CHAPTER XA DISCUSSION OF PROGRESSIVE WOMEN
The group that had foregathered about Mrs. Ramsey's tea-table that Thursday afternoon had scattered and gone its several ways. The last of them was bidding her adieu as her husband entered and joined her brothers, who were lingering for a farewell word with her, each occupied in characteristic fashion, John gazing into the fire that smouldered on the grate, for it was a raw and chilly afternoon, and Frank endeavoring to coax a last cup of tea from the silver tea-ball and the still steaming kettle.
"If you really want another cup, Frank, let me have the tea-ball refilled," Mrs. Ramsey said, and then laying her hand on her elder brother's shoulder, "A new Lincoln penny for your thoughts, Jack. You look as if they might be romantic, but I suppose you are reallyoff on the quest of the blooming bacillus or the meandering microbe, or hanging over—what is it you call your garden beds of disease—a culture?"
He looked up and patted her hand. "It is too bad not to be able to be a hero to one's own sister, but the truth is, I wasn't thinking at all, just wool-gathering. By the way, Frank, are you going to motor down to that meeting of Miss Holland's to-night?"
"Wool-gathering, he calls it!" said the younger man, letting his lump of sugar clatter on his saucer. "I'd say it was all cry and no wool; at least you are pulling none over my eyes. Am I going to motor down to hear the protests of the proletariat to-night? No, dear brother, I am not. When I go out to mingle with the down-trodden and oppressed I take the 'L'; a surface car would be even more appropriate, but they take forever, and I compromise on the 'L,' but you never did have any sense of dramatic fitness."
"Might I ask why this sudden interest in the militant laboring ladies?" said Ramsey, drawing up his chair before the fire, and lighting a cigarette. "Are you going to obtrude your somewhat massive personality upon the scene?"
"Yes, that's what I'd like to know," added Frank.
The doctor laughed rather diffidently. "Why not?" he said. "Why shouldn't I go, if I wish to?"
Frank flung out his hands with a gesture of mock despair. "Now, wouldn't that come and get you!" he said. "I appeal to you, Hilda. You were present; you heard Miss Holland invite me to this Manifesto Makers' meeting. You know she never said a word to Jack; she didn't even look at him. He was foolish enough to let her see that he was already a convert to her little gospel, and therefore no longer in need of her ministrations. But as for me, 'I was a wandering sheep; I did not love the fold,' and hence, as a good missionary, she feels a deep interest in me. Off and on, I should say at least fifty Colorado women have tried to make a suffragist of me. Some of them were very pretty," he added reminiscently, "and I've noticed that the prettier they are the longer it takes 'em to make me see the error of my ways. Now with Miss Holland, I wouldn't mind letting her tinker with my political views so long as we both shall live."
"Frank, you are incorrigible," said his sister."If Miss Holland knew what a flighty, inconsequent infant you are, she wouldn't waste a thought on you, let alone a whole evening. What makes you want to go, anyhow?"
"What's the use of her wasting thoughts on a solemn dub like our brother?" he demanded aggrievedly. "What business has he trailing the soap-boxing suffragers around when he is about to take upon himself vows to cleave only to the daughter of a militant 'Anti' leader, some time when he can jar himself loose from his professional cares long enough for a honeymoon?"
"I'm afraid, Jack, you will find your prospective mother-in-law quite as strenuous as the most ardent of the suffragists," said his sister. "I haven't gone into this thing at all, I haven't time, but it is certainly amusing to watch the 'Antis' outdo even the most ardent suffragettes by way of proving their contention that woman's sphere is home. If they were consistent, they would never appear in public——"
"Except by 'Now comes the counsel for the defendant,'" interrupted Frank, "but they never are. There is a little bunch of them in Colorado who have failed to command the same attention in politics that their money imposesupon the social world, so they rush into type and get themselves interviewed and asked to speak when they come East, all by way of proving their sensitive and shrinking nature. I don't agree with the suffragists, not a little bit, but I can fraternize with them; they are sincere, but none of the 'Antis' for me; never saw one yet who wasn't either a snob or so narrow-minded that a toothpick would look like the Brooklyn Bridge by comparison."
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "Miss Holland has certainly made an impression upon you; not that I see what difference it makes, since women already vote where you hail from."
"That just goes to show how foolish a smart man can be," replied his brother cheerfully. "You think because you may have a vote on the enfranchisement of women that it is very important what you think, but is it? Not at all. But with me it is different. I've paid office rent in Denver for two years, and spent a third of the time here or in Washington. I've looked in on two State conventions, and forgot to register at the last election, but because I come from Colorado I am considered an authority on woman suffrage, and when I say it's no good, and swell out my chest and lookgloomy, it has great weight, great weight!" He leaned back in his chair and gave way to unseemly mirth as he recalled some occasion on which he had evidently hoaxed some trusting reporter.
"Nonsense, Frank," his brother-in-law answered. "I don't believe you know the first thing about politics or suffrage, or what the women have done or haven't done."
