CHAPTER VII.

THE LAST DAYS AT FRANKLIN STREET.

Freda MacDowell was one of the most remarked women who had attended the University of Merlton in recent years. First as a student, then as a departmental secretary, she had left behind her a definite impression on the unchanging portion of the college—the faculty. Occasionally a student does this, but never by academic prowess. The brilliant scholar passes through his four years with lustre of a kind, but is soon swallowed up in the oblivion of the graduate status. The remembered student betrays, even in those budding years, a definite mould of mind, illustrates a definite viewpoint and adheres to the peculiar details of conduct that mark a distinct personality.

Freda possessed some unaccountable leverage on life that bestowed this distinction. She was just a little mysterious. No one knew why she had come upon the college world, from the very start, as a rebel, fortified capably against the acknowledged virtues of a university. Books were proclaimed a burden, lectures and classes were boring. Girl associates freely disagreed with her and disliked her. But on attempting to engage her in altercation they discovered a handful of unanswerable arguments. Freda’s tenets were never flippant. On the surface they sometimes appeared even affected yet were found to be based on carefully-digested opinion.

She never ventured on speculative problems. She followed her own injunction: “Open your eyes and look at life.” In so doing she ran the risk of the realist. Life, too closely inspected, often seems monstrous.

Beneath Freda’s animation and apparent flippancy, reposed a silent and very solemn tribunal before which everything of importance had to be arraigned. Themes of elemental justice, of human motives, and of the obscured relation of cause and effect—these she dwelt upon. Few people knew what a sage she was, in secret. Few were permitted to see past her bright face.

At Merlton, no university student, caring so little for the customary rewards of education, had received as much interest from the teachers. Most of the professors had a tender spot in their hearts for her. This may have depended, in no little measure, upon her personal beauty, for decades of mental acquisition do not alter a man’s response, and a good-looking woman maintains her authority even in the sedate courts of learning. Then, too, a realist who has smashed her way through the brambles wins a sharp simplicity that is bound to attract all enemies of delusion. Professor Freeman pendulated between admiration of her mental courage and curiosity about her flippancy. François de Freville gloried in his “Oiseau,” without stint. Alfred K. Tanner loved her, but the great-hearted gentleman loved nearly everybody, so that it was never noticeable. Nutbrown Hennigar had started with the emotionless, but level-headed idea that Freda was sufficiently ornamental to grace his distinguished presence on most social occasions and had arrived at a point where he believed that she should be a permanent ornament in his home. All these people composed the fringe of her existence. She took none of them seriously, but derived a paltry pleasure from the flattery to her vanity.

A little nearer was Maxwell Lee—so much like her in many ways, a good chum, clever, sincere and respected. But he did not awake any amorous response in Freda.

Thus she had continued to play with life, superficially gay, but actually discontented. The only man who had ever believed in her was Mauney Bard. He saw beneath the surface. This, at least, was how she felt on the day following his ardent declarations.

Another college term was finished. Spring and the vacation were at hand. But she knew no eagerness, as in other years, to be off to her home in Lockwood. The morning was occupied in arranging her secretarial desk for the summer’s absence and the afternoon in quiet day-dreams in her room on Franklin Street.

Her opened window, beside which she lounged in her big Morris chair, let in a heterogeneous clatter of carts and horses’ hoofs, the constant, shrill voices of romping children and the distant melodies of an organ-grinder from a neighboring block, the brisk movements of the Rigoletto, and the long, rolling chords of the Aloha. It was a very satisfactory occupation to sit passively by her window. Beyond and beneath the noise and the music there was a sweet silence of new happiness within her. And her eyes were not seeing the familiar objects of the room, but feasting upon the fresh, open face of Mauney Bard. Out of the air, his clear blue eyes looked into hers. She heard his voice laughing. She saw his eyes, boyish and eager, light with their happy laughter.

After a time she glanced toward her wardrobe and rose impulsively to dress for dinner. While she was finishing the ceremony of donning a new evening dress of rose silk the door opened quietly to admit Gertrude who, after a glance at her bowed smilingly.

“Ah-ha!” she said, very softly, “Doing it _a la grande_, are you?”

“Gertrude,” said Freda, “see if you can get this fastened, will you?”

“I shall be pleased, my dear,” responded the landlady, coming close, “to help you with so charming a frock. Why a dome-fastener should be placed in such an inaccessible position puzzles me considerably. Don’t you want your hair waved a little?”

“Have you really got time to do it up for me?” Freda eagerly asked.

“Sit down, my dear,” purred Mrs. Manton as she placed a towel over Freda’s shoulders and began extracting hairpins. “What a respectable wad you really have. One could do wonders with half of it. Shall I give you that Paris touch I used once before?”

Freda nodded, “Uh, huh! Won’t it be grand?”

“Doubtless,” said Mrs. Manton. “But in the words of Shakespeare, What’s the big idea? Going out for dinner?”

