The Restless Sex

"I didn't know it," she murmured. "I did not recognize him. How clever he really is!"

"You hadn't met him then," remarked Jim.

"But I had seen him, once," she answered in a low, dreamy voice.

Jim Cleland glanced around at her. Again it struck him that Stephanie was growing up very rapidly into an amazingly ornamental girl – a sister to be proud of.

"Did you have a good time, Steve?" he asked.

"Wonderful," she sighed; smiling back at him out of sleepy eyes.

The car sped on toward Boston.

CHAPTER IX

Stephanie Quest was introduced to society when she was eighteen, and was not a success. She had every chance at her debut to prove popular, but she remained passive, charmingly indifferent to social success, not inclined to step upon the treadmill, unwilling to endure the exactions, formalities, sacrifices, and stupid routine which alone make social position possible. There was too much chaff for the few grains of wheat to interest her.

She wanted a career, and she wanted to waste no time about it, and she was delightfully certain that the path to it lay through some dramatic or art school to the stage or studio.

Jim laughed at her and teased her; but his father worried a great deal, and when Stephanie realized that he was worrying she became reasonable about the matter and said that the next best thing would be college.

"Dad," she said, "I adore dancing and gay dinner parties, but there is nothing else to them but mere dancing and eating. The trouble seems to be with the people – nice people, of course – but – "

"Brainless," remarked Jim, looking over his evening paper.

"No; but they all think and do the same things. They all have the same opinions, the same outlook. They all read the same books when they read at all, go to see the same plays, visit the same people. It's jolly to do it two or three times; but after a little while you realize that all these people are restless and don't know what to do with themselves; and it makes me restless – not for that reason – but because I do know what to do with myself – only you, darling – " slipping one arm around John Cleland's neck, " – don't approve."

"Yours is a restless sex, Steve," remarked Jim, still studying the evening paper. "You've all got the fidgets."

"A libel, my patronizing friend. Or rather a tribute," she added gaily, "because only a restless mind matures and accomplishes."

"Accomplishes what? Suffrage? Sex equality? You'll all perish with boredom when you get it, because there'll be nothing more to fidget about."

"He's just a bumptious boy yet, isn't he, Dad?"

Jim laughed and laid aside his paper:

"You're a sweet, pretty girl, Steve – "

"I'll slay you if you call me that!"

"Why not be what you look? Why not have a good time with all your might, marry when you wish, and become a perfectly – "

"Oh, Jim, you are annoying! Dad, is there anything more irritating than a freshly hatched college graduate? Or more maddeningly complacent? Look at your self-satisfied son! There he sits, after having spent the entire day in enjoyment of his profession, and argues that I ought to be satisfied with an idle day in which I have accomplished absolutely nothing! I'm afraid your son is a pig."

Jim laughed lazily:

"The restless sex is setting the world by the ears," he said tormentingly. "All this femininist business, this intrusion into man's affairs, this fidgety dissatisfaction with a perfectly good civilization, is spoiling you all."

"Is that the sort of thing you're putting into your wonderful novel?" she inquired.

"No, it's too unimportant – "

"Dad! Let's ignore him! Now, dear, if you feel as you do about a career for me at present, I really think I had better go to college. I do love pleasure, but somehow the sort of pleasure I'm supposed to enjoy doesn't last; and it's the people, I think, that tire one very quickly. It does make a difference in dancing, doesn't it? – not to hear an idea uttered during an entire evening – not to find anybody thinking for themselves – "

"Oh, Steve!" laughed Jim, "you're not expected to think at your age! All that society expects of you is that you chatter incessantly during dinner and the opera and do your thinking in a ballroom with your feet!"

She was laughing, but an unwonted colour brightened her cheeks as she turned on him from the padded arm of John Cleland's chair, where she had been sitting:

"If I really thought you meant that, Jim, I'd spend the remainder of my life in proving to you that I have a mind."

"Never mind him, Steve," said John Cleland. "If you wish to go to college, you shall."

"How about looking after us?" inquired Jim, alarmed.

"Dad, if my being here is going to make you more comfortable," she said, "I'll remain. Really, I am serious. Don't you want me to go?"

"Are you really so restless, Steve?"

"Mentally," she replied, with a defiant glance at Jim.

"This will be a gay place to live in if you go off for four years!" remarked that young man.

"You don't mean that you'd miss me!" she exclaimed mockingly.

"Of course I'd miss you."

"Miss the mental stimulus I give you?" – sweetly persuasive.

"Not at all. I'd miss the mental relaxation you afford my tired brain – "

"You beast! Dad, I'm going! And some day your son will find out that it's an idle mind that makes a girl restless; not a restless mind that makes her idle!"

"I was just teasing, Steve!"

"I know it." She smiled at the young fellow, but her grey eyes were brilliant. Then she turned and nestled against John Cleland: "I have made up my mind, darling, and I have decided to go to Vassar."

Home, to John Cleland and his son, had come to mean Stephanie as much as everything else under the common roof-tree.

For the background of familiar things framed her so naturally and so convincingly and seemed so obviously devised for her in this mellow old household, where everything had its particular place in an orderly ensemble, that when she actually departed for college, the routine became dislocated, jarring everything above and below stairs, and leaving two dismayed and extremely restless men.

"Steve's going off like this has put the whole house on the blink," protested Jim, intensely surprised to discover the fact.

It nearly finished Janet, whose voice, long afflicted with the cracked tremolo of age, now became almost incoherent at the very mention of Stephanie's name.

Old Lizzie, the laundress, deeply disapproving of Stephanie's departure, insisted on doing her linen and sheer fabrics, and sending a hamper once a week to Poughkeepsie. Every week, also, Amanda, the cook, dispatched cardboard boxes Vassarward, containing condiments and culinary creations which she stubbornly refused to allow Cleland Senior to censor.

"Ay t'ank a leetle yelly-cake and a leetle yar of yam it will not hurt Miss Stephanie," she explained to Cleland. And he said no more.