"There you wrong me," the young man answered gravely. "The first thing to know in politics is when to come into the game and when to keep out. Personally, I can't make my firm believe that it is cheaper to buy the other fellows' men after they are elected than it is to try to elect our own, and have them raise the ante on us, but they'll come to it after a while. As to the women, bless you, voting doesn't change their nature, and so long as women are willing to believe what men tell them, it's mighty unsafe to trust them with the ballot. Before you know it, they'll find us out, and then you'll see the first result of the suffragist dream of heaven on earth—there'll be no more marrying or giving in marriage. Oh, I'm dead against it!"
They all joined in the laughter that followedthis sally, and Hilda said thoughtfully, "If you boys are intent on this meeting, I'll hurry dinner, for they probably begin early." As she rose to go, Frank caught her hand with the piteous entreaty, "Oh, please make my big brother take his marbles and go home. He wasn't asked to this party. Miss Holland didn't say a thing to him. I don't see why he has to have first show with all the pretty girls in New York!"
"When Miss Holland knows you, and all your native charm, she will never smile again upon your older brother," laughed his sister, "but in the meantime I suppose it's an open meeting, and we can't prevent his going. But don't worry; his fatal beauty will but serve as a foil to your more sparkling type. Besides, with your vivid imagination, unhampered by a slavish subserviency to facts, you should be able to furnish canards that will occupy all Miss Holland's time for a month."
As she left the room her husband opened the door, and her brothers rose and remained standing until it was closed after her.
"If all women were like her——" Frank said impulsively, but Ramsey stopped him.
"If half of them were like her," he said reverently,"I would be in favor of turning the government over to them, certain that the hand that rocks the cradle would never give this storm-tossed old world more shaking up than is good for it."
CHAPTER XITHE ADVANCING COLUMN OF DEMOCRACY
As the two brothers turned into the cross street that led to the hall where the Industrial League had its headquarters and held its weekly meetings, Dr. Earl laid his hand on Frank's shoulder.
"Dear old fellow," he said affectionately, "would you mind telling me what on earth possesses you to come down here to-night? I'm not asking out of mere curiosity, nor do I believe that is the motive that brings you."
"Then if I say the pursuit of the good, the true and the beautiful, you will not believe me?" his brother answered lightly.
"I shall know you do not wish to tell me the real reason, and will drop it, but I shall not be deceived. I haven't studied my kind for this long without knowing at least the a-b-c of human nature. You use your cap and bells and an air of frivolity to conceal your true characterfrom the world, as other men cloak themselves in an atmosphere of austerity and reserve."
"Discovered!" cried Frank, with a laugh, "after all these years in which I flattered myself I had made such a good job of it, too. Truth to tell, no mask and domino ever afforded such perfect protection as the jingle of my jester's bells. I am apparently so given up to pomps and vanities that nobody gives me credit for a serious thought, and so takes no pains to conceal his own from me. It has long been one of the wonders of my world how I hold my job."
"Well, since you put it that way, I have asked myself at times how you have achieved the standing you have in your profession, a standing of which we are all immensely proud, by the way. But if you are a profound student, it is something recent; I used to think you learned too easily ever to know how to study, and law is a vocation."
"Law is one thing and success in the legal profession is another," said the young man oracularly. "Between our omnipresent legislatures which spend our time and money repealing what we lawyers already know, andenacting laws for the courts to set aside, these are what might be called parlous times for the profession, but my long suit is not in understanding statutes, but people."
Insensibly he had dropped his flippant tone, and was speaking, seriously, with conviction. There was a moment's pause and then Jack said, "And you go to this meeting because——?"
"Because, little as I like it, I am not such a fool that I do not know that the enfranchisement of women is certain, and it may help me to understand the new and troublesome element which is to be injected into public life if I watch the workings from the beginning. Anyhow, it is part of my business to understand these things, and hence my acceptance of Miss Holland's invitation. This is the place, isn't it?"
The house differed in no wise from the rest of the block, save in its air of thrift and cleanliness, and the brass plate on the door bore the name, "Industrial League House." It was evidently a settlement with resident workers, for a troop of boys was straggling down into the basement, where a gymnasium had been established, and several young women werestanding in the hall discussing some matter connected with sterilized milk. At the right of the wide hall there was a large, old-fashioned double parlor, with plenty of chairs for a meeting of sixty or seventy people, and perhaps half that many were already in the room. They were singing as the two men entered, and Dr. Earl and Frank stood in the hallway listening to the words sung to the soul-stirring old tune of "John Brown's Body."
"These are they who build thy houses, weave thy raiment, win thy wheat,Smooth the rugged, fill the barren, turn the bitter into sweet;All for thee this day—and ever. What reward for them is meet?Till the host comes marching on."
As they struck into the chorus, the boys downstairs took up the swelling chords, and it was echoed from the street beyond.
"Hark, the rolling of the thunder;Lo, the sun! and lo! thereunderRiseth wrath, and hope, and wonder,And the host comes marching on."
"I wonder whether they sing the sixth stanza," said Frank curiously. Jack looked at himin amazement. "What is the song?" he asked, conscious that he was getting new sidelights upon his younger brother's character this evening.
