Invincible Minnie

At last they were alone in the bedroom. Minnie had just locked the door when Frances sprang at her, caught her in a tight embrace, and whispered:

“Minnie!”

“What?” asked Minnie sharply.

“Minnie!... I’m engaged!”

Minnie gasped.

“Why, Frankie!” she cried. “How on earth!...”

“Oh, darling, I’ve been longing to tell you!... I’m so happy! If you only knew him, Minnie! You couldn’t help liking him. There’s something about him.... He’s so dear and boyish——”

“Who is he?” Minnie asked.

“He’s an Englishman. Very nice family, and all that. The nicest manners. And I consider him really handsome. Just the type we’ve always liked, Minnie.”

It occurred to Frances that Minnie was not so enthusiastic as the occasion warranted. She felt a sudden fear that Minnie was jealous, felt herself neglected.

“We’ve talked so much about you,” she hurried on. “You’re going to live with us after we’re married, and we’re going to do everything to make you happy. I told Lionel what a little brick you were, slaving away here, and he said he knew he’d love you. And, oh, Minnie, you’re sure to love him!”

Instead of answering Minnie got up and went to the window, stood there, staring out at the fields.

“Minnie!” cried her sister, “Please, Minnie, darling, say you’re glad!”

“I am,” said Minnie, keeping her back turned, “I’m very glad you’re so happy.”

“Please you be happy too! I’m going to make Lionel write to you the instant I get back.”

“Frankie,” said Minnie, “you’re not going back.”

There was something unmistakably sinister in her voice now; Frances looked at her nervously.

“What on earth do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean just what I say. You’re not going back to New York. I’m going and you’ll have to stay here.”

“But what ... Minnie, what nonsense! I have my job and Lionel....”

“They’ll have to get on without you,” said Minnie.

“You’re crazy!” said her sister. “What would you do in New York? And who’ll take care of Grandma?”

“You.”

“I shouldn’t dream of giving up my job.”

“You’ll have to. I tell you, Frankie, I’m going to have my turn. I’ve stopped here a whole year while you’ve been in the city and I’m sick and tired of it. I’m through. I’m going!”

“You can’t be such a beast. After I’ve just told you about Lionel.”

“He can come out here to see you.”

“He can’t. He’s too poor. He couldn’t pay the fare.”

“Then you’d better not bother about him. You certainly couldn’t marry him if he’s as poor as that.”

“Minnie, please be reasonable. I’ll just go back for a few weeks——”

“You shan’t go back at all.”

“I will! I won’t give in to your nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense; it’s justice. You’ve had a year and now I’m going to have a year. You didn’t care whether or not I wanted you to go, and now I don’t care whether you want me to go or not. I’m going.”

Frances smiled scornfully.

“I’ll go back as usual,” she said.

“Oh, will you! I’ve got a nice place myself.”

“I don’t believe it! What sort of place?”

“I’m going to be Aunt Irene’s companion,” she said calmly, “And I’m going to get just as much as you’re getting.”

They fought it out passionately, forgot their dignity, forgot their love, raised their voices until the poor old lady at the end of the corridor heard them. They cried, too, tears of anger and hysteria; at last, from sheer exhaustion they fell asleep side by side in the bed they had slept in together for so many nights in harmony and affection, fell asleep hating each other, each utterly resolved upon her own way.

VII

But Minnie conquered. When Frances woke up, she found herself alone. Minnie had left a note on the pillow.

BOOK TWO: FRANKIE’S BRIEF DAY

CHAPTER NINE

“I can’t tell you—just now, anyway.”

Frances dried her eyes and looked at her grandmother with a new look, hard and clear.

“You’ll have to make out alone for a few hours,” she said, “I’ve got to go in on that four-eight train. I’ll be back some time to-night.”

She went into her room and, closing the door, flung herself down on the creaking bed, not to cry, but to think, to plan for him. All morning the breakfast dishes were unwashed, the beds unmade, nothing touched in the house. It was noon when a curious sound startled Frankie. She fancied she heard a step in the passage.

She flung open the door, to see a poor, trembling little figure come out of her grandmother’s room.

“Grandma!” she shrieked, and flew to catch her and half carry her back to her bed, reproaching her bitterly, tenderly, while she got her clothes off. She noticed with intolerable remorse how clumsily the things were put on and the scanty hair twisted up.

“Grandma,” she cried. “You know you shouldn’t! Suppose you had slipped! It was dreadful of you!”

She saw to her horror that there were tears in the poor thing’s eyes and her feeble voice quavered.

“Frances,” she said, “I couldn’t stand it. Both of you going off ... neither of you wanting to stay with me.... I felt I didn’t care what happened to me.... And——” she broke into a weak little sob as she came to her last and worst grief, “one o’clock and the house not touched! I just couldn’t lie abed any longer!”

“No, Granny dear, I know! I’ll do everything right away. Only lie down and rest, won’t you? I’ll do everything before I go.”

The old lady patted her hand.

“Won’t you ask Sally Washington to sit in the kitchen while you’re gone?” she asked. “I’m so nervous about fire.”

Frankie hurried across to the cottage, but Sally couldn’t come; she was sick in bed and there was no one available but young Norman Washington, aged nine, who was guaranteed by his mother to be trustworthy.

The old lady, however, rejected him.

“Worse than no one!” she cried. “A boy! He’ll eat up all my preserves. And goodness knows what he’ll break.”

It also occurred to her that he was quite likely, in his quality as boy, to set fire to the house; in fact, as she considered it longer, she declared it certain that he would do so.

