CHAPTER XII.

THE ST. LAWRENCE HEARS A DIALOGUE.

The next evening Mauney called at MacDowell’s and had his first encounter with Freda’s father. He found him comfortably seated with a newspaper on the verandah. As Mauney approached, MacDowell’s sharp, black eye surveyed him over the corner of his journal. Then he removed his feet from the low wicker table.

“Good evening, sir,” he said politely, rising and extending his hand. “Come right up. I ought to have met you before, Mr. Bard,” he continued with a mischievous smile, “but better late than not at all. It’s warm, isn’t it? There’s a chair. I don’t know what’s going to happen if it doesn’t soon rain. We usually have a breath of air from the river here, but this last week, I’ve been sweltering.”

“And what has surprised me, Mr. MacDowell,” said Mauney, “is the general impression that Lockwood is such ‘a cool, breezy, summer resort.’”

“So it is,” MacDowell affirmed. “This is exceptional heat. You can go a long piece before you’ll find a town whose situation, general lay-out, and climate can even compare with this wonderful little town.”

“It’s funny, though,” rejoined Mauney, “how many knockers are to be found among its citizens. I’ve been here only a couple of weeks, and I’ve noticed that the lower and middle classes—for I think the divisions are pretty distinct—are constantly fault-finding and grouching.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” MacDowell nodded, while his face reassumed the special enthusiastic expression which he always wore when praising his town. “Let them talk! But I’m going to tell you, Mr. Bard, that this town, out of the whole province, has, without exception, the most brilliant future before it. Some day you’re going to see that river alive with commerce and our harbor crowded with freighters. The population is going to jump up, internal trade will flourish, the community will become permanently prosperous. And all this, once some big industry sees the advantage of locating here. It’s no myth. It’s bound to come.”

Mauney liked the big man for his enthusiasm. He was inspired, as most people were who talked with MacDowell, by a new belief in Lockwood. After all, why should it not grow and prosper and become a city? There was the river, indeed; that great, potential artery of commerce, with its undeveloped water-power. And here was Lockwood, sure enough, strategically situated, and upon the very brink of an undeniably great future. Some personal magnetism of his host had conjured up the vision before him and taught him faith. He felt all at once a deep respect for the masterly man who, at this moment, although unnoticed, was smiling slyly at Mauney’s serious face. MacDowell was at last clear to him: he was remaining in Lockwood because of his faith. He was tied to the old town by invisible bonds of strong affection and belief. Let them talk! Here was an heroic figure, a man of brave judgment and great dreams. Mauney could not have been persuaded, just then, that his hero’s dream was simply a lifelong adoration of Gloria Smith, and that his skilful role was but the disguise of a private loyalty. Later he would learn, perhaps, that MacDowell was, of all municipal students, the most confirmed pessimist, but that would never hinder him from liking the genial man and feeling that in some degree he redeemed Freda’s home from hopeless frigidity.

At last Freda came out of the house, and seemed surprised to see Mauney. While they were talking her father interrupted good-naturedly.

“Look here, you folks, why don’t you take out the canoe for a paddle along the shore?”

“You have a very fertile imagination, Dad,” said Freda.

“Yes,” he agreed dryly, “and a desperate determination not to be ousted from this verandah.”

His suggestion was adopted, and together they crossed the rough tableland to the steps leading down to the boat-house, exchanging not a word as they went.

“I telephoned last night, Freda,” Mauney said as he began to follow her down the steps.

“What time did you ’phone?” she asked, pausing as she reached the first landing.

“I think it was about nine, and your mother said you had gone to a dance.”

Freda stood by the railing, looking away to the river as he reached the landing. She said nothing, but displeasure was written openly on her face. She had been looking forward to making her own confession of the gentle guilt. She had imagined herself saying: “I was a very wayward girl last night, Mauney,” and him listening, thoroughly vexed. But he had spoiled that anticipation by knowing all about it.

“Well,” she said, with a haughty elevation of her brows, “wasn’t that all right?”

“Of course, it was all right, Freda,” he replied. “But I had heard nothing about the dance, you see.”

“Hadn’t you _really_!” she exclaimed with more sarcasm than she felt.

“No,” he replied quietly, but with a puzzled glance at her cheek which, though turned away, was suddenly very red. “I have no authority over what you do, Freda, and even if I had, I wouldn’t use it.”

“I don’t suppose you would, Mauney. I suppose you’d _always_ just let me do as I wanted to.”

“You’re quite right. But I was surprised last night, and a little bit hurt.”

“Well, I knew you would be,” she admitted, turning slightly towards him.

“And I just want to know,” he continued, “if you’re always going to do things that hurt.”