"It's William Morris' 'March of the Workers,' and the verse I'm talking about begins, 'O, ye rich men, hear and tremble.' Come on in, Jack," and a moment later John Earl heard his brother's beautiful voice take up the words:
"Many a hundred years, passed over, have they labored deaf and blind;Never tidings reached their sorrow, never hope their toil might find.Now at last they've heard and hear it, and the cry comes down the windAnd their feet are marching on."On we march, then, we, the workers, and the rumor that ye hearIs the blended sound of battle and deliv'rance drawing near;For the hope of every creature is the banner that we bear,And the world is marching on."
Silvia Holland turned quickly when she heard the strong, unknown voice join in the ringing words, and fairly gasped when she saw that it was Frank Earl who was singing, while his brother looked at her with an air as bewilderedas her own. The moment that the song was concluded she greeted them, and found them comfortable seats where they could see and hear without being too conspicuous.
"We like to have men come to our meetings, and a few generally drop in. I expect several to-night, for we have a speaker from Colorado, but we don't often have the luxury of a baritone note for our music, so we owe you a special vote of thanks, Mr. Earl," she said to Frank.
He bowed. "Oh, no; it's the other way about," he said lightly. "You don't know how grateful I am to you for not singing the 'Day of Wrath' verse, in which all of us who haven't succeeded in swearing off our taxes hear what is coming to us. How well that girl presides," he added, as a businesslike young woman dispatched the reading and adoption of minutes and the reports of committees without a hitch or a moment's useless delay.
"That is Florence Dresser," explained Miss Holland. "She is one of the leaders in the Laundry Girls' Association. The secretary," indicating a young woman who might have been a twelve-year-old child, save for her sad, careworn face, "has nearly killed herself sewing for sweaters to take care of her family;we've found homes for the children and she lives here now; we are trying to make up to her for the lost years, but it is hard work," and she sighed.
"We have one meeting a month when we have a program," Miss Holland explained. "At the other three we consider various phases of industrial life as it affects our own membership or women in general. I am rather sorry that this happens to be a program night, for you would have had a better idea of the scope we try to cover at the other kind, but perhaps this will be more entertaining." She turned more directly to Frank. "A business meeting here always makes me think of the 'Antis,' and their twaddle about woman's sphere, which they would like to reduce to a demi-hemisphere."
Frank nodded. "Of course there's nothing to that with intelligent people now; woman's sphere is wherever she can make good, but I think it is a pity that she has to take so large a place in the industrial world, and I don't believe that voting will help her."
"But it has helped men," Miss Holland replied quickly.
"Not half so much as their unions," he answered."The thing that helps is getting together and standing together."
"Now you've lost your whole case," laughed Dr. Earl. "There has never been anything that brought all sorts and conditions of women together like the suffrage cause. You see that in England. In fact, you see it everywhere. Women are waking up, and getting to their feet and stretching out their hands—to us? Not at all, to each other."
"Oh, I wish you'd say that to my comrades here," said Miss Holland. "We should all be so glad to hear you. Will you not let me present you for a few minutes during the informal discussion?"
For an instant he wavered, then the face of Leonora flashed before him, and he shook his head decisively. "I'm too new at this sort of thing," he answered. "Get my brother here to talk to you about Colorado, and let the audience heckle him."
"We'd be delighted," laughed Miss Holland. "The lady who is to conduct the question box, which is the main thing to-night, comes from Denver. Her name is Carroll Renner; do you happen to know her? Will she be able to holdher own? Sometimes they ask pretty sharp questions."
"Don't give yourself a moment's uneasiness," Frank answered. "There'll be no twelve baskets needed to remove the fragments of the contumacious when she gets through. A small blotter will answer."
"You know her very well, then?" Miss Holland said, openly surprised.
"Rather," he answered laconically. "She is the most persistent lobbyist in the State, and she infallibly discovers the one deadly section in a bill that you thought so well hidden that no one would ever notice it. She's the most troublesome woman I know and the best fellow."
Miss Holland and Dr. Earl both turned and looked at the little woman, who had come in a few minutes before with a party of people, with added interest. She was very simply gowned in black, and but for a certain twinkle of the dark gray eyes, and a rather mocking smile, there was nothing particularly distinctive about her.
"Tell me some more," said Miss Holland curiously. "Sometimes the voting woman helps and sometimes she hurts; if they're freaky,and of course some of them are, they hurt dreadfully."
"I've seen her a good deal while I've been watching the Senate," he said. "I'd been out there for several sessions of the General Assembly before I located there. She came in one day with a letter from some national woman's organization—wanted the Beveridge Child Labor Law endorsed, I think. Anyhow, time was of the essence of the contract, so we drew up a concurrent resolution, and she got a Republican and a Democrat to introduce it together, and it slid along on its way to Washington within forty-eight hours; she and a Mrs. Platt worked it together. All they said was that the women wanted it."
Miss Holland gasped. "Go on," she said.
He lowered his voice, for the president was introducing a handsome girl who was to give a reading.
"Another time there was a bill—I don't recollect it, but something about committing girl prisoners, or something of the sort; I saw her get pretty white, and shut her lips hard, and then she got up and started to walk out, and one of the Senators saw her, too. 'Say, you don't like that bill?' he said, and she answered,as if she could hardly control her anger, 'It's infamous!' 'Oh, it is, is it?' he said. 'Well, then, we'll make them adjourn over until we can get a conference and amend the thing.' No fuss, no talk; just straight goods. That's Carroll Renner."