She was in a pitifully nervous state. She entreated Frances to dress her again and help her downstairs, so that she could wait there, where, in case of fire, she could manage somehow to get out. She couldn’t eat anything for lunch. She sat propped up in bed, her trembling fingers moving ceaselessly, her watery eyes staring vacantly, in dim anxiety, consumed with dread, with the horror of her own helplessness. As she passed by the door, Frances could see her there, each time more intolerably pitiful. Until, one time, she saw her press her poor, clawlike hand against her mouth.... Somehow that decided Frances; she couldn’t leave her; couldn’t endure the idea of her alone there until two in the morning, when the last train would have brought her back. No; she couldn’t go. She went into the room, hard and brusque again.

“I won’t go to the city,” she said. “I’ll just harness up Bess somehow and go to the village and send a telegram.”

All over—all finished. She knew it. She had no hope, no illusion about the matter, only the certainty that her terribly brief time of happiness was done.

II

Happiness which existed now only in her memory, in time to grow incredible even there....

One year!

She remembered very well when she had made that first visit to Miss Eppendorfer. She had never before been alone in New York, didn’t know how to find the address, had to ask one policeman after another, and try in a sort of agony to comprehend the directions they gave. And when she had arrived, her terror of the unknown city was supplanted by a worse one; suppose she didn’t get the job, that the authoress didn’t like her, and she had to return home, shamefully defeated.

She had plenty of time to contemplate this, waiting in the sitting-room of Miss Eppendorfer’s flat. An insolent coloured girl showed her in and left her there without a word. She was almost ill from nervousness; she watched the door without stirring for fifteen minutes or so, then, when no one came, grew bold enough to look about her. It was a small and rather dark room, furnished in a style new to her—the ubiquitous Mission style. Little square chairs of imitation weathered oak, with imitation leather seats, studded with gilt nails, fit for an authoress from the Middle West to sit in while she laughed indulgently at Victorian mahogany. Mock austerity, mock simplicity, a crowd of cheap and monotonous stuff, all square and squat; plain curtains, bookcases with sets of books selected always by authorities, and never by the owner. Replica of a thousand rooms, mirror of a thousand souls, a room which signified and expressed nothing. It was the first cheaply-furnished room Frances had ever entered, and she was innocently impressed with it. The good taste she possessed was not innate, it was traditional; she wasn’t able to judge the unknown.

The mistress of all this came in an hour late. She was a thin, blonde woman with hollow cheeks and a sweet, sweet smile; she hurried forward, holding out both hands with a profuse cordiality that surprised Frances.

“Is this the little country girl who’s going to do so much for me?”

Blushing but courageous, Frances made some sort of answer, her candid eyes fixed on the face before her. If she hadn’t known, she might have thought that this haggard woman with bleached hair was “not quite nice.” But she knew that her rural standards couldn’t be applied everywhere. She wasn’t a bumpkin....

“Sit down,” Miss Eppendorfer invited, “and we’ll have tea while we chat.”

It was the first time Frances had ever had tea; it was an institution as yet unknown in the suburbs during her girlhood, and utterly undeveloped in Brownsville Landing; there, when one had guests in the afternoon, they were splendidly served with lemonade and good cake. Tea and toast would have been almost an insult.

The authoress had to fetch everything herself from the kitchen.

“I don’t dare to disturb that black wretch,” she whispered to Frances. “She’s only looking for an excuse to go, and then where shall I be? I couldn’t boil an egg, could you?”

Frances said that she could.

“Well, my dear,” said the authoress, when she had got her samovar started, “tell me about yourself.”

But she didn’t need much telling; aside from the letter she had had from the librarian in Brownsville Landing, she could see in one shrewd glance that Frances would “do”; was able to realise, as only an imitation could, how honest, how genuine was this girl.

She engaged her then and there, said she was “strangely attracted” by her. And urged her to take up her duties at once.

“Send home for your things,” she advised, “and settle right down to-night in your comfy little room. That’s the way I always like to do things—on the spur of the moment.”

“I’d like to, but I couldn’t. They’d worry at home.”

“Send a telegram, honey,” Miss Eppendorfer suggested.

It was her first telegram, too, and it gave her a delightful sense of adventure, and of defiance, for she knew that Minnie would disapprove.

Miss Eppendorfer opened the door of a tiny room, which, she said, was to be Frankie’s “very own.”

“Isn’t it dear?” she asked. “I think I must have known when I furnished it, that someone just like you was coming to me some day. It expresses you, don’t you think so?”

At first Frances thought it a delightful room, furnished all in wicker even to the bed and decorated in gay chintz; there were candles on the dressing table with rose-covered shades which at once took her eye, and a brocade glove box. She felt that she would be tremendously happy in such a nest.

And then, as she laid her hat on the bed, she was startled, dismayed, at the sight of the pillow-cases. Suspicions aroused, her glance travelled from corner to corner, and she apprehended the appalling griminess of the place. Griminess not confined to this room of “her very own,” as she was soon to discover.

She had turned back the lace-trimmed chintz bedspread and was suspiciously examining the sheets when Miss Eppendorfer came in again with a filmy nightdress decorated with pale green ribbons, a boudoir cap and an elaborate negligee.

“Put these on now and be comfy,” she urged, “and we’ll have a nice little supper, all alone together.”

She herself had got into a lace tea-gown over a torn lace petticoat and quilted satin slippers which weren’t high enough to hide the holes in her stockings....

“Thank you,” said Frances, “but I’m quite comfortable as I am.”

She felt that her neat linen blouse and dark skirt gave her a sort of advantage; anyway she couldn’t have gone trailing about in a wrapper, she wasn’t that sort.

