mind our business if she wishes to go on the stage or dawdle before an easel in a Washington Mews studio some day.”

  Her logic made Cleland anxious again.

  “The trouble lies in this intoxicating perfume we call liberty. We women sniff it afar, and it makes us restless and excitable. It’s a heady odour. Only a level mind can enjoy it with discretion. Otherwise, it incites to excess. That’s all. We’re simply not yet used to liberty. And that is what concerns me about Stephanie — with her youth, and her intelligence, her undoubted gifts and — her possible inheritance from a fascinating rascal of a father.

  “Well, that is the girl; there are the conditions; this is the problem.... And now I must be going.”

  She held out her smartly gloved hand; retained his for a moment:

  “You won’t sail before Stephanie’s Easter vacation?”

  “No; I’ll probably sail about May first.”

  “In that case, I’ll come on from Bayport, and you won’t need to find a companion for Stephanie. After you sail, she’ll come to me, anyway.”

  “For hospital training,” he nodded.

  “For two years of it. It’s her choice.”

  “Yes, I know. She prefers it to college.”

  Miss Quest said very seriously:

  “For a girl like Stephanie, it will be an excellent thing. It will give her a certain steadiness, a foundation in life, to have a profession on which she may rely in case of adversity. To care for and to be responsible for others develops character. She already seems interested.”

  “She prefers it to graduating from Vassar.”

  Miss Quest nodded, then looking him directly in the eyes:

  “I want to say one thing. May I?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then, above all, be patient with Stephanie. Will you?”

  “Of course!” he replied, surprised.

  “I am looking rather far into the future,” continued Miss Quest. “You will change vastly in two years. She will, too. Cherish the nice friendship between you. A man’s besetting sin is impatience of women. Try to avoid it. Be patient, even when you differ with her. She’s going to be a handful — I may as well be frank. I can see that — see it plainly. She’s going to be a handful for me — and you must always try to keep her affections.

  “It’s the only way to influence any woman. I know my sex. You’re a typical man, entirely dependent on logic and reason — or think you are. All men think they are. But logic and reason are of no use in dealing with us unless you have our affections, too. Good-bye. I do like you. I’ll come again at Easter.”

  Alone in the quiet house, with his memories for companions, the young fellow tried to face the future; — tried to learn to endure the staggering blow which his father’s death had dealt him, — strove resolutely to shake off the stunned indifference, the apathy through which he seemed to see the world as through a fog.

  Gradually, as the black winter months passed, and as he took up his work again and pegged away at it, the inevitable necessity for distraction developed, until at last the deadly stillness of the house became unendurable, driving him out once more into the world of living men.

  So the winter days dragged, and the young fellow faced them alone in the sad, familiar places where, but yesterday, he had moved and talked with his only and best beloved.

  Perhaps it was easier that way. He had his memories to himself, sharing none. But he did not share his sorrow, either. And that is a thing that undermines.

  At first he was afraid that it would be even harder for him when Stephanie returned at Easter. The girl arrived in her heavy mourning, and he met her at the station, as his father used to meet him.

  She lifted her rather pale face and passively received her kiss, but held tightly to his arm as they turned away together through the hurrying crowds of strangers.

  Each one tried very hard to find something cheerful to talk about; but little by little their narratives concerning the intervening days of absence became spiritless and perfunctory.

  The car swung into the familiar street and drew up before the house; Stephanie laid one hand on Jim’s arm, stepped out to the sidewalk, and ran up the steps, animated for a moment with the natural eagerness for home. But when old Meacham silently opened the door and her gaze met his:

  “Oh — Meacham,” she faltered, and her grey eyes filled.

  However, she felt her obligations toward Jim; and they both made the effort, at dinner, and afterward in the library, fighting to keep up appearances.

  But silence, lurking near, crept in upon them, a living intruder whose steady pressure gradually prevailed, leaving them pondering there under the subdued lamplight, motionless in the depths of their respective armchairs, until endurance seemed no longer possible — and speech no longer a refuge from the ghosts of what-had-been. And the girl, in her black gown, rose, came silently over to his chair, seated herself on the arm, and laid her pale face against his. He put one arm around her, meaning to let her weep there; but withdrew it suddenly, and released himself almost roughly with a confused sense of her delicate fragrance clinging to him too closely.