"And that's what it means to be an enfranchised woman!" said Miss Holland, with a long breath. "None of us could do that here!"
"Well, that's part of it," acquiesced Frank, and then they listened silently. The girl who was reading was not particularly well-trained, but there were passion and pathos in her voice as she told the story of the eaglet, chained to a log for fear it might fall if permitted to attempt to fly.
"We also have our dream of a Garden," the strong young voice went on. "But it lies in a distant future. We dream that woman shall eat of the tree of knowledge together with man, and that side by side and hand close to hand, through ages of much toil and labor, they shall together raise about them an Eden nobler than any the Chaldean dreamed of; an Eden created by their own labor and made beautiful by their own fellowship.
"In his Apocalypse there was one who sawa new heaven and a new earth; we see a new earth; but therein dwells love—the love of comrades and co-workers.
"It is because so wide and gracious to us are the possibilities of the future, so impossible is a return to the past, so deadly is a passive acquiescence in the present, that to-day we are found everywhere raising our strange new cry, 'Labor, and the training that fits us for labor!'"
"You recognize it, of course?" Silvia said to Dr. Earl, but he shook his head, and Frank answered, "It's Olive Schreiner, isn't it? She does good work, but I've never read anything that compared with that book on 'Woman and Economics,' and when an American writer has the whole world sitting up and taking notice, I don't see why we don't boost her game."
There was a little buzz and stir while slips of paper and pencils were distributed to the audience, and the questions collected for the next speaker.
The presiding officer made the usual preliminary remarks, and introduced Miss Renner, who gathered up the goodly sheaf of white slips in her hands and ran over them as if looking for some query that would make a speciallyapt beginning. Her face lit up as she came across one with which she was evidently familiar.
"This is a favorite question of mine," she said cheerfully. "I should miss it dreadfully if it failed to turn up, but it is such a troublesome and comprehensive question to answer that I have set the reply to music, and will have it sung for you, in order that you may all remember it. The question is, 'What have Colorado women done with the ballot?' I don't, myself, consider that a fair question, since none of us come down to Philadelphia or New York or Pittsburg or any of the other cities of sweetness and light and ask what you men have done with your all-powerful vote, but this seems to be the main one, especially to the masculine mind."
Dr. Earl laughed, for he had written the question, and seating herself at the piano, Miss Renner looked up at a merry-faced girl, who began singing to her rippling accompaniment a song of miraculous changes which should have ensued upon woman's enfranchisement, and concluded with a long chant, recounting some of the more notable achievements of the voting woman, ranging all the way from jointownership of children and property, minimum salary laws, juvenile courts, medical inspection of school children, State institutions built and endowed, equality in inheritance and a host of other things, up to the adoption by her State of the initiative and referendum.
After that, Miss Renner had her audience with her until she dropped the last twist of paper on the table beside her. "You ask me why it took us so many years to pass a good law regulating child labor, and why we have failed in limiting the hours of woman's labor. As to the first, it is true that our law was by no means equal to yours, but we had the means to enforce it, and as a consequence we have little or no child labor. You have a good statute, one of the best in the Union"—there was a ripple of applause—"but in addition to this excellent law prohibiting child labor," she went on evenly, "you have in this city alone over twenty thousand child wage-earners.
"When we have gone to our legislatures asking for laws for the protection of the weak, we have generally obtained them easily, when they did not interfere with 'big business.' It took Illinois women nine years to get a StateHome for children. We passed such a law without any effort whatever. In two-thirds of the States of the Union women are trying to make mothers co-equal guardians of their children, and trying in vain. That was the first law our enfranchised women wrote upon our statute books. One only learns to understand these things by experience. You may find it hard to see why railroads should go into a deal to defeat an eight-hour law for women, but that statute was flagged by a Pullman palace car towel and fell asleep at the switch, because that company complained that it couldn't get a change of sheets unless laundry girls could be compelled to work overtime. You don't dream when you talk of 'big business' to what little business it will descend."
There was a sudden hush, and she flung out her hands with an impulsive gesture, and there was a passionate earnestness in her voice that gripped her hearers. "Let me tell you something you do not know when you hold the women in the suffrage States responsible for conditions they are the first to deplore. A handful of men in this city have more to do with Western industries and their regulationthan have both the men and women. We have steel works; their policy is dictated from lower Broadway. We have smelters; they are closed at the order of a syndicate in this city. We have railroads, all of them controlled by your fellow citizens, and it was the deals entered into between the representatives of these interests and our local corporations that defeated the eight-hour law for women, and every bit of reform legislation pledged to the people. It was this condition, this failure of alleged democracy, that made us go on record for real democracy, for the initiative that makes it possible for us to enact the laws our representatives are cajoled into pigeon-holing, for the referendum that enables us to scotch the snake so that the people may have a chance to kill it. This was the first great fundamental reform which the women demanded, and it was owing to the work of education they began twenty years ago, and kept up untiringly, that Colorado has won this great victory. Woman suffrage is not alone for women, or to enable us to secure certain readjustments of law. It is for our country, which cannot exist half enfranchised and half irresponsible, half democracyand half a feudalism; half of it privileged to shirk or exercise its civic rights, and half denied aught but the burden of those rights. Women need the franchise if only to make their influence, of which we hear so much, effective, but more than they need the ballot, this nation needs the active devotion of its women to transmute to golden fulfillment its leaden life; it needs, it must have all that we can give it, your life and mine; if it is to go forward, its sons and daughters must go forward—together!"