Disillusionment progressed rapidly. She sat down at the supper table, hungry and curious, and disposed to be charitable; but the dirtiness of the tablecloth was flagrant and her napkin had obviously been used before. And her glass had a milky ring inside it.... She was not over-fastidious, or inclined to give great importance to domestic matters, but she had a genuine passion for cleanliness. She couldn’t help being disgusted. Still, she reflected, it was no doubt all due to the scornful coloured girl, and she consoled herself by thinking that perhaps, when not engaged in literary work, she could look after things a bit.

She put on the ribbon-trimmed nightdress and went to sleep between the dubious sheets, a little homesick for the big, airy bedroom where Minnie was lying, and the darkness and the quiet. Her window opened on to a court; she could hear voices talking and phonographs playing, and the light from Miss Eppendorfer’s room shone under her door and disturbed her. She couldn’t compose herself, she was excited and confused, and imagined that she lay awake for hours.

Miss Eppendorfer came in to wake her up the next morning, in a state of great excitement, still wearing the trailing tea-gown. She told Frankie that the coloured girl had gone; and she related a long story of wrongs and grievances; the girl drank, lied, pilfered, was even engaged in complicated plots against one of the best and kindest mistresses extant. Miss Eppendorfer gave a list of her benefactions: a pink hat, a dotted veil, blouses, shoes, and still——!

“She used to say all sorts of things about me over the telephone, if anyone rang up when I was out. And, my dear, the things she told that hall-boy!”

Frankie pitied her distress and was eager to soothe her excitement.

“Never mind!” she said, “We’ll find another. And now wouldn’t you like me to make a cup of coffee for you?”

“Oh, I would, my dear! I’m no good till I’ve had my coffee, and I can’t make it decently myself.”

She sat down on the bed, and though Frances waited impatiently for a chance to get up, she showed no signs of moving. Nothing could have induced Frankie to dress in her presence. A faint annoyance crept over her. She got out of bed on the other side, gathered up her clothes and went into the bathroom, with a brusque excuse.

She came out, stiffer and straighter than ever, and went into the tiny kitchen to make the coffee. It was the filthiest place; roaches running over everything, grease, dust, crumbs.

“That girl was a very poor servant,” she said severely.

Miss Eppendorfer was sitting on a corner of the table, swinging her slippered feet.

“I spoil them,” she said. “I’m too good to them. And then I don’t keep after them. You have to, if you want anything done.... But with my writing, of course I can’t keep my mind on that sort of thing very well.”

She praised the coffee extravagantly, and, as she drank it, explained to Frankie that she was very, very nervous, and that a scene such as she had had with that dreadful girl upset her beyond measure. Frances noticed her trembling hands, her quick breath, and accepted this nervousness, and, in her competent way, went about making her comfortable.

They had a rather pleasant day together. The hall-boy was sent to fetch “Jennie” who had often before come to fill in gaps, and while she was creaking and wheezing, scrubbing and mopping her faithful way round the flat, the authoress lay on a sofa and talked to Frankie. She told her about her work, which so far consisted of three short stories and two very successful novels.

“But I’m really only beginning,” she said.

(Frances thought privately that she was rather old for any sort of beginning.)

Her latest book was called “The Lonely Woman.” She gave a copy to Frances and begged for a candid opinion after she had read it.

“But I’m not a judge,” Frances told her earnestly, “I don’t know anything about literature. Only that I love books and reading.”

“My dear,” said Miss Eppendorfer, “I saw at once how sensible and level-headed you were. I want your opinion!”

Noon came. Miss Eppendorfer sighed as the clock struck.

“I do not feel equal to going out,” she said, “I’d rather do without lunch. Of course, there’s plenty in the house, but Jennie can’t cook a thing.”

Frances was quite willing to get a lunch ready, and to bring it on a tray to the nervous authoress. Also tea and supper. Otherwise there was nothing to do but sit and talk.

III

Frances would have found it difficult to explain what her secretarial duties were during that year. Principally to go with Miss Eppendorfer everywhere that she went—to the shops, the bank, the dentist. She was too nervous to go out alone; she wouldn’t stir without her “little pal”; and, as far as Frances could see, she had no other friends. There were a few people who telephoned, and who very rarely dropped in to see her, but she never got invitations of any sort. It puzzled Frances; she could see no reason why Miss Eppendorfer shouldn’t be popular; in the first place, she was a quite successful writer, which should have brought some sort of fame, and in the second place, she had an excellent disposition. They lived together, all day and every day, month after month, those two women, without a sharp or a violent word, with the exception of the two famous Scenes, to be described later. And these didn’t exactly count, for the authoress was not altogether responsible, altogether herself then.... Of course, there were times when relations were a bit strained, but not often. And the remarkable, the admirable thing was, that they were not congenial, not in any way suited to each other; it was simply their common kindliness and good temper that so preserved harmony.

Lack of friends was not the only point to puzzle Frankie; there were other mysteries. It was a long time before she could understand Miss Eppendorfer, or appraise her with any justice. At first she saw much to disgust her. The slatternliness, above all, the shameless lack of pride. She used to look across the supper table at the pallid, faded blonde creature, with uncombed hair, still dressed in a wrapper over her nightdress, and wonder how, how ...! Even this, though, she learned to condone when she saw that it sprang not so much from neglect as from awful weariness. The poor soul was either hectic with excitement, flying from shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant, taking every meal away from home for perhaps a week, or else she couldn’t make up her mind even to walk round the corner for a breath of air, would stay shut up in the flat for days. She dressed well enough when she went out; she spent money lavishly on her clothes and wore them with a conspicuous and rather vulgar sort of style, but she didn’t really care; had no sort of decent pride in her body. Didn’t trouble much about cleanliness, for instance.

