By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
THE clock struck midnight, but Mrs. Fremby did not even glance up from her work. She had an old skirt, stretched over the transom, so that the landlady could not see that the light was still on. The door was locked. She was safe, and very snug.
Outside, a preposterous storm raged. It was almost the beginning of April, yet it snowed, and the wind howled. Let it! Mrs. Fremby had a forbidden electric heater glowing richly before her. It could not warm the vast and dingy front parlor that she inhabited, but it could and did keep her feet warm. The flame of righteous indignation in her heart helped, too, as she wrote:
At last the American woman has definitely rebelled. She refuses any longer to accept unquestioned the dictates of Paris as to what she shall or shall not wear. This season it is plain to any impartial observer that the influence of the French capital is distinctly on the wane.
Heavens, how she hated Paris! For years and years she had been fighting its insidious influence upon American modes. Even when, in order to earn her daily bread, she was obliged to describe what milady had worn at the Longchamp races, she always managed to get in some clever bit of propaganda—something like this, for instance:
A certain American woman of unimpeachable social standing attracted considerable attention by her costume of this and that, made in New York, and showing in every line a skillful adaptation to the American type.
What if this independent American woman of unimpeachable standing was an invention of Mrs. Fremby’s? Never having been within thousands of miles of Longchamp, she was obliged to invent a little, and this mythical creature was very real to her, and dear. She could absolutely see that “American type,” tall, proud, and beautiful, completely dominating all the Parisiennes.
Mrs. Fremby herself was small. That was her misfortune; but she made the most of herself. Even now, in an old and faded dressing gown, she was a mighty smart, trim little woman, and, if she was not pretty, she had the wit to know it, and to behave accordingly. Her good points were her miniature figure, which was excellent, and her crown of glittering, wiry red hair, which she arranged with much skill. The very foundation of style, she often said, was individuality, and she had it.
“The modes of this season will be marked by—” she was writing, when there was a knock at the door.
Mrs. Fremby got up. Swiftly and noiselessly she detached the heater and thrust it, still red-hot, into a cupboard under the washstand. Then, with a lofty expression of annoyance, she went to open the door; but it was not the landlady—it was Judith Cane.