There was generous applause, and the two young men followed Miss Holland, and she presented Dr. Earl and was about to introduce his brother, when Miss Renner held out both hands to him.
"Hast thou found me, O mine enemy," she cried. "I'm awfully glad to see you, Frank. I was much minded to tell how you helped me get my dove bill through, but I feared they might hold you responsible for the defeat of the eight-hour law and turn and rend you."
"You promised never to reveal any of my good deeds," he answered. "Keep it out of the papers, Miss Holland. I can't afford to loseprestige as the exponent of the Mammon of Unrighteousness."
"Unfortunately, he is a great god with legislatures, East as well as West," answered Miss Holland, and then they all went out together.
CHAPTER XIIA TUBERCULAR KNEE AND A WORRIED SURGEON
Dr. Earl found his hands uncommonly full for the next few weeks. What with the endless detail attendant upon the arrangements for his new offices, and the perfection of his equipment, it seemed as if there were not enough hours in the day to meet all the calls upon him. Leonora looked aggrieved, and Hilda complained loudly that he had deserted them.
The spectacular manner in which the yellower part of the New York press had handled his first case after his return, brought him telephone calls and personal visits from many old patients, and a goodly number from new ones, not to mention freaky interviews with persons representing all sorts of cults. He was asked to address half a dozen different branches of the New Thought movement. The Society for the Propagation of Esoteric Buddhism asked him to tell them of his experiences in Hindoostan;"Purple Mother" and "Besant" Theosophists sent committees to wait on him, and various believers in Spiritist exploitations, astrologists, psychometrists and all sorts and conditions of dabblers in occultism pestered him with letters, circulars and requests of every conceivable nature.
It had been no part of his plan to return to his native land and set up a practice by which he should exploit to the world the results of his study. A real student, he knew very well that a lifetime would be all too short to devote to the as yet but little known field of mental therapeutics, and nothing could have been more foreign to his character, individually or professionally, than the fanfare of trumpets with which his return had been heralded. The principles which he wished to prove must be brought home to his profession if they were to be of great and lasting benefit, and the publicity and advertising which a man of a different calibre might have enjoyed, were annoying in the extreme to Earl. He was still a young man, and modest withal, and he felt that nothing could be more detrimental with the men whose regard he wished to secure and hold, so he declined all invitations to speak, all requests for articles orinterviews, and gave himself up to getting back into the harness. His patients, both old and new, took up more time than he could have hoped for, and before the middle of summer he found himself not only well launched in his profession, but with all that he could possibly find time to do, and work piling up ahead of him, so that he could only promise indefinitely when the Ramseys urged him to come down to their Newport place, and Leonora had to put up with fractions of Sundays until she and her mother left for Bar Harbor.
There were times when that young lady was by no means certain that she wished to marry a successful physician. "You wouldn't like me any better if I were unsuccessful?" he asked teasingly, but she came back to her point, and he had to explain gravely that the theories of the laboratory must be worked out in actual practice before they can be transmuted into accepted facts.
"But you don't need the money," she argued, trying dimly to apply some of the principles which he was fond of expounding. It seemed rather hopeless, but with infinite patience he sought to make clear to her that any human being whose life is not to be useless and profitlessmust have some object to attain, some work to do which will develop his character. When she replied that he had character enough, and her only object in life was to be his wife, what more was there to say? Flattery at once so charming and so complete left him defenseless, and he kissed her and went away, trying not to ask himself whether a legal ceremony could ever make wedded souls of two mortals of such diverse views of life. And yet, she was so sweet, so sweet!
In spite of the many other demands upon his time, Dr. Earl saw his first patient very frequently. Mrs. Bell did not appear cramped for means, and provided everything that could add to her little daughter's comfort, including not a few luxuries, which Dr. Earl felt convinced were the gift of Miss Holland. If he had vaguely hoped that he might meet her at his patient's he was destined to disappointment. Once her car arrived just as he was leaving, and another time they passed on the stairs. He told himself that it was better so, and yet when he took her hand, and felt the firm, strong fingers, well-knit and efficient, for no soft, yielding little five-and-a-half glove-wearer ever compassed Beethoven, he knew that hers wasa nature that could answer to his own, and his hand tightened involuntarily. There was something in his look as he met the blue eyes on the step above that brought the warm blood to her face, and she swayed toward him almost imperceptibly, and then with a word of courteous greeting went on her way, for she knew that according to common report he was to marry Miss Kimball that fall. Her lip curled a little, for she remembered Leonora of old; she knew her pink-and-white prettiness and the few and simple enfoldments of her elementary little brain, just large enough to hold a few attractive near-ideas, a thorough comprehension of all the social conventionalities, and a fixed and stubborn conviction as to what was or was not "smart." "If she has a soul," Silvia said to herself with rather unusual heat, "no one could tell whether it is in a condition of arrested development, hopeless atrophy or complete ossification. As well seek diamonds in a common sandbank as inspiration or aspiration in its sawdusty recesses." Then she laughed, and said, "Cat!" softly, which was really most irrelevant.
