Fran Part 22

"But we'll see," she cried, at last coming down the ladder, "we'll see!" and she clenched her fists, flung open the barn-door and marched upon the house with battle in her eyes. Girding up her loins--that is, smoothing her hair--and sharpening her weapons for instant use, she opened the library door.

She knew Grace Noir had gone to the city with Robert Clinton, and yet her feeling on seeing Hamilton Gregory alone, was akin to surprise.

How queerly lonesome he looked, without his secretary! There was something ghostly about Grace Noir's typewriter--it seemed to have fallen into Fran's power like an enemy's trophy too easily captured.

The pens and pencils were at her mercy, so readily surrendered that they suggested treachery. Did an ambuscade await her? But impossible-- no train returned from the city until nine in the evening, and it was now only three in the afternoon--six hours of clear field.

She found the philanthropist immersed in day-dreams. So deep was he below the surface of every-day thoughts, that he might be likened to a man walking on the floor of the sea. The thought of the good his money and influence were accomplis.h.i.+ng thrilled his soul, while through the refined ether of this pious joy appeared the loveliness of Grace Noir, lending something like spiritual sensuousness to his vision of duty.

He did not want the applause of the general public any more than he wanted his past unearthed. It was enough if his philanthropy was known to G.o.d and Grace Noir. She stood, to his mind, as a symbol of religion--there can be no harm in reverencing symbols.

Fran's eyes drew him abruptly from the bottom of the sea. He emerged, chilled and trembling. "Fran," he said, as if she had appeared in answer to a summons, "I am unhappy about you. Your determination to have nothing to do with the church not only distresses but embarra.s.ses me. You have insisted on coming into my life. Then why do you disgrace it? You pretend that you want to be liked by us, yet you play cards with strangers at night--it's outrageous. You even threw a card in my yard where a card was never seen before."

"Do you think cards so very wicked?" asked Fran, looking at him curiously.

"You know what I think. I look on gambling as immoral. But it ought to be enough for me simply to forbid it. Cards, and dancing, and the theater--these things are what destroy the influence of the church."

"And not going to the meeting-house," remarked Fran, with quiet irony,--"that's perfectly dreadful."

She closed the door, and placed her back against it. A shake of her head seemed to throw aside what they had been saying as of no more importance than the waving tresses of black hair. She looked him in the eyes, and said abruptly--

"I want to be your secretary."

Hamilton gripped his chair. He found the air hard to breathe after his submarine inaction--doubtless he had stayed under too long. "I _have_ a secretary," he retorted, looking at her resentfully. He checked words he would have liked to utter, on reflecting that his secret was in Fran's keeping. She need but declare it, and his picture would blossom forth in all the papers of the big cities. How Grace would shrink from him, if she knew the truth--how that magnificent figure would turn its back upon him--and those scornful, imperious, never- faltering eyes...

Fran drew nearer. She seated herself upon the arm of a chair, one foot on the floor, and spoke with restrained intensity: "I'm well enough educated. I can take dictation and make good copy."

He allowed his tone to sound defiance--"I already have a secretary."

Fran continued with an effort, "Mother didn't like studying, very well, but she was determined to get me out of the condition I was born in; she taught me all she knew. When I caught up, she'd go digging ahead on her own account to pull me a little higher. Wasn't she splendid! So patient--" Fran paused, and stared straight before her, straight into the memory of her mother's eyes.

Gregory reflected--"If this child had not come, had not intruded herself upon my life! Haven't I suffered enough for my follies?"

"When mother died," Fran resumed, "she thought maybe Uncle Ephraim had mellowed, so I went to him, because I thought I couldn't get along without love." She shook her head, with a pathetic little smile. "But I could! Uncle Ephraim didn't mellow, he dried up. He blamed me for being born--I think, myself, it was a mistake. He turned me out, but I was so tough I just couldn't be winter-killed. After that I went back to the show and stocked up in experience. I mention it to point out that a mild little job like being your private secretary wouldn't strain a muscle. I expect I could even be a foreign secretary. It's as easy to walk a rope that's rigged high, as one near the ground. All the trouble is in the imagination."

Gregory's voice cut across hers, showing no comprehension of her last words: "My secretary must be in sympathy with my work. To exercise such talents as I have, is my religion, and I need a helper whose eyes are fixed upon the higher life. This is final, and the subject must never be reopened. I find it very painful."

Fran's discovery that he had not heard her plea, crimsoned her face.

She jumped from the armchair, breathing rapidly. "Then," she cried, "if you won't have me, get another. The one you have must go."

"She shall do nothing of the sort," he coldly responded.

"Yes," Fran retorted violently, "I tell you she must go!" He struck the table with his palm. "Never!"

"Shall I use my last resource?" Fran's eyes gleamed ominously.

The hand upon the table became a fist. That was his only reply.