  The movement was nervous and involuntary; he shot a perplexed glance at her, still uneasily conscious of the warmth and subtle sweetness which had so suddenly made of this slender girl in black something unfamiliar to his sight and touch.

  “Let’s try to be cheerful,” he muttered, scarcely understanding what he said.

  It was the first time he had ever repulsed her or failed to respond to her in their mutual loneliness. And why he did it he himself did not understand.

  He left the arm-chair and went and stood by the mantel, resting one elbow on it and looking down into the coals; she slipped into the depths of the chair and lay there looking at him.

  For something in the manner of this man toward her had set her thinking; and she lay there in silence, watching his averted face, deeply intent on her own thoughts, coming to no conclusions.

  Yet somehow the girl was aware that, in that brief moment of their grief when she had sought comfort in his brotherly caress and he had offered it, then suddenly repulsed her, a profound line of cleavage had opened between him and her; and that the cleft could never be closed.

  Neither seemed to be aware that anything had happened. The girl remained silent and thoughtful; and he became talkative after a while, telling her of his plans for travel, and that he had arranged for keeping open the house in case she and Miss Quest wished to spend any time in town.

  “I’ll write you from time to time and keep you informed of my movements,” he said. “Two years pass quickly. By the time I’m back I’ll have a profession and so will you.”

  She nodded.

  “Then,” he went on, “I suppose Miss Quest had better come here and live with us.”

  “I’m not coming back here.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going about by myself — as you are going — to to observe and learn.”

  “You wish to be foot-free?”

  “I do. I shall be my own mistress.”

  “Of course,” he said drily, “nobody can stop you.”

  “Why should anybody wish to? I shall be twenty-one — nearly; I shall have a profession if I choose to practise it; I shall have my income — and all the world before me to investigate.”

  “And then what?”

  “How do I know, Jim? A girl ought to have her chance. She ought to have her fling, too, if she wants it — just as much as any man. It’s the only way she can learn anything. And I’ve concluded,” she added, looking curiously at him, “that it’s the only way she can ever become really interesting to a man.”

  “How?” he demanded. “By having what you call her fling?”

  “Yes. Men aren’t much interested in girls who know nothing except what men permit them to know. A girl at college said that the one certain source of interest to any man in any woman is his unsatisfied curiosity concerning her. Satisfy it, and he loses interest.”

  Cleland laughed:

  “That’s college philosophy,” he said.

  Stephanie smiled:

  “It is what a man doesn’t know about a woman that keeps his interest in her stimulated. It isn’t her mind which is merely stored with the conventional — the conventional being determined and prescribed by men. It isn’t even her character or her traits or her looks which can keep his interest unflagging. What deeply interests a man is an educated, cultivated girl who has had as much experience as he has, and who is likely to have further experience in the world without advice from him or asking his permission. No other woman can hold the interest of a man for very long.”

  “That’s what you’ve learned at Vassar, is it?”

  “It’s one of the things,” said Stephanie, smiling faintly.

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE BOY — for as yet he was only a boy — sailed in May. The girl — who was swiftly stripping from her the last rainbow chiffons of girlhood — was at the steamer to see him off — down from Poughkeepsie for that purpose.

  And the instant she arrived he noticed what this last brief absence had done for her; how subtly her maturing self-confidence had altered the situation, placing her on a new footing with himself.

  There was a little of the lean, long-legged, sweet-faced girl left: a slender yet rounded symmetry had replaced obvious joints and bones.

  “What is it — basket ball?” he inquired admiringly.

  “You like my figure?” she inquired guilelessly. “Oh, I’ve grown up within a month. It’s just what was coming to me.”

  “Nice line of slang they give you up there,” he said, laughing. “You’re nearly as tall as I am, too. I don’t know you, little sister.”

  “You never did, little brother. You’ll be sorry some day that you wasted all the school-girl adoration I lavished on you.”

  “Don’t you intend to lavish any more?” he inquired, laughing, yet very keenly alert to her smiling assurance, which was at the same time humourous, provocative and engaging.

  “I don’t know. I’m over my girlhood illusions. Men are horrid pigs, mostly. It’s a very horrid thing you’re doing to me right now,” she said, “ — going off to have a wonderful time by yourself for the next two years and leaving me to work in a children’s hospital! But I mean to make you pay for it. Wait and see.”