The day that the cast was to be removed, Silvia appeared laden with good things thatthey might celebrate the occasion with due ceremony.
With infinite care and gentleness, Dr. Earl cut down through the cast, and took it off. The fracture was perfectly knit, but there was a slight swelling about the knee, and as Earl examined it Silvia saw him compress his lips in a hard, straight line. Without looking up, or changing his tone, he asked the child if she had had a fall since the cast had been changed. She answered readily that about a week before her crutch had slipped as she was coming indoors, and she had fallen, striking the injured leg against the stone step, and she winced as he touched the thin knee.
"It's too bad," he said, "but there will have to be another cast about this knee, and you must be more careful, little girl."
The tears came to her eyes, and her mother turned to him with an expression of anxiety. His cheerful face reassured her. "We'll hope it won't be for long," he said, "but there's no use taking chances. Has her health generally been good?" he asked Mrs. Bell.
"The diseases common to childhood went rather hard with her and she had considerabletrouble with her neck and throat a few years ago," Mrs. Bell replied.
He made an examination of the glands of her neck, but said no more.
In spite of many insistent calls elsewhere, Dr. Earl remained long enough to help lend an air of festivity to the small party, which Silvia presided over with infinite tact, and with a last admonition to Mrs. Bell to keep the little girl in bed until he came again, and as quiet as possible, he took his departure, and Silvia went with him.
"Tell me what is the matter?" she said, with her usual directness, when they were out on the street.
"What makes you think anything is?" he parried.
"I beg your pardon," she said, a trifle coldly. "I should not have asked."
He turned to her and stopped, mute reproach in his eyes. "There isn't a shadow of doubt that tuberculosis has developed in that knee, and while I hope to arrest it, and perfect a cure in time, I am very anxious, nevertheless."
"But the break has united?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, and that goes to show that this conditionis very recent, and mild, but with her antecedent history no one can tell what may happen," he said.
"Antecedent history?" Silvia said, rather puzzled. "I thought you did not know the family?"
"I didn't," he answered, "but you may remember that I looked very carefully at the bruises about the knee when I set the leg, and I asked Mrs. Bell some general questions but received no very definite replies until to-day, and what you heard indicates that the child has already had a slight attack of tuberculosis. I had counted on my treatment to overcome the weakening influences of confinement to bed and crutch for so long a time."
Silvia was silent, as if thinking out some plan, and said suddenly, "Then it will all resolve itself into a contest between health and disease, with a considerable handicap against the patient?"
"Yes," he said. "With plenty of good food and good air and the right kind of care, there is no reason why she should not win. And I intend that she shall," he concluded energetically.
CHAPTER XIIIAN ANTI-SUFFRAGE MEETING
Dr. Earl redoubled his attentions to Leonora, determined to give her no just cause for complaint. The doubts that had beset him disappeared, for no one could be more charming than Leonora, when she was permitted to follow her own bent. Her mother also showed her gratification at his devotion, and tried, with consummate tact, to wean him away from his evident partiality for the suffrage cause. She gave him the best of the tracts issued by the Anti-Suffrage Society; while he was waiting for his offices to be fitted up, she took him to lectures and teas and receptions where anti-suffrage sentiment abounded, and tried in various ways to convince him of the superior social status of the "Anti" women.
The culmination was reached, however, when he escorted her and Leonora to a meeting in a large theatre one afternoon. They wereprominent figures in one of the boxes nearest the stage, and Silvia Holland and Carroll Renner, who were sitting well toward the rear of the parquet, had ample opportunity to watch the effect of the meeting upon him.
Frank Earl, who had come in directly afterward and taken a seat just back of them, leaned forward and talked while the crowd gathered. "Oh, don't mind him," he said, when Miss Renner asked if that were not his brother with the anti-suffrage leaders. "He can't help himself, but if he doesn't go away from here ready to enlist under Miss Holland's banner I miss my count. Even I should, were it not that I have seen the folly of it all on its native heath. Don't make faces at me, Carroll, or people will know you are a suffragette."
The theatre had been profusely decorated with flags, flowers and bunting, and mottoes were festooned along the walls, one of which was "God Bless Our Homes," and another, "Imbecile Children Will Be the Product of Imbecile Voting Women."
Dr. Earl was much impressed with the audience, which, nevertheless, seemed rather chilly and unresponsive. A dignity prevailed which either could not or dared not give way to anydecided demonstration, in marked contradistinction to the enthusiasm which characterized the suffrage meetings he had witnessed.
In addition to the bunting and the mottoes, there were a number of large pictures, done in the style of the cartoonist. One of these showed a colonial dame at her spinning-wheel, with the words "An American Lady of Four Generations Ago" beneath it; beside it was the picture of a masculine-looking woman, in a harem skirt, standing on a box at a street corner, addressing other women similarly attired; this was called "The American Suffragette." Another picture showed a nurse caring for the sick and dying soldiers on one side, and on the other a suffragette charging the police; this picture was labeled "Before and After Taking."
