"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't
in favour of women suffrage.'
"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'
"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that
I knew a male creature would approve of.
"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a
glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty
Ames--that had come home in time for the Proudfit party--was a-sitting,
a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day
after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my
own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.
"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'
"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,
hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation--I don't
know what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic
and toed the crack.'
"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.
"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.
"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I
cut in, hasty and peaceful.
"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a
_year_ past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,
is it? Ain't you going to get it done _this_ spring?'
"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to
pavin' that new street.'
"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.
'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'
"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel
Daniel--a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the
skin drawn over it--and she was crying.
"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I
left little Otie so sick--I hadn't ought to of left him--only I did want
the fifty cents....'
"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'
"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel
says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money--'
"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in
the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't
you?'
"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's
just exactly how Silas is.
"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you
was tellin' me--about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I
says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now
while the river's low, and you know it.'
"'Woman--' Silas begins excitable.
"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council
is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden
Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,
some direct.
"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n--Who-a!' Silas yells,
pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel
following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a
citizen ought to be, and ain't.
"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked
with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.
"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.
"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.
The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'
"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just
graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you
notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I
believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't
bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know
they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well
as by my prayers,' says she.
"'_Your_ children!' says I.
"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she
speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute
I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked
when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.
We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned
like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress and told
us that was for _our_ baby--and then we always looked away, squeamish.
"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that
way, that maybe you might possibly have--have one, sometime.'
"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to
know--everything,' Letty said.
"That struck awful near home.
"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother--like that. I
always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think
everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to
speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of
hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't
matter.'
"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.
"I looked at her, blank.
"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.
"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little
jackanapesses.'
"'But you _do_,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother
or not.'
"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept
up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready
for loving.... I always wonder if things ain't sometimes arranged to
happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at
that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for
the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his
mother--and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?
"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do
nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to
talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting
that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,
and would I go over?
"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something
to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'
"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,
and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was
little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.
"'_So_,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,
are you?'
"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.
"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run
all down her shoulders.
"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am--to
carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.
But put it at just _strong_.'
"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.
"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I
guess some men do, judging by the results.'
"He laughed, but he went on.
"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in
public life as you would be in your home--your very own home?'
"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her
head--all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when
she looked up.
"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered
smile.
"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he
says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head
in his face the regular man look--I can't rightly name it, but every
woman in the world knows it when she sees it--a kind of an _I'm the one
of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you_ look.
"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty done? First she looked
down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,
sort of little and low and soft. _And she kept still._ She was about as
much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about
women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain
as the blue on the sky, I see that _she liked the minute when she let
Elbert beat her--liked it_, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.
"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,
and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her
like petting.
"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he
spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,
but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee
and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of
suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy
was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her
preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is
like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the
prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated, young
Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated
over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little
things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's
like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose
working away, quiet and still.
"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,
barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped
trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down
to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much
of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black
Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as
a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with
the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of
her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies
and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held
my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost
run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right
out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't
what was the matter with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter
with him.
"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago
that she must move.'
"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this
year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did
you say to the council about filling in the hole?'
"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a
good crop of wooden blocks this year.'
"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'
"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was
a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and
wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy
Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,
_could_ set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in
the same kind of danger.
"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,
had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express
ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby
Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:--
"'_I_ believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for
twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women
can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'
"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about
the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.
Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he
votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the
poorhouse.
"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to
counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'
"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost _been_ the mayor
of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done
a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.
I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'
"'Men _know_ more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as
they can _do_ any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'
holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'
that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'
"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'
at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine
print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'
prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions
of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'
"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've
thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us
women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our
sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'
dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that
kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'
"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.
"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see
some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on
real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'
"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I
nudged her.
"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.
"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something
to her, low. 'I could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like
you do is better than being elected!'
"And Letty--what do you s'spose?--she just glanced up at him, and made a
little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and
kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to
her wrist.
"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read
some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together--six or
eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common
council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,
and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she
spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'
Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.
"'_Well_,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say
the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than
the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'
"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and
they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this
Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.
"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was
a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in
the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'
"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy
Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.
"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,
careless laugh.
"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up
some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the
hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I _would_ do.'
"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a
disgrace to be, same as an actor, _unless_ you got to be a big one. An'
can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't
want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.
"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of
sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I
always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone
votin'--an' like it _couldn't_ make no real difference.'
"'Oh, an' _ladies_!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, 'really it's bad enough to
have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of
coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to
sleep nights.'
"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby
in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.
Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'
if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by
main strength?'
"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to
look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis--her that's an
invalid and gloomy by complexion.
"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for
their approval. And they got it.
"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell
you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.
They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'
"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind
of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover
it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:
"'You _know_ you think of yourself in a home afterward--and not around
at polls and things, Letty.'
"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you
know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it
like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and
thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you
can't never get much real arguing done that way.