Her book, too, was a shock to Frances. It was the story of a woman living on the prairies—the Lonely Woman—alone with a stolid husband; then a young clergyman stopped there on his way somewhere, and chapter after chapter recounted the wiles, the lures of the lonely woman to rouse his passion, to destroy his honour. In the end she got him, triumphed for a few lurid days, and then tried to run away with him. But they were overtaken by a blizzard and died, frozen to death. The pursuing husband saw them, sitting clasped in each other’s arms, and shot them, not knowing that they were already dead, and then gave himself up to the police and was hanged. It was what her publishers called “palpitating”—very. Nothing was left to the imagination.

Frances thought it awful; she hadn’t been trained to see the poetry in lust. All she could say in praise was that the prairie scenes seemed very true to life, and Miss Eppendorfer assured her that they were.

“I’ve lived out there,” she said. She often told scraps of her past life, but they wouldn’t piece together; sometimes one story directly contradicted another. She had been married, sometimes she said once, sometimes twice, and her husband—or first husband—had been “unspeakable.” She had divorced him, or he her. Sometimes she described her childhood as ideally happy, her parents as wealthy and indulgent; then, once, she told Frances she was the daughter of a wretched woman who had lived with a worker in the Chicago stockyards. Yet all this didn’t impress Frances as lying; it was too vague, too aimless; she couldn’t help a stupid feeling that Miss Eppendorfer didn’t know exactly what had happened to her. Which was of course absurd.... And she was sure that the stories which told of want, pain, and struggle were the true ones, that the poor woman had suffered.

Talent she undoubtedly possessed. Although Frances detested the persistent fleshliness of her stories, she had a generous admiration for the gift itself. She would watch her writing, almost with awe, wondering where the ideas came from, from what unfathomable reservoir she drew so easily. She had no style, little art, couldn’t even use the language properly; simply she put on paper the visions of her curious mind. She sometimes used to cry as she wrote. And, although her books were oversensual, her talk wasn’t. She avoided those topics which distressed the austere Frances.

IV

It was not for six months that Frances got her first clue to this baffling creature. She tried to study her, to understand her, why she had no friends, no “circle” such as she had imagined literary people always had, why she was sometimes so slovenly, sometimes so extravagantly dressed, why sometimes she couldn’t bear to go out, and sometimes couldn’t endure staying at home.

It was after one of her infrequent visits home. Miss Eppendorfer hated to let her go, and would never go out during her absence, which naturally used to distress Frankie and cause her to cut her time at home unduly short. She did everything possible before leaving, and always saw to it that Jennie was there, under a solemn promise not to leave for a minute until she got back; then with soothing assurances, as if Miss Eppendorfer were a very nervous child, she would pack her bag and hurry off, oppressed and serious, worrying over the household she had left.

This time, when she came back, Jennie didn’t answer the bell. She rang again and again, but couldn’t hear a sound. Then she questioned the hall-boy and he told her Jennie had left that morning, but that Miss Eppendorfer was at home.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” he said, with a grin.

Frances turned white, remembering all the stories she had read of suicides and murders.

“Isn’t there any way I can get in?” she cried.

The boy leisurely suggested going to the flat below and asking leave to go up through the fire escape. He didn’t offer to do it for her; he was, on the contrary, as indifferent, as contemptuous as he could well be.

Fortunately the window on the fire escape was open and Frances got in without difficulty. And rushed into Miss Eppendorfer’s room.

She was asleep, her mouth open, her hair in her eyes, lying on the outside of the bed with no covering but a gauzy nightdress. The room was full of a smell unfamiliar to Frances, but she surmised, even before she saw the empty bottle.

Whiskey.

Somehow she got the poor thing warmly and decently covered up and the horrible littered room tidied. Then she went into her own room and sank into a chair, for her knees would support her no longer. She couldn’t think about it, her intelligence seemed to have fled, to be suspended, waiting. She was conscious of nothing but horror and a reluctant and painful compassion. She felt that now, after this, she could never, never leave Miss Eppendorfer.

CHAPTER TEN

Curious that Frances should find herself so placed, Frances who had been brought up to regard drunkenness in a man as a bestial crime, and in a woman, a thing almost impossibly awful. She sometimes wondered at herself, how was it that she didn’t blame Miss Eppendorfer, but looked upon her failing as if it were a disease? She felt herself very old, very experienced. In spite of her pity and real unhappiness over the thing, there was in it a deep, secret satisfaction; it was, she felt, Knowledge, Life; she was learning, developing. She had so far, far outgrown Minnie and her grandmother and their standards! She was tolerant, worldly-wise; there wasn’t, she believed, much more for her to learn....

The future rather worried her. This couldn’t last forever, and after this, what? She was not gaining experience that would be of any practical value to her in any other position. She was not able to save money; at the end of six months she found herself no better off than when her career had begun. And she was so ambitious, so passionately anxious to succeed, to be important and famous. She gave her problem much serious thought. One thing was certain; she couldn’t and wouldn’t leave Miss Eppendorfer under the present circumstances; the only thing was for her to prepare herself, to be ready for something better when there was a change of some sort. She presented her scheme to Miss Eppendorfer as tactfully as possible.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “if I knew how to type better and faster, and something of shorthand, I’d be ever so much more useful ... to you, and—and in general ... I wrote to a business school near here, and I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a course there in shorthand and typing. Three evenings a week, from seven to nine.”

But Miss Eppendorfer protested, begged her to put it off and not to leave her so much alone. She was afraid of this plan, afraid that she would, by it, lose this girl she so much needed.

“Just wait a month, dear, won’t you? Till the days are longer?”

It seemed an idiotic reason to Frances, and she looked obstinate.

“Perhaps I could take the course with you,” Miss Eppendorfer suggested, “I think I’d enjoy it.”

That idea didn’t please Frankie at all; the thought of going to school with anyone of Miss Eppendorfer’s age, appearance and temperament was appalling. She imagined what people would say—how they would be ridiculed. She was obliged to postpone the plan for a time, until she could think of a different way of presenting it....