The meeting opened with a spirited address by the president of the association, Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, who was welcomed with a brief rustle of well-bred applause, led by Frank Earl.
"Got to do it," he said, in answer to Carroll's reproachful look. "You'll see; even Jack will catch on before the end of the meeting. Alwaysapplaud these folks when they begin; maybe you can't when they quit."
Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss told of the enormous gains recently made by the "Antis" among the select people of the city, and passed off the suffrage parade as merely a tatterdemalion host of the riff-raff of the city led by a few notoriety seekers.
"You see, Miss Holland," Frank whispered, "what a good thing it is that I came here; I never should have known that that parade wasn't one of the finest assemblages of women in the world if I hadn't."
Silvia laughed in spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform went on piling up the indictment against her sex, and showing how demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and nobler politics would be without the influence of woman, and wound up with a glowing peroration on behalf of the women who were fighting to maintain the sanctity of the home and the elevation of the children.
Silvia gave an impatient ejaculation. "Howcan you take it so quietly, Miss Renner?" she asked. "I confess it always stirs me up."
"It wouldn't if you had the ballot," said the smaller woman. "It's just amusing, or tiresome, according to how well it is done. You women are the worried and worrying Marthas; we are the Marys, who have chosen the better part that shall not be taken away; we know it can't be, and this is something like hearing people laboriously argue that the world is flat with the sun revolving around it."
After the opening speech there were brief addresses by Dr. David Dearson on the disastrous results to motherhood should women participate in the active life of the nation; by the Reverend Jayson Yerkes on the Pauline doctrine of the subserviency of the truly feminine woman; by Mrs. Workman Werther on the decadence of feminine charm among women aping men's interests in life, and Crawford Dorer, a labor leader, opposed the movement because the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The "Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave anangry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr. Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures and the pitiful spectacle that voting women make of themselves, he galvanized the audience into a semblance of real life and interest.
Dr. Earl found the speeches entertaining if not enlightening, and after the second, gave himself up to the silent enjoyment of collating the arguments presented in juxtaposition. No sooner had one speaker convinced his hearers that women would precipitate anarchy by their radicalism than the next proved equally conclusively that an era of dilettantism and millinery shop legislation would be the inevitable result of woman suffrage; no sooner were they filled with the horror of the degradation of politics by the class of women certain to participate in it, than another speaker assured them that politics was already so vile that any woman would be hopelessly contaminated who had anything to do with the gangrenous growth, and yet another showed that women wouldn't vote anyhow. It was all he could doto control the muscles of his face when the Reverend Mr. Yerkes told them in one sentence of the dissension that would rend families and in the next that married women simply voted as their husbands dictated, and he could not repress a smile when the doctor and the professor made it clear that if woman is to reproduce the race she must not be expected to do anything else, only to have Mrs. Werther show how woman must be free to take part in the ennobling activities of the world, philanthropy, charity, etc., if she is to "bring to motherhood that crown which is the glory of the race," and much more of the same sort. He heard the ancient argument about bullets and ballots, and in the same breath his attention was called to Semiramis conquering Assyria, the Amazons invading Asia, the triumph of Sappho in song, Aspasia in the salon, Deborah among the Judges of Israel, George Eliot in literature, and a host of others who had won distinction.
The audience was told that it was entirely proper to agitate, cajole, coax, beseech, threaten, bully and browbeat men into voting for candidates and measures desired by the women; anything that stopped short of blackmail and personal intimidation bore the hallmarkof refined femininity, but to take two minutes to accomplish results for themselves by depositing a ballot on election day meant everlasting damnation to all feminine traits! And Leonora patted her pretty little hands, and looked up to Earl for approval, feeling that at last he must see that Silvia and her cohorts were routed horse and foot.
When the attack upon Western women was well under way, and Mr. Rice, a dapper little chap, looking like a freshman from high school, was rolling out his arraignment of Denver women in particular as typical of the nethermost depths to which the voting female may descend, Carroll Renner wrote a few lines on a bit of paper, and gave it to one of the ushers, and a few minutes later she had the satisfaction of watching the portly Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss read it. When Mr. Rice had concluded his diatribe, the lady stated in dulcet tones that Mr. Frank Earl was said to be in the audience, and as he lived in Denver, and was known to have strong views on this question, there was an urgent request that he should come to the platform, that they might know from one who had long witnessed with regret the deteriorating effects of woman suffrage that nothingthat they had heard was in any way exaggerated. She vouched for Earl as one whom she had known since his boyhood, a member of one of the most highly respected families in New York, and who had never failed to reply when she had needed statistics from the field of woman's dethronement.
There was a bustle and stir over the audience, and John Earl looked a good deal startled, while Leonora was openly delighted. An excellent speaker, and a trained debater, the occasion had no terrors for Frank Earl. In fact, he confessed to himself as he made his way to the platform, he had not had so much fun as he expected to enjoy in the next fifteen minutes for many a long day. He was introduced with many rather florid expressions, and began by stating his position calmly, unmistakably, as opposed to the extension of the franchise to women. He then made a few complimentary references to those ladies who nobly put aside their own devotion to the home, the sphere they adorned so admirably, in order to save their misguided suffrage sisters from the evil effects of their mistaken zeal.
