III
“You know,” said Cele Nesbitt to Freda, “I think Mr. Flandon acts kind of queer, don’t you?”
“He’s tired, probably,” she told Cele.
“Doesn’t look tired. He seems so excited. I thought he and old Sable must be having a row. I went into Sable’s office with some papers to-day and there they were glowering at each other and mum as oysters all the time I was in the room. They don’t stop talking business when I’m around.”
“Well, don’t worry about them,” answered Freda, “Mr. Flandon is the kindest person I know and there’s something wrong with people who can’t agree with him.”
“Hate him, don’t you?” Cele teased her. “Isn’t it a pity he’s married. And such a stunning wife and children. Did you see her picture on Sunday? She ought to be in the movies instead of politics with that hair.”
Except for Margaret Freda saw only one other person at very close range. That was Gage’s stenographer, Cecilla Nesbitt, commonly known as Cele. Cele was a joyous soul who had taken a liking to Freda and shortly invited her to come home for dinner. Freda had gone and been made happy and intimate at once. There were all the traces of the cottage that the Nesbitts had before they moved to St. Pierre—old rattan rocking chairs and scroll topped beds. Over everything, invading everything was the Church. There was a little holy water font inside the door, there were pictures and holy cards framed and unframed everywhere, crucifixes over the beds, holy pictures in the bureau frames and rosaries on the bed posts. To Freda in her sparsely religious home, God had been a matter of church on Sunday and not much more than that except a Bible for reference and a general astronomical warder at the enormity of God’s achievements. This difference—this delightful easy intimacy with God was all fascinating. This was the comfort of religion, religion by your bedside and at your table. She expanded under it. There was a plenitude of Nesbitts, sleeping rather thickly in the four bedrooms—two brothers, young men of twenty or thereabouts—there was Cele after them and then two younger girls of ten and thirteen and stepping rapidly downward the twins of nine, Mrs. Nesbitt having finished her family with a climax, especially as the twins were boys and made up for being altar boys on Sunday by being far from holy on all other occasions. Still their serving of Mass endowed them in the eyes of Mrs. Nesbitt with peculiar virtues. She had a gently conciliatory Irish way towards her sons rather different from her tone to her daughters. Freda contrasted it with some amusement with the cold classicism of Margaret’s attitude. To Mrs. Nesbitt they were obviously slightly inferior in the sight of God and man, being female, to be cherished indeed, frail perhaps, and yet not made in the exact image of the Creator.
They were headed for the Nesbitt flat. Freda had no letter from Gregory, had had none for two days and her heart felt as if it were thickening and sinking. She would not let it be so. She set to work to make herself interested. She would not mope. It was not in her to mope. But she did not know where Gregory was, for his last letter had said he was waiting advice from the bureau—one of his talks having been cancelled—and that he didn’t know where he would go now. It did not make her worried or nervous but she had been drugging her emotions with his letters and the sudden deprivation hurt her cruelly. So she was going home with Cele to forget it.
They got on the street car and hung from their straps with the nonchalance of working girls who have no hopes or wishes that men will give up their seats to them, their attitude strangely different from that of some of the women, obviously middle class housewives, who commandeered seats with searching, disapproving, nagging eyes. Freda loved this time of day—the sense of being with people all going to their places of living, fraught with mystery and possibility. Her spirits rose. She was not thinking sadly of Gregory. She thought of how her intimate thought and knowledge of him reached out, over her unfamiliarity with these others, touching him wherever he was, in some place unknown to her. The thought put new vigor into her loneliness.
It was an oppressively hot evening for June. They climbed the three flights to the Nesbitt flat with diminishing energy and Cele sank on one of the living-room chairs in exhaustion as she went in.
“Hot as hell,” she breathed. “Let’s sit down a minute before we wash, Freda.”
Freda took off her hat and brushed her hair back with her hand.
“Pretty hot all right. Bad weather for dispositions.”
“My idea of this kind of weather is that it’s preparation for the hereafter.”
Mrs. Nesbitt opened the door to the kitchen and hot heavy smells from the cooking food came through to the girls. But Mrs. Nesbitt herself, mopping great hanging drops of sweat from her forehead, was serene enough. She shook hands with Freda with vast smiling cordiality.
“You’re as cool looking as the dawn,” she said to her. “Are you tired, dear?”
“Not a bit.”