Chance gave her an opportunity very soon. One morning the telephone rang, in itself a rare happening, and she hurried to answer it, as the authoress was asleep.

“Is this Miss Eppendorfer?” enquired a high, loud voice with an exaggerated London accent. “Oh, her secretary! Very well! You will please to tell Miss Eppendorfer that her cousin Kurt Hassler from Hamburg is here, and would like to call.”

“She’s not awake yet,” Frances explained, “but if you’ll leave your number——”

“The Ritz,” he replied haughtily. “Find it in the telephone directory. I am here until one.”

She had scarcely replaced the receiver when Miss Eppendorfer opened the door of her room and stood smiling absent-mindedly at her.

“I thought I heard the telephone,” she said.

“You did. It was your cousin from Hamburg. He wants to see you.”

Miss Eppendorfer became immensely excited, and insisted upon Frankie’s calling him up at once.

“I’m too nervous,” she said. “Tell him to come to-night for dinner at seven.”

He accepted the invitation, and the authoress was delighted.

“I haven’t seen him since he was a child,” she told Frankie, “but I’ve heard lots about him. He went to Heidelberg, and then he went into his father’s business and he’s done wonderfully well, they say. He speaks English, French and Spanish perfectly.”

“Are you a German then?” Frankie asked.

“No; my father was, but I’m not. I’m American through and through. I can’t even speak German. If Kurt didn’t speak English, I don’t know what I’d do.”

While she drank her coffee, Miss Eppendorfer ingenuously confided to Frances her great desire to impress Mr. Hassler.

“You see, his family—- my father’s cousins, over in Germany, always looked down on us. They were as rude as they could be. You know how proud those old commercial families are. Why, my dear, Kurt Hassler would never have dreamed of putting his foot inside my door if I hadn’t got a name for myself with this writing. So I’m going to show him that I’m somebody, after all. That I know how to do things right!”

Jennie was fetched to wait on the table, and supper was ordered from a restaurant nearby, with an extravagant variety of wines. Miss Eppendorfer dressed herself in her very best, and implored Frances to do the same, but Frances, although expecting a bearded and majestic man in evening dress, refused to put on any of the authoress’s finery.

“He’s not coming to see me,” she cried, “and, anyway, I’d rather look like what I am.”

Proud humility! And wasn’t she aware all the time that in her fresh blouse and blue serge skirt she utterly eclipsed Miss Eppendorfer, she with her clear brown skin and her beautifully honest eyes, with her youth and strength and dignity?

She had resented Mr. Hassler’s manner over the telephone and she had only to take one look at him in person to hate and detest him forever. He was unexpectedly young, not so old as herself, she imagined, but with a self-assurance seldom attained by other races this side of forty. He was handsome enough, but detestably arrogant, a smooth-shaven, blonde-crested boy with up-turned nose and wide, impudent mouth. He was stupid and pompous, couldn’t talk about anything but himself and his “world-export business” as he called it, yet Frances saw that he had wit enough to take the measure of his cousin. His gallantry was so obviously mocking that she burned with shame for the poor haggard, painted woman who gulped it down. It was really torment for her to look on.

Alas, poor Frankie! She had yet to learn of Miss Eppendorfer’s second great weakness!

II

After that evening everything was changed, Miss Eppendorfer herself a quite different person. She was as good-tempered, as kindly as ever, but so silly that Frankie’s own amiability began to wear thin. She wrote no more, all her talk was of clothes, of hair dressers, of manicures. She would spend all morning sitting at her dressing table, polishing her nails and “jabbering,” as her secretary mentally called her talking. She was full of the affectations of a happy young girl, was impulsive, whimsical, even pouted. And for whom but that obnoxious little Hamburger, young enough to be her son!

He called every evening, and made it plain to Frankie that he wanted to be alone with his cousin. So she withdrew to her bedroom and tried to read, to ignore that light, hysterically gay voice answering his impudent compliments.

“Can’t she see?” Frankie used to ask herself, almost in tears. “Doesn’t she know he’s laughing at her? Oh, what an idiot she’s making of herself, poor old thing!”

He and Frances hated each other. She stared at him with cold contempt, he looked her up and down insolently; they never spoke unless it couldn’t be avoided. Unfortunately Frances had to listen to a great deal about him from Miss Eppendorfer, how successful and brilliant he was in business, how supremely well-educated, how fastidious and aristocratic, how irresistible to the fair sex. He told her about his “affairs” and she insisted upon telling Frankie, although the latter said bluntly enough that she wasn’t interested. It was necessary that she should be shown what a remarkable conquest Miss Eppendorfer had made. She was forced to hear about the Russian princess, the awfully exclusive Parisienne, and above all about the eminent and very chic Damen in Wien. The colossal success he had had! Frances had either to consider him a liar, or the ladies on the continent of Europe as pitifully lacking in taste.

He very soon began coming to dinner every night, and Miss Eppendorfer went to great trouble to secure a cook who was not only a German, but a German from the only correct part of Germany for cooks to inhabit. She extorted big wages and made life wretched with her shrewishness, but her delicacies were supposed to atone for all this. Expenses mounted steadily; Frances had not imagined that Miss Eppendorfer had so much money. She bought new clothes continually, and flowers, and very expensive wines. Mr. Hassler was not absent for a single night for two months after the coming of the German cook, but not once did he invite his cousin to go anywhere with him, or did he bring her flowers or sweets.

Frances could not comprehend this thing; she thought she did, but she didn’t, in the least. It was the sort of affair not related in romantic novels; there was nothing romantic about it. It might be classified as a “love affair,” although it would have been confoundedly hard to find any love in it.... Frankie simply thought that Miss Eppendorfer was “silly” about the young man, and anxious to impress him, and that he was attracted by the good dinners.