"I would entreat you," said Fran, faltering, "and with tears--but what good would it do? None. There's no use for one woman to weep if another woman is smiling. Dismiss your secretary."

He leaned toward her from over the table, and spoke in a low level tone: "I am going to appeal to your better nature. Think of the girls of the street who need rescue, and the women of the cities who are dying from neglect and vice. If you hinder my work, let the souls of these outcasts be upon your soul! You can ruin me, but not without ruining my good works. I don't ask you to keep silent on my account-- what am I but an instrument in the hands of Providence?--but for the sake of the homeless thousands. I have atoned for my past, but the world, always ready to crucify the divine, would rejoice to point the finger of scorn at me, as if I were still the fool of twenty years ago."

"But your secretary--"

"She is a vital factor in my work. Remove her, and the work ceases."

"How important!" cried Fran, throwing back her head. "What will G.o.d dowhen she dies?"

"Perhaps I have gone too far. Still, it would be impossible to replace her."

Fran made a step toward him--"My mother was replaced."

He started up. "You shall not speak of that. She lived her life, and I demand the right to live mine. I tell you, the past is ended."

"But I am here," returned Fran. "I have not ended. Can't you look into my face and see my mother living? She paid for her secret marriage, wandering over the face of the earth with her baby, trying to find you. I don't deny that you've paid for all--yes, even for your desertion and your living a hidden life in this town. Maybe you've suffered enough. But that isn't the question. Look at me. I am here. I have come as truly out of your past as out of the past of my darling, uncomplaining--what did you call her?--'_friend_'. And being here, I ask, 'What will you do with me?' All I want is--just a little love."

The long loneliness of her life found expression in the eager voice, in the yearning eyes. As he stared at her, half-stupefied, he imagined she was holding out her arms to him in pleading. But it was not this erect form, slight and tense, that reached forth as if to clasp him to her heart; it was a memory of his youth, a memory that in some oddmanner blurred his perception of the living presence. From the fragile body of Fran, something leaped toward him, enveloping, overpowering.

It was partly Fran, and partly somebody else--how well he knew that other somebody, that dead woman who had found reincarnation in the soul of this wanderer.

She thought his covered face a token of weakening. "You must have loved my mother once. Is it all so dead and forgotten that there is none left for your child?"

But she was seeking to play upon strings that had long since ceased to vibrate. He could not bring back, even in retrospect, the emotions inspired by Josephine Derry. Those strings had been tuned to other love-harmonies. To remember Fran's mother was to bring back not the rapture of a first pa.s.sion, but the garrish days of disillusionment.

He even felt something like resentment because she had remained faithful--her search and unending love for him made so much more of his desertion than ever he had made.

He could not tell Fran that he had never loved her mother. The dead must not be reproached; the living could not be denied--so he was silent.

His silence inspired Fran with hope. "I am so lonely, so lonely!" she murmured plaintively, "so very lonely! There seems a reason for everybody but me--I can't be explained. That's why I am disliked. If there could be one heart for me to claim--whose heart should it be?

Does no sort of feeling tell you whose heart it should be?"

"Of course you are lonely, child, but that is your fault. You are in this house on a footing of equality, and all seem to like you, except Miss Grace--and I must say, her disapproval disturbs you very little.

But you won't adopt our ways. You get yourself virtually expelled from school--do you blame me for that? You won't go to church--can you expect church people to like you? You make everybody talk by your indiscreet behavior--then wonder that the town shuns your society, and complain because you feel lonesome!"

Fran's eyes filled with tears. "If you believe in me--if you try to like me--that's all I ask. The whole town can talk, if I have you. I don't care for the world and its street corners--there are no street corners in my world."

"But, child--"

"You never call me Fran if you can help it," she interposed pa.s.sionately." Even the dogs have names. Call me by mine; it's Fran.

Say it, say it. Call me--oh, father, _father_. I want your love."

"Hus.h.!.+" he gasped, ashen pale. "You will be overheard."

She extended her arms wildly: "What do you know about G.o.d, except that He's _Father_. That's all--Father--and you wors.h.i.+p Him as His son. Yet you want me to care for your religion. Then why don't you show me the way to G.o.d? Can you love Him and deny your own child? Am I to pray to Him as my Father in Heaven, but not dare acknowledge my father on earth? No! I don't know how others feel, but I'll have to reach heavenly things through human things. And I tell you that you are standing between me and G.o.d, just as the lives of so many Christians hide G.o.d from the world."

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" cried Gregory. "Child! this is sacrilege!"

"No, it is not. I tell you, I can't see G.o.d, because you're in the way. You pray 'Our Father who art in Heaven...give us this day our daily bread.' And I pray to you, and I say, My father here on earth, give me--give me--your love. That's what I want--nothing else--I want it so bad...I'm dying for it, father, can't you understand? Look--I'm praying for it--" She threw herself wildly at his feet.

Deeply moved, he tried to lift her from the ground.