“How do I know?” she retorted, facing him. “If you don’t like things I do, why then, you’ve got to discipline me.”

“Discipline you!” he exclaimed. “Why I hadn’t even thought of disciplining you.”

“Because,” she interrupted without heeding his words, “I don’t know what it is that sometimes plays the devil with me, and I’ve _got_ to be disciplined. I’ve been like a boat without a rudder. My greatest need has been for some one to steer me.”

“Tell me, Freda, who were you with at the dance?”

“Ted Courtney,” she quickly answered.

His eyes opened wide, then grew thoughtful. “Do you mean that he—that Courtney took you to the dance?”

“Yes.”

He was silent a moment, studying the palm of his hand. “But I never dreamed that you even liked him,” he said at length.

“I don’t either, Mauney.”

“I suppose,” he said in a lower tone, as he leaned his hips against the railing and folded his arms on his breast, “I suppose it’s really your business and not mine. Don’t imagine that I’m trying to interfere in your affairs.”

“Oh, goodness, no,” she almost jeered. “I’m afraid there’s not much danger of your ever interfering the least bit! Why, Mauney, I don’t mind if you give me the very devil for going to that dance!”

“Only tell me. Why did you go with Courtney?” he asked with a deliberation that provoked her.

“There are just about forty-seven reasons,” she stated with thin grace. “First, because I knew I shouldn’t, second, because at the time he asked me I was furious with you for not calling me up for a whole week, third because I wanted to do something to relieve my fury.”

“But, I told you,” he interrupted in a quiet, polite tone, “I told you why I didn’t call you up.”

“You told me after I had promised to go to the dance.”

“Yes, but you don’t understand,” he said, gently, taking off his straw hat and turning the rim slowly around between his hands. “It was not the dance. Can’t you understand my feelings?”

“I understand them only too well.” Her dark eyes were now burning almost savagely, and her hands tightly gripping the balustrade. She spoke in an unnaturally restrained tone. “It’s Max Lee, of course, I’ve tried to feel sorry about him being ill. Perhaps I ought to be trying to comfort you. If so—too bad. I’m just being true to my feelings, that’s all. You had to be so thoughtful of that man, didn’t you, Mauney? Had to let him down so very, very easily. You couldn’t let him die like a man, unhappy and miserable, but _like_ a man you had to smooth out his path for him. Even if he did love me, which I doubt, he knew I didn’t love him. What difference did he make anyway? Why allow your care for him to make you slight me? Even if Lee _is_ dying,” she concluded emphatically, “that’s not half as dramatic as it looks. There are other people who are _living_—or trying to!”

“But he’s been _my_ pal, _my_ friend, Freda,” he answered very calmly, “and I’m afraid that you’d have to be a man to quite appreciate my feelings.”

It was nothing apparently. Mauney seemed quite unperturbed. As Freda stood regarding his reposeful figure she wondered what she could possibly do to stir him up. Even rudeness to a dying man—for it was that—had not brought the storm she expected. Even scorn of his solicitude for a dying friend—for her words had been that, too—had failed to budge him an inch. And now he was there before her, leaning against the railing, reflectively flipping his finger at the lining of his hat, as if she had merely remarked upon the brilliance of the sinking sun, or the character of the weather.

“Why don’t you curse me?” she asked presently. “I doubt if you have any feelings. Why don’t you simply kill me for what I said?”

“In the first place,” he smiled, “I don’t think you quite meant it.”

“Oh, but I did,” she affirmed. “I really did.”

“Come on,” he said in a lighter tone, catching her hand and starting down the second flight of steps. “If I were to kill you, Freda MacDowell, it would be a tough little world for me to go on living in.”

“Anyway,” he added, drawing her gently along as she made to grasp the railing. “I certainly did use you rottenly last week. I can see now how you felt, and as for that dance and our friend, Courtney, well—I’m not going to be so miserably jealous any more.”

The edge of Freda’s knife-like mood was dulled a little by his words, and she followed him with a sense of defeat. It was becoming her ambition to see this big fellow angry. Why a woman should desire such a sight, and desire it like a fetish, is one of the obscure phenomena of feminine psychology. To say that anger reveals new qualities of the man is to give but a paltry explanation. During the little canoe journey along under the eastern shore of Lockwood, Freda kept thinking of Gertrude Manton’s apothegm: “We don’t know why our love makes us hurt them. They are only men, but we are women.” But had Gertrude really managed to hurt them? That was the question. If so, unbounded praise! As for herself, Freda was ignobly defeated. The man at whose sure stroke her canoe glided so sleekly under the shadowy cliffs was surely incapable of anger.