Her first real suspicions awoke when she was checking up the stubs in the authoress’s cheque book, which she did every month when the vouchers came back from the bank. And she saw, no less than five times, cheques made out to “Kurt Hassler” for fifty dollars, sixty dollars, up to a hundred. It gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness, which she couldn’t shake off, although she assured herself that it was all “business.”

Then she and Miss Eppendorfer had the first of their quarrels. The cook wanted a day off, and Miss Eppendorfer gaily asked Frankie if she wouldn’t cook one of her dear little suppers for “Kurtie.” Frances flushed.

“Why don’t you go to a restaurant?” she suggested.

“Kurtie’s so sick of restaurants. I told him what heavenly things you used to fix up for me, and he said he’d like to see what you could do. He’s——”

“I’m sorry,” said Frances, “but I’d rather not.”

“My dear! Please! I’ve practically promised.”

“I can’t help it. I couldn’t.”

“But why?”

Frances looked at her indignantly.

“I wouldn’t cook for that man!” she said, severely.

“What is your objection to him, may I ask?” enquired Miss Eppendorfer, with sudden frigidity.

“I’d rather not say.”

“I insist.”

“I’m not going to say. It has nothing to do with the case, anyway. I don’t mind—I never mind doing things for you. But ... I should think you’d know better than to ask me to cook for your guests. I’m supposed to be your secretary, Miss Eppendorfer, not your servant.”

She was startled by the expression on Miss Eppendorfer’s face.

“A hell of a secretary you are!” she screamed. “You don’t know a damned thing. You’re no more use to me than a parrot. You take my money and never do a stroke of work. You’re as lazy as a nigger.” And much, much more, of abuse that grew fouler and fouler, most of it unintelligible to the girl. She stood motionless, white as a sheet, dumb with horror, her own little anger swept away on this violent torrent. She never forgot the scene, or the words.

“Oh!” she whispered. “Oh!... How terrible!... Oh, God, how terrible!”

For she had a dreadful feeling of helplessness, of being in a world where her dignity was of no avail. She cried forlornly for Minnie and her grandmother, even for her mother, dead a score of years.

She had packed her trunk and was absolutely determined to go home that night when Miss Eppendorfer came to the door, imploring to be let in. She, too, was in tears, streaming with tears, and she went down on her knees to Frances.

“Forgive me!” she cried. “Forgive me! Frances, darling, you know how terribly nervous I am! Don’t be too hard on me. I can’t live without you!”

She was so dreadfully upset that Frances had to get her to bed and give her a dose of some powerful sedative she used for her “nerve attacks,” and telephoned to Hassler not to come. And in the end she agreed not to go home.

But she remained very grave and thoughtful. She went out to supper at a little French table d’hôte nearby, came back and went to bed, without seeing Miss Eppendorfer again.

She was waked up late that night, though, by her. The poor creature was crying again, standing by Frankie’s bed.

“Oh, Frances!” she moaned, “I’m so wretched! I wish I were dead!”

Frances asked what was the matter.

“Kurt was so nasty to me,” she sobbed. “I rang him up after you’d gone out, and he came. But he wouldn’t stay a minute. He just looked at the supper and went away. I tried! I had sardines and caviare and fruit, all fixed in a dainty way.... Oh, Frances!”

Her voice rose to a shriek that alarmed Frances.

“Don’t get excited!” she entreated. “Just tell me, quietly, all about it. First let me close the window.”

It was an incoherent tale; he had told her that she didn’t know how to dress, that he wouldn’t be seen in a public place with her, that at her age she shouldn’t try to wear pink. Told her she looked vulgar. That he couldn’t see a trace in her conversation of the brains he imagined were required in novel writing.

Frances was exasperated.

“Why in the world do you bother with him!” she cried. “He’s—I’m sure you’re deceived in him. Why don’t you let him go?”

Miss Eppendorfer began to weep anew.

“I love him!” she declared. And seeing Frankie’s shocked face, she added, with humane motive, “We’re going to be married!”

Frances believed it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I’m a sort of grandmother here in the business school. All the rest are little girls with pigtails and hair ribbons, and little boys in short trousers. You can imagine how I feel, so old and sedate. And even in size! They’re all so stunted. I tower above my tiny desk. I’m taller even than any of the teachers, and quite a different colour, at least five degrees redder.

“I thought I knew something about typing, but I’ve had to start all over again, and learn the ‘touch system.’ And shorthand! Oh, Minnie! I’m so stupid, you can’t think. The others learn like eager little trained animals. They can’t speak decently, or spell, of course, but what does that matter? They can put down on paper what they hear someone say, and copy it off, without the trouble of understanding. I foresee that I shall be here for years while all the little boys and girls pass on and out, and become bank presidents.”

It was quite true that she wasn’t quick at learning her new trade. She was studious by nature, and painstaking, but her hand was not ready. She was more discouraged than she cared to tell.

Life seemed, just then, a rather miserable affair. Her ambition was balked by her slowness in learning, and she began to think that she would never be able to do better than she was doing with Miss Eppendorfer. A filler of odd jobs, employed principally because she was personally agreeable.... And, somehow, Miss Eppendorfer’s talk of love made her lonely and sad. She thought of her twenty-three years, and was terrified by the fear that she would never be loved. She longed so to be loved! What chance, though? She went from Miss Eppendorfer’s flat, which no man entered but “Kurtie,” to the night school, where the oldest male was perhaps nineteen.

A situation ripe for the coming of the hero. As usual he came. Or perhaps, the one who came had to be he....