There were a good many suffragists and some suffragettes in that anti-suffrage meeting,and Frank saw that the chilly audience had at last thawed, melted, warmed up and was rapidly approaching the point where it might reasonably be expected to boil over.
"I am unalterably against the extension of the franchise to women," he repeated, and went on, "but my reasons for this opposition are concrete and practical rather than abstract and theoretical, and are based upon the experience I have gained from my residence in Colorado. I am also opposed to it because it is all too evident that the suffrage should be restricted rather than extended. The ballot should be the reward of intelligence, education, and a comprehension of the great political problems of the nation."
"Give us the truth," some one at the left of the parquet cried.
"I shall," he said, "and that necessitates correcting a few impressions which seem to me at variance with the facts. If it were true that women would not vote, or would vote as directed by the male members of their families, I should not so much deprecate giving them the ballot; but neither contention is true. Women do vote, and what is worse, they vote in steadily increasing numbers. Out of seventy thousandvotes cast at the last election in my city a little less than half of them were cast by women, and judging from the results, I must say that the men of their families had very little influence with them. The possession of the franchise has developed the secretive instinct among women; they no longer confide their intentions to their doting husbands; they listen to their words of wisdom and then—they vote the secret ballot as they please."
There was a wave of laughter that swelled into a gleeful sort of shout of mirth, but with an air of the most grieved surprise the speaker turned wonderingly to Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, who still beamed upon him, though she was looking worried.
"But surely, Mr. Earl," she said, "when the disagreeable duty is thrust upon them, the conservative women do what they can to protect the interests of the State?"
He shook his head sadly.
"This is one of the most frightful discoveries we have made since women began to vote. When Mr. Dorer speaks of the innate conservatism of women he shows that he is not conversant with the woman movement. It is true that there are a few intensely partisanwomen, who can be held by party ties, but the rank and file observe no such allegiance. They read and study, but in addition they go to the legislative halls, and there they see that both parties make and break promises with equal facility, and what is the result?"
"Well, what is it?" cried an impatient feminine voice.
"I hardly know how to break it to you," he said, "but the result is revolt, revolt all along the line. Yes, ladies; women, lovely, refined, gentle, educated women utterly refuse to be dictated to by political leaders, and openly sneer at ward bosses. They can't be kept in line. They no longer sing the sweet strains of 'The land of the free and the home of the brave.' On the contrary, they raise the battle cry, 'Let independence be our boast,' and in spite of the passionate pleas of their natural leaders, they go on record for the most radical legislation. Why, I'm told that nearly every so-called progressive law enacted in my State has been passed by their continued efforts.
"They have no conception of the ideal of government laid down by Hamilton; they will submit to neither checks nor balances, and would subvert the whole scheme of representativegovernment and replace it with an out-and-out democracy. In accord with this mistaken view they have adopted the initiative and referendum, carried it overwhelmingly, three to one, in every county in the State, and I need not tell an audience of intelligence that this is the most insidious form of attack now being made upon the fundamental principles of our government."
By this time Silvia and all the suffragists in the audience were applauding wildly, while Carroll Renner laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks, and once more Frank turned a patient and puzzled countenance to the presiding officer.
"I do not understand the applause, ladies," he said mildly, with a gleam in his eyes that none but Carroll understood. "The thing I am telling you is frightful. The enfranchisement of women means the end of the Republic as it now is; it means the rejection of all theories that are found wanting, and the putting out on the vast uncharted sea of experiment; it means interference with those great business enterprises that have built up, I had nearly said that 'make and preserve us a nation'! It means a reckless disregard for property rights in thesentimental desire to protect the individual, as if a nation could become great and strong by individual effort alone, and without the guiding and sustaining hands of statecraft and financial genius gripping the rudder of the ship of state. They will not listen to the voice of experience; they cannot be intimidated; they cannot be deceived for an indefinite number of years; if the established order seems to them unfair, unjust or illiberal, they have little respect for tradition when it's results they're after."
"But if the anti-suffrage movement is growing as we have been told, can't the anti-suffragists overcome those tendencies?" asked an old lady on the platform.
Frank restated the question for the benefit of the audience, and then answered with indescribable pathos, "I cannot conceal the truth from you; improbable as it seems, when once this poison becomes virulent in the body politic it spares none, and the very women who have battled most nobly against this corroding innovation are apt to succumb to its insidious influence; even the anti-suffragist, home-loving, God-fearing, modest and retiring as is her nature, has developed a talent for political intrigue that has led to the downfall of morethan one of the best laid plans of mice and men."
He tried to go on, but the audience was convulsed, not so much by what he said as by his manner, and by the sudden turning of the tables after the long tension had reached the snapping point. Still uncertain whether to regard his as friend or foe, Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, after rapping vainly for order, was obliged to dismiss the meeting, and by some irony of fate the orchestra played "Hail Columbia," and the suffragettes took up the words and sung them with much unction, especially the lines—
"Let independence be our boast,Ever mindful what it cost."