“You never——” Anthony stopped the car and put a quick arm about her shoulders. “What a damned shame! Just rest—just forget it.”
From that night they were closer comrades than ever before. And it was during the weeks that followed that Horatia found herself writing less and less to Jim. It was very hard to write. She couldn’t put all she wanted to say in one letter and she didn’t know whether he would understand all the things she was thinking unless she wrote him very fully. That could all come later, she told herself—now she wanted strength and calmness. Nothing, according to Marjorie Clapp, was so worth while as strength and health. And more and more she found Marjorie and Anthony establishing standards by which she measured life.
They were so sure, and yet not sure as Maud was sure—with aggressiveness and assertiveness. They did not try to decide everything for everyone and they were slow of condemnation in most respects and rather open to new beliefs.
“Have you no imperfections?” wailed Horatia to Marjorie.
Marjorie stared at her. “What have I been assuming?” she asked in horror. “What sort of prig——”
“It’s because you don’t assume. Because you are modern without bragging of it and conservative when it is for the safety of things. Because you are actually getting somewhere.”
“Well,” said Marjorie, “one of my imperfections is that I fairly soak in such talk about myself. I’ve been through the mill, Horatia. I’ve wondered and puzzled and hated being called a reactionary. There was a time when bobbing my hair and taking a lover instead of a husband seemed the brave thing to do. And then I decided that it wasn’t, after all. That it was my fear of being called stupid and not my conviction of what was progress that was holding me back from the commonplaces of being a wife and mother. Inwardly I approved of lots of things and outwardly I was afraid to give in to them for fear of being ordinary. But I’m sure now. I’ve burned my bridges. I want to give my children the best of the old régime. The new régime will unavoidably make advances to them and they may accept a lot of them. That’s all right too—the old and the new make a fine blend. And I try to keep in touch with things so nothing will shock or frighten me. Why are you so worried?”
“I’m not really, just now. I’m as content as a cat. But I suppose I ought to know where I stand and as a matter of fact I don’t. I ought to know what people I want to run with. I’ve seen a lot of kinds. And I don’t really fit in anywhere. Someone told me that I was only fit to do lip service to modernism, the other day. That bothered me. I had taken it for granted that I was a modern. It seemed indecent not to be.”
“But you are. Anyone who sees you knows that you are carrying on into the future.”
“This person didn’t think so.” And for the second time, omitting her personal connection, Horatia told Grace’s story.