II
“Did I drive away a visitor?” asked Walter.
“No—she was through with me. You’re rather a relief.”
Margaret could smile with the most complete friendliness of any woman he had ever seen, thought her visitor. She lifted her head and smiled straight at you. There were no evasions in her way of showing that she was glad to see you. She didn’t hold her gladness as a prize, but made you a straight gift of it. He liked the dress she was wearing—a fawn colored cloth dress that outlined the straight lines of her figure—he liked the way her hair grew away from its boyish side parting with a little curve here and there.
“I think I am a little early,” he said, looking at his watch, “but I thought since I was through at the office I’d come up, and you might be willing to come out for a ride before we dine. It’s just five o’clock.”
“That sounds very nice. Sit down and amuse yourself while I get my hat.”
He obeyed, finding a book which did not seem to interest him at all but which gave him a chance to turn pages while she put on her hat and piled the papers on her desk. She turned to him as she was doing that.
“You spoil me.”
“I’d like to spoil you.”
“Spoil me by treating me like a human being—forgetting that I’m a woman and that you’ve been taught to flatter women.”
“If I do that I can’t remind you that I’m a man and it might be I’d like you to think of that.”
It was very light. Their tones were the perfectly controlled tones of those who have emotions thoroughly in check. But the note of seriousness was there and they were both too wise to pretend that it wasn’t.
“I’m quite ready to go,” said Margaret.
He helped her with her cloak and they went down the stairway. 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. As if in that kind of talk they got most pleasure from each other, as if the subject were inexhaustible.
Walter had told Margaret a great deal about himself and she had listened with interest. Then little by little under that cloak of the impersonal she had told him something of herself, her interest in women. “Not that I idealize them. I don’t. But they are far more interesting than any work—their problems are the biggest in the world.”
“Are you looking for still further concessions?”
“You mustn’t use that word. We’re looking for the truth in the situation. You think because we vote that the game’s up, don’t you? It’s not. If women are ever going to be—women, Mr. Carpenter, they’ve got to develop all the qualities they’ve been letting rot and decay for hundreds of years. A few women have preserved the strength all women should have. But most of them—Do you dream that most of them have an idea of doing any real work—want any real work? Do you think they’re going to give up their security of support without a struggle? They don’t want independence in the majority of cases. They want certain rules relaxed for their convenience. But do you think that basically they want to give up their claim developed through ages as a ‘weaker sex’?”
She stopped, at the little smile in his eyes. “You think I’m as oratorical as Mrs. Thorstad, don’t you?”
“I do not, but I was thinking that it was time we had some dinner.”
They stopped at one of the hotels and maneuvered their way through a crowded, ornate dining-room to a little table on the side of the room, Walter bowing gravely to a great many people as they went along.
“You’re a very solid citizen, aren’t you?” asked Margaret.
“I like solid citizens,” he answered, “are they too on your list of obnoxious people and things?”
“Of course they are not.”
“I was a little worried after that list began developing. I don’t want to be on the list of people you don’t like.”
But it was not until they had finished dinner and were drinking coffee that he developed that thought.
“I wonder if you know how hard you women are making things for men,” he said, not abruptly but as if stating his brief.
“Perhaps it was too easy before.”
“Perhaps. But you make it so difficult—you stand so aggressively strong—so independent of us that we can’t find a thing with which to recommend ourselves. You don’t want our protection—our support—you mistrust our motives.”
“I told you this afternoon that I thought most women did cling to protection and support.”
“Not the women we may want. You don’t want the things I have to offer.”
His tones had hardly raised. In her first moment of embarrassment Margaret fumbled for words but he went on in that same quiet tone.
“I thought it was as well to be frank with you. I couldn’t see that I would gain anything by conventionalities of courtship. And I’m a little old to indulge in certain forms of wooing anyhow. I have never seen any woman I wanted to marry so much. I like your mind. And I mention it first because it is the thing which matters least. I like more than that the way you smile. I would always have the greatest enjoyment from you as a woman of intellect. But the real reason I want you to marry me is because you are a woman of flesh and blood—and all that that means.”
She had flushed a little and as he ended in that controlled way, though for all his control he could not conceal the huskiness in his voice, she leaned forward a little to him, as if in sympathy. But she did not speak. Her eyes fell away from his.
“I care for you just as all men have a way of caring for women, Margaret—I love you very much.”
“I’m a very poor person to love,” she answered, slowly.
“You’re a wonderful person to love. Do you think you could care for me—ever? After you’d trained me a bit?”
“I like you to talk to—to be with as much as any one I’ve ever known,” she said at last. “We’ve had a great deal of sympathy for each other. Of course I guessed you liked me. I rather hoped you wouldn’t love me. Because”—and curiously enough her voice dropped as if in shame, almost to a whisper—“I’m so cold, Walter. I don’t feel things like most women.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Walter, rising abruptly.
But he was unlucky. At the very door they were hailed by a passing automobile and discovered the Flandons, Jerrold Haynes and three other people, had seen them. They were invited to come along to the theater where there were a couple of vacant seats in the boxes the Flandons had taken. It seemed ridiculous to refuse. The play was conspicuously good, it was too cold a night for driving and they all knew that Margaret had no home to which they were going. So, unwillingly, Walter found himself made part of the larger group. For the rest of the evening he heard Margaret arguing with Gage, whom Walter noted, seemed very bitter on the matter of his wife’s discussed entry into politics. He heard Helen say, suddenly and very quietly, after some rather blustering declaration of Gage’s, “If the women want me, I shall go, Gage.” Walter was conscious that there seemed an altercation beneath the surface, that the geniality of relation between Helen and Gage was lessened. For a few minutes he thought Helen was flirting rather badly with that ass of a Jerrold Haynes.
As he took Margaret home she talked at length of sending Helen to the Convention.
“You’ve shelved me, haven’t you?” he asked as they entered the tiny apartment so fragrant with his flowers.
“I didn’t mean to. Come in and we’ll talk about you.”
“About you and me.” He came in, readily.
“I didn’t understand that was what you wanted.”
She did not let him touch her and in the isolation of her room he could not persist. For a while he sat silent and she told him about herself and her lack of feeling. She had fine, clear, experienced phrases to tell of it. Yet she was conscious of making no impression.
“I’ve passed the marrying time,” she said.
“Why?”
“It involves things which have passed me by—that I no longer need.”
“You mean—children?”
“No—I haven’t a lot of sentimental yearnings about them. But of course I would like to have children. There’s an instinct to do one’s duty by the race, in every woman.”
He actually laughed.
“You chilled young woman. Well—what then has passed by you?”
She did not tell him. Perhaps there were no words, no definite thoughts in her own mind. She must have been full of strange inhibitions. Analysis crowded so close on the heels of feeling with her that she never could have the one without the other. All her study, her watching of men, all her study and analysis of women had made her mind a laboratory with her own emotions for victims of analysis.
Gregory had told her that in that sprawlingly written letter, now in the post office, being sent back to her from Mrs. Thorstad.
Gregory held her thought for a moment. Then she looked at Walter with fresh appreciation. She liked to be with Walter. He didn’t oppress her. His mind met hers without pushing. She felt protected in his companionship from that rude forcing of emotion which had been so hard on her.
He was going now. At the door he held her hand.
“I could be very good to you,” he said, quietly. “Let me try.”