It was the end of June, and after two months of effort, Frankie still sat among the beginners. She had developed a new trouble. She was able now to scratch desperately while the teacher dictated, almost keeping pace with her, but she could never afterward read what she had written. She was trying in vain to type a letter she had taken down, in which all she could distinguish was “Dear Sir:” and the “14th inst.” when she heard someone sit down in the seat next her, which had till then been vacant. Naturally she glanced up. It was, as she later wrote to Minnie, a “real grown-up human being,” a tall, thin fellow with a haughty, stupid face, a man who couldn’t be under thirty and who was dressed in well-fitting and expensive clothes. She couldn’t help staring at him, all the more because he took no notice of her at all. “He was so out of place there,” she wrote. “He was so well-bred, with the nicest thin brown hands. And, my dear Minnie, he was even stupider than me. Much stupider.”

She watched him a great deal, as he tried to write on his machine. The keyboard was hidden with a tin cover, so that he was obliged to learn the letters by memory; this puzzled and annoyed him, and he frowned severely over his chart.

“I say!” he said, suddenly, to Frances, with a marked English accent, “Isn’t there something wrong about this thing? B ought to come next to A.”

She explained that the keyboard wasn’t arranged alphabetically. He asked why not, and she said she didn’t know.

“Some American idea, I suppose,” he observed, with displeasure, and turned away to resume his struggle.

He was not polite, he was certainly not clever, and, in spite of limpid and innocent grey eyes, not handsome; his nose was too large, his expression too contemptuous. Why then should Frances think him so terribly appealing and attractive? She felt an exaggerated good-will toward him, an ardent wish to help him, even to comfort him. There was no obvious reason for this painful compassion; he was well-dressed, showed not the least trace of poverty, quite the contrary. He looked healthy too, although very thin. And he had very much the air of being satisfied with himself. Ridiculous girl!

He had come to the end of a line and not understanding the bell’s signal, was trying to keep on writing. He saw that something was wrong, and he turned to Frances again. She had been watching him, and was ready to explain at once.

“I’ve never tried one of these infernal things before,” he remarked, quite unnecessarily.

“I’ve been at it for two months,” said Frances, with a sigh, “but I don’t seem to get on. Not like the others.”

He looked at her thoroughly for the first time.

“You’re not like the others,” he said, “that’s probably why.”

And added:

“You look like an English girl.”

That meant that he was pleased, she knew.

“I’m not. I’m American—as far back as the Revolution.”

“What revolution?” he asked.

With the characteristic innocence of her country-people, whose Genesis it is, she was astounded.

“Why, our Revolution! In 1776!” she explained.

He said “Really!” and went on with his writing.

The next night he saluted her with a stiff “Good evening!” directly she entered the room, so formal and frigid that her heart sank. They weren’t friendly, then! But, after half an hour’s desperate effort, he grew bored and discouraged, and once more turned his attention to the pretty girl.

“You’re doing well,” he observed.

Frances gave a sigh and smiled at him.

“I hate it!” she said.

“Rather! But why do you do it?”

“I want to get on—get a better job.”

“What are you doing now?”

He was, she thought, very personal, but he didn’t seem aware of it.

“I’m a secretary, for an authoress.”

That seemed to interest him.

“I’d thought of something of that sort for myself,” he said. “What do they expect of a secretary over here?”

“My position’s rather peculiar,” Frances told him. “I do all sorts of things that aren’t really part of my duties.”

“What, for instance? Can’t you give me some sort of idea?” he persisted, and, half-laughing, she tried to tell him.

“Oh, I go shopping with her,” she said, “and I listen while she reads, and I get up little chafing-dish suppers, and answer the telephone, and check up her bank book, and talk to her publishers, and—oh, well—lots of things like that!”

“I shouldn’t call that a secretary,” said the young man. “At home we’d call you a sort of companion.”

Frances turned red, and began typing again. He was rude, and no mistake about it. Detestable! She worked violently for a time, then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of him, pecking away at his typewriter so slowly and stupidly that her heart smote her.

“Good night!” she said cheerfully when the gong sounded, and she went off to the dictation class and he to the beginner’s room, where she could see him through the open door, writing on the arm of his chair, surrounded by eager children.

III

Frances was a little late the next night, and from her locker in the corridor, she looked anxiously into the classroom for the young Englishman’s nice brown head bent over his machine. But he wasn’t there. She went to her place and began to work half-heartedly, with one eye on the door, watching for him. The clock ticked on and on, half an hour gone, still she couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming. The whole long hour passed, the typing lesson was finished, and he hadn’t come.

Disappointment out of all proportion assailed her. Her heart was like lead, the whole world blank.

“What a fool I am!” she told herself. “Why on earth should I care? I don’t really; it’s only that he’s the only other possible person in the place—— Why should he come? Of course he’s given up the whole thing in disgust. Of course he’s not coming back, at all. Ever. Of course I shan’t see him again. What difference does it make?”

And yet, in spite of all this excellent common-sense, that feeling of desolation persisted. She hated and loathed the silly school, made up her mind to stop coming. She sat in the shorthand class, scratching down her unintelligible little symbols——

Suddenly an awful thought swept over her. It grew rapidly to a conviction. He had certainly stayed away solely because of her, because she had been so preposterously over-friendly that he was disgusted and alarmed. She did wish that she might see him once more, just to tell him that she didn’t like him, not him, personally; simply, like all nice Americans, she had wanted to be kind to a stranger....

She rushed out the minute the class was over. She was very anxious to get home. And there he was, waiting for her, standing under a street lamp where the light streamed on his arrogant face, a slim, foppish figure, with a walking stick. She felt suddenly angry at him; replied with coldness to his greeting.

“It was such a nice evening,” he said, “I couldn’t stand that filthy place.”