"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up--and now it was
like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us
face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had
all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered
like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had
defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'
Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis
don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too--and so
on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been
talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the
way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even
Libby Liberty had kept still--her that has a regular tongue in her head.
And Letty, that believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly
that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her
peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,
wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in
the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?
"_What in creation...._ Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me
like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that
it takes most folks a good while to recover from....
" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the
street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.
It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying
and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,
to see the cat take to them--which it done--like the cat immemorial has
done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,
strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and
when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like
the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said
when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was created with, so
to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy
in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and
flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.
"'We like it--why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us
here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,
left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'
"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used
to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very
much dressed up, and I thought:--
"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't
no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize
it and shut up?'
"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy
said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,
hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going
over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,
just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part
open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,
in calico and no hat. And as soon as we see her face, everybody stopped
talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.
"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?
Otie's worse--I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of
him.'
"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her
whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.
"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so
much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.
"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right
up with all there is to me.
"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know
what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council
that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,
that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else
did--piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you
want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right
out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to
fill in the Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad
for paving up half the county swamp.'
"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'
All but me. I went right on--nothing could of kept me still then.
"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to
fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,
what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it
visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you
say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we
ain't--mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I
do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work
and proved it.'
"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in--her that's afraid even to
ask for starch if you forget to give it to her--she broke right down and
leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:--
"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his
bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this--for no
reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of--that's the worst. He
needn't of.'
"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her
shoulder in that big, mother way she's got--and it was her that went
with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us
ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.
"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.
I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or
two.'
"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it
herself.'
"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in
some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to
do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'
Sykes give a quarter--she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real
generous with money. And Silas pipes in:--
"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'
he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I
been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she
should be all stacked up with debts.'
"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I
thought: 'Ladies,' I says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and
hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices
on what's the trouble up to her house.'
"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:--
"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'
"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying
over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'
"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies
bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't
all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for
it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general
scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'
"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody
in particular:--
"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'
"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or
somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a
little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'
"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at
the penny-apiece kind and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give
his mother one.'
"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always
give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'
"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by
me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'
"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy
Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'
"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.
"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,
but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a
doughnut--an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'
doughnuts.'
"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em
like a little gentleman--_towards_ the coop an' not down the road. I
always noticed that about him.'
"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. _What makes us let
him die?_'
"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath--and my breath, in
these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I
says:--
"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being somebody that Friendship Village
could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing
but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help
adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,
tasteful.'
"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and
bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the
fifty cents--besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it
was all going for nothing, all for nothing--when we could of helped it.
And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:--
"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the
river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we
can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'
"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking
down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my
heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.
Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and
Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the
wall--but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well
dressed, was setting the lawmakers of the whole world; and there in
front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but
Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is--saying to them: 'My
land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em
into the world, tedious. Let 'em live--fix things so's they can live an'
so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and
spilled over, as if everything we was all of us _for_ had come up in my
throat.
"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done
for Otie--so be we'd begun in time.'
"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold
as some kind of death:--
"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. _I_ say
that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women
votin',' she says, triumphant.
"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,
and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her
eyes was like the sunny places in water.
"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'
Lacy meant?'
"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.
"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and unexpected and young Letty
looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:--
"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry
him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring
about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been
the women who have been urging it--and not getting it done. Wasn't it
our work to do, too?'
"I see Elbert looking at her--like he just couldn't bear to have her
speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before
he meant to:--
"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and
my mother did.'
"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:--
"'_Womanly!_' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and
feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and
neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more
womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children
as I would make my own home?'
"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you
about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on
my kitchen stoop, when she spoke of her children and when I felt like
I'd ought to turn away--the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my
baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now--only now, somehow,
I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at
Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was
what she'd said that morning that she was--and that I was--and that we
all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or
not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them
all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't
own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.
But now, when I heard Letty do it....
" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window
of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women
that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to
be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other
women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I
didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,
_inside their four walls and out_. And they wasn't coming with poultices
and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left
undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by
scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down
back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of
through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery
improvements on the dead and gone--no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied
with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But
their hands--was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been
before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and
that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked
across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I
thought:--
"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no
more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, _save one_: And that's
that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world
ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come
fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of
our children is dying from something that was your job _and_ ours to do,
and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'
"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and all of you! Let's pretend,
just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure
out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'
"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with
us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:--
"'Oh, Letty--you ain't _strong_ enough to help carry things along!'
"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it
isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help
when the time comes. It's the--mother in them.'
"And I says to myself:--
"'And it's the--_human beingness_ of them.' But Letty didn't know that
yet.
"Elbert answered, after a minute:--
"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman
you are!'
"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that
morning--just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big
hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For
what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male
creature. And I knew then, and I know now, that that won't never die,
no matter what.
"Elbert put out his hand.
"'Good night, Letty,' he said.
"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.
"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.
"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you--will
you?'
"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.
"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'
"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd
heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that
is the human tone--I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world
knows it when she hears it--a tone that says: _If I have my way, you and
I are going to live out our lives together_.
"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.