“There’s a little droop to your eyes, dear. I thought maybe it was bad news now.”
Freda had a sudden impulse to confidence, a leap of the mind towards it. But she drew back.
“No—not bad news at all.”
“Your mother and father’s well?”
“My mother is coming to see me for a few days, I think. She’s going to Chicago for the Convention for the clubs and she’ll come back this way to see me.”
“Now, isn’t that the blessing for you,” said Mrs. Nesbitt rejoicingly.
The family streamed in, the boys from their work and the twins from school. Last came Mr. Nesbitt, his tin lunch pail in his hand, his feet dragging with weariness. They talked of the heat, all of them, making it even more oppressive than it was by their inability to escape the thought of it. And Mrs. Nesbitt who knew nothing of salads and iced tea, or such hot weather reliefs stirred the flour for her gravy and set the steaming pot roast before her husband. They ate heavily. Freda tried to keep her mind on what she was doing. She talked to the boys and let Mrs. Nesbitt press more food on her unwilling appetite. It was very unwilling. She did not want to eat. She wanted to sit down and close her eyes and forget food and heat and everything else—except Gregory.
Vaguely she was aware of Mr. Nesbitt talking.
“It was in the paper and no more stir made of it than if a stray dog was run over by an automobile—shot down they were, martyrs to Ireland.” His voice was oratorical, funereal, heavy with resentment.
“Who?” asked Freda.
“Fine young Irishmen with the grace of God in their hearts shot down by the hired wastrels of the Tyrants. Gentlemen and patriots.”
“What an outrage it is,” she answered.
He burst into invective at her sympathy, rolling his mighty syllabled words in denunciation, and his family sat around and listened in agreement yet in amusement.
“Come now, pop, you’ll be going back, if you get as hot under your shirt as all that,” said Mike.
“It’s too hot for excitement, pa,” Mrs. Nesbitt contributed equably. “Pass him the mustard, do you, Cele.”
“I’ll show you a true account of it in The Irish News,” said Mr. Nesbitt, to Freda, ignoring his family.
He wiped his mouth noisily and abandoned the table, coming back to press into Freda’s hands his Irish News, a little out of fold with much handling.
“The city papers tell you nothing but lies,” he said, “read this.”
To please him, Freda read. She read the account of the shooting of three young men poets and patriots, whose names struck her as familiar. And then she read:
“These young martyrs were part of the group who banded together for restoration of the Gaelic tongue to Ireland. They with Seumas, McDermitt and Gregory Macmillan now on tour in this country—”
She read it again. It gave her a sense of wonder to come on his name here, his name so secretly dear, in this cold print. And then came more than that. This was Gregory—her Gregory who might have been killed too if he had been there—who might be killed when he returned to Ireland. She didn’t know where he was. Perhaps—perhaps he had heard of this and gone back. Perhaps he had forgotten, forgotten about her—about them. This was so big—
She had to take her thought away from the presence of all these people. She wanted to con it over—she must get away. Suddenly she stood up and the heat and distaste for food—the accurate sight of a piece of brown stringy meat, embedded in lifeless gravy, sickened her. She pressed her hand before her eyes and swayed a little.
Mrs. Nesbitt jumped up with Cele.
“She’s sick—poor dear. The heat now has quite overcome her.”
They helped her into the least hot of the little bedrooms and she found herself very sick—nauseated—chilled even while she was conscious of the heat that oppressed while it did not warm her. The family was all astir. Mr. Nesbitt underwent censure for having bothered her. But when Freda, apologetic and recovered, went home on Mike’s arm, getting the first breath of air which came as a relief to the hot city, Mrs. Nesbitt came into the room where Cele hung half out of the window trying to catch the breeze.
“Sick she was, poor thing.”
“Rotten heat got her. She’s not used to working, either, I think. She felt a lot better. Her stomach got upset too.”
Mrs. Nesbitt pressed her lips together.
“It was a funny way she was taken. If she was a married woman I should have said the cause was not the heat.”
“Huh?” said Cele, pulling herself in. “What’s that you mean?”
“I mean nothing,” said Mrs. Nesbitt. “Nothing at all. Only I would have you always be sure to make sure your friends are good girls, my darlin’. Mind ye, I say nothing against the young lady. But she’s a pretty and dangerous face and she’s away from her home where by rights should every girl be.”