It was; sweet, calm, fresh, with a bright little moon overhead.

“I thought perhaps you’d like to walk a bit,” he said, “if you’re not tired.”

She hesitated imperceptibly, then accepted.

“A few blocks,” she said. “I shouldn’t like to be late.”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked presently.

Frances said she didn’t, and they began strolling, quite aimlessly, uptown.

“I say!” he exclaimed, “It’s very decent of you to come. You Americans are unconventional, aren’t you?”

“Not all of us,” said Frances drily.

“We’re different. We won’t have anything to do with a stranger till we’ve got his credentials. I dare say we’re over-particular. No English girl I’ve ever met would take up a man this way——”

“I’m not in the habit of it,” said Frances. She was affronted and angry. “But I’m not a child. I’m accustomed to—to forming my own judgments. I—as far as I could judge, you were a gentleman. I thought you’d quite understand——”

“I do!” he protested, “I do, absolutely. I only wanted to tell you that I like it—all this freedom, you know. An English girl of your class would be so—so much more prudent——”

“I’m not imprudent!” cried Frances, passionately.

“Ah, but you are, though. My dear young lady, you don’t even know my name.”

“Well, what is it, then?” she asked, half-laughing, half-furious. “You’d better tell me, if that will make this shocking walk more ‘prudent.’”

“Lionel Naylor,” he said.

“Haven’t you any letters, any papers, to identify yourself? How can I tell if that’s really your name?”

He replied with perfect seriousness:

“I’ve one or two things—a letter——”

“Oh, nonsense! Couldn’t you see that I was joking? Why on earth should I care who you are? I’m old enough and sufficiently intelligent to find out very soon what you are. I’m not afraid of strange men. I can take care of myself.”

“It does no harm for a girl to be careful,” he answered, stubbornly.

And that was, apparently, his final word. They went on in silence. Frances counted fifteen blocks without a word. At the first crossing he had rather ceremoniously taken her arm, and he didn’t release it. He seemed quite contented to go on forever in this way. But it provoked Frances beyond measure. She longed to say to him:

“Why did you ask me to take a walk, if you didn’t want to speak to me?”

She made up her mind that she wouldn’t speak first, no matter how long it was. She had to, though. She looked at her watch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to turn back now,” she said. “It’s time I was home.”

“I say!” he cried. “That’s too bad! I wanted to have a talk with you.”

“Why didn’t you talk then?” she asked, sharply, and he answered with equal irritability:

“My dear young lady, I can’t plunge into things the way you people do. I have to collect my thoughts a bit——”

“Strange as it may seem to you,” said Frances, “all the people in this country are not exactly alike.”

It began to dawn upon him that she was really annoyed, that these people were possibly as sensitive to offence as himself. Instantly he was very sorry.

“I dare say I’m not very tactful,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be offensive, though, I assure you. I admire you people very much.”

“All of us?”

He laughed.

“There are some, of course.... My sister-in-law—She!...”

“She’s an American?”

“Yes. My brother lives over here, you know. Been here some time. We thought he was a confirmed bachelor. Practically certain not to marry. Then, the very day after I got here, he did it. And such a girl! Of course it made trouble at once.”

Frances was interested, and moreover, she could see that he wanted to talk about it.

“How?” she asked.

“Set my brother against me. Put all sorts of beastly—Am—beastly ideas into his head. She has no use for a man unless he’s eternally stewing over a row of figures, grubbing after money. So now he’s got this idiotic idea of my learning this typing and shorthand rot. And why? So I can get a job in his office. I never heard such silly rot. What earthly use is that stuff going to be? I shan’t be one of his clerks. It’s her idea. She wants to humiliate me.”

Frances murmured something sympathetic.

“What business were you in before?” she asked.

“Not in any business,” he replied, surprised. “Didn’t you understand? I suppose, according to your ideas, I’m no good. I’ve never done anything much. Just stopped at home while my mother was alive.... Until two years ago ... when she died. She—liked to have me at home. We got on together very well.”

He was rather pathetically anxious to be friendly and communicative now, to show her that he wasn’t aloof and condescending. He tried to tell her about himself, indirectly to present his credentials. And did so, far more fully than he imagined. With every word, spoken and unspoken, she was more certain that she had not been mistaken—that he was “nice,” that he was to be trusted, that he was mysteriously likable.

“We travelled, and so on,” he continued. “She liked that.... Do you know, when I look at this girl Horace has married, I’m glad—really glad, the poor old mater—isn’t here.”

Then, unfortunately, he got started on a very favourite topic; he told her what he had endured from “that girl”; how she sneered at him, persecuted him, was continually poisoning his brother’s mind against him. Frances listened with a heavy heart. She couldn’t approve of this! It wasn’t manly; it wasn’t fine. She pitied him, yearned over him, and at the same time felt a passionate Defoe desire to lecture him, to tell him he was wrong, didn’t see things in a proper light. She wanted to tell him what to do and offer to help him to do it.

Conversation about his sister-in-law lasted until they had reached Frankie’s door. Then he was once more surprised and regretful that he hadn’t made better use of his time. He took Frankie’s proffered hand warmly.

“You see,” he said, “I didn’t ask your name. It wasn’t necessary.”

“Do you know it?” she asked, a little puzzled.

“No, not that. Simply, I don’t need any credentials to know that you’re—absolutely—all right. Absolutely.”

She smiled at him maternally. She liked that clumsy compliment; she liked his naïveness, his simplicity, even his rudeness. She saw him no longer as a young man, but as a boy, who had been badly trained, a rather spoilt boy. She felt very peaceful, very kindly, toward him and toward everyone else. She had never known life to be so satisfying as it was that evening, for no reason at all.