“No.”

“Expecting Mr. Nutbrown Hennigar?”

“No.”

“Pure vanity, I suppose, then.”

“You haven’t guessed yet, Gertrude.”

“You’re a poor person to risk guesses about,” admitted Mrs. Manton, “So you may have the fun of telling me.”

“Well, then,” said Freda, “I’m in love.”

“In love, my dear!” exclaimed the landlady, “With what?”

“A man, Gertrude.”

“Never!” Mrs. Manton shook her head slowly as she stepped in front of Freda to inspect the results of her handicraft. “Do tell me what it’s like,” she implored.

“Well,” said Freda, “you admire the man’s style from the first—his voice, his looks. His boots are polished. His fingernails are clean, and not polished. His tie is carefully knotted, his trousers well in press. You like him, but you’re not in love yet.”

“I should say, not yet,” Gertrude agreed, half cynically.

“Then, whenever you talk with him he has a faculty of understanding you. You don’t have to repeat or explain, Gertrude. You’ve always wanted to talk with people who _get_ you. Isn’t that right?”

“It’s as sure as mud.”

“And then,” continued Freda enthusiastically. “It works the other way, too. You find it easy to understand him. His broadcasting machine is in the same wave-length as your radio-receiver. But even then you’re not in love.”

“Are you quite sure?” enquired Mrs. Manton, teasingly.

“Yes. Listen, Gertrude, to me!” Freda said, as she rose to look down into the sombre face before her. “There are all kinds of attractions and fascinations and mesmerisms that pass for love. But when you have known your man for a long time and feel you can hang on him, trust him, let him steer you, and just want to be right with him all the time—isn’t that love?”

“It sounds suspiciously like it,” smiled Mrs. Manton.

“But you’re not taking me seriously,” Freda objected.

“What do you want me to do—weep? Oh, girl, I could deliver one of the finest speeches on this subject that ever was heard.” Mrs. Manton spoke with decided emphasis, and pointed toward Freda admonishingly. “Remember, my dear, that no man lives that can understand a woman’s nature. They can’t vibrate with us. Good or bad, they don’t need us. Mind you, they think they do. But when the curtain is lifted on the mystery, their fine frenzy dies. What do we do then? We wash dishes three times a day, and listen to a voice in the kitchen fire to find out when they will return to the glorious delirium of their first affections. Then we grow restless. We are off up toward the sky. Then we whizz plumb down like an aeroplane in a nose-dive. We don’t know why we do the things we do. We are in ignorance as to why our love makes us hurt them. In short we are women. They are only men. And a satisfied woman is the rarest work of God!”

During the evening Gertrude gathered her little flock together in the dining room and provided music, dancing and refreshments, as a function in honor of Maxwell Lee’s departure. Not a word was said about his condition. It was all as if nothing had happened. Freda was informed quietly by Mrs. Manton that Mauney was going to Rookland with Max on the morrow and was providing money for his better care while in the sanatorium. He had at first refused his kindly offer, but had finally been persuaded, after three hours’ argument, to accept it. The party broke up early and Freda, after assisting her landlady to wash the dishes, joined Mauney in the drawing room.

It was a rarely happy hour. Freda, accustomed to orthodox methods of love-making, was genuinely refreshed by Mauney’s restraint. Her presence brought a happiness that he could not disguise. It shone in his face. Most men would have told her, of course, that she was looking very beautiful to-night. His omission of the compliment she readily explained by reason of his essentially undemonstrative disposition. Freda, always dramatic by nature, expressed her own feelings by gathering herself neatly upon a cushion at his feet. Mauney sat leaning forward, his arms on his knees, looking down into her face. He scarcely appreciated the real surrender typified by that lowly cushion. But he knew and she knew that a delicious, quivering kind of peace was in the room with them. They talked of many matters for a time.

“If I had _you_,” he said, seriously, at length, “everything would be perfect. I wouldn’t care what happened—”

Her head turned thoughtfully away for a moment, but he soon lifted her face with a finger under her chin.

“Try to _get_ me, won’t you?” he implored. “Try to put yourself in my position. Lee has been the whitest chap to me that ever was. Behind my back as well as to my face. If he had only ever done me one little, mean trick—but he hasn’t. Can you see what a damned predicament I’m in?”

“Yes,” she replied quickly, with an understanding smile that revealed a white gleam between her lips. “I can see it, plain as the paper on that ceiling.”

Mauney whistled softly a snatch of an indefinite tune and made some pretence of keeping time with his heel, while he stared unhappily at the carpet.

“It’s not very nice to be me,” he said.

“It’s your predicament, boy,” she said, “I’m sure you’re able to settle it somehow or other.”

Later, when Freda had gone to her room, she was glad that _her_ lover had a hard problem to solve. She was glad that _her_ lover was capable of such an unusual fidelity; for her innate casuistry had been busy on the situation and had shown her that such a man would make a faithful husband.