  “If you’ll come to Europe with me I’ll take you,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t. You’d hate it. You want to be free to prowl. So do I, and I mean to some day.”

  “Why not come now and prowl with me? I’ll take care of you.”

  The girl looked at him with smiling intentness:

  “If dad hadn’t expressed his wishes, and even if my aunt would let me go, I wouldn’t — now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I shall do no more tagging after you.”

  “What?”

  “No. And when you return I mean that you shall come and ask my permission to prowl with me.... And if I find you interesting enough I’ll let you. Otherwise, I shall prowl by myself or with some other man.”

  He was laughing, and her face, also, wore a bright and slightly malicious smile.

  “You don’t believe that’s possible, do you, Jim? — a total reversal of our rôles? You think little sister will tag gratefully after you always, don’t you? Wouldn’t it astonish you if little sister grew up into a desirable and ornamental woman of independent proclivities and tastes, and with a mind and a will of her own? And, to enjoy her company, you’d have to seek her and prove yourself sufficiently interesting; and that you would have to respect her freedom and individuality as you would any man’s!”

  “I think, little sister,” he said, laughing, “that you’ve absorbed a vast deal of modern nonsense at Vassar; that you’re as pretty as a peach; and that you’ll not turn into a maid errant, but will become an ornament to your sex and to society, and that you’ll marry in due time and do yourself proud.”

  “In children, you mean? Numerically?”

  “Quantitatively and qualitatively. Also, you’ll do yourself proud in the matronly example you’ll set to all women of this great Republic.”

  “That’s what you think, is it?”

  “I know it.”

  She smiled:

  “Watch the women of my generation, Jim — when you can spare a few moments of your valuable time from writing masterpieces of fiction.”

  “I certainly shall. I’ll study ’em. They’re material for me. They are funny, you know.”

  “They are, indeed,” she said, her grey eyes full of malice, “funnier than you dream of! You are going to see a generation that will endure no man-devised restrictions, submit to no tyrannical trammels, endure no masculine nonsense. You’ll see this new species of woman coming faster and faster, thicker and thicker, each one knowing her own mind or intent on knowing it. You’ll see them animated by a thousand new interests, pursuing a thousand new vocations, scornful of masculine criticism, impervious to admonition, regardless of what men think and say and do about it.

  “That’s what you’ll see, Jim, a restless sex destroying their last barriers; a world of women contemptuous of men’s opinions, convinced of their own rights, going after whatever they want, and doing it in their own way.

  “If they wish to marry and bother with children they’ll pick out a healthy man and do it; if not, they won’t. Love plays a very, very small part in a man’s life. Love, sentiment, domesticity, and the nursery were once supposed to make up a woman’s entire existence. Now the time is coming very swiftly when love will play no more of a rôle in a woman’s life than it does in a man’s. She’ll have her fling, first, if she chooses, just as freely as he does. And some day, if she finds it worth the inconvenience, she’ll marry and take a year or two off and raise a few babies. Otherwise, decidedly not!”

  “These are fine sentiments!” he exclaimed, laughing, yet not too genuinely amused. “I’m not sure that I’d better go and leave you here with that exceedingly pretty little head of yours stuffed and seething with this sort of propaganda!”

  “You might as well. The whole world is beginning to seethe with it. After all, what does it mean except equality of the sexes? Hands off — that’s all it means.”

  “Are you a suffragette, Steve?” he inquired, smilingly.

  “Oh, Jim, that’s old stuff! Everybody is. All that is merely a matter of time, now. What interests us is our realization of our own individual independence. Why, I can’t tell you what a delightful knowledge it is to understand that we can do jolly well what we please and not care a snap of our fingers for masculine opinion!”

  “That’s a fine creed,” he remarked. “What a charming bunch you must be training with at Vassar! I think I’ll get off this steamer and remain here for a little scientific observation of your development and conduct.”

  “No use,” she said gaily. “I’ve promised to learn to be a hospital nurse. After that, perhaps, if you return, you’ll find me really worth observing.”

  “Is that a threat, Steve?” he asked, not too sincerely amused, yet still taking her and her chatter with a lightness and amiable condescension entirely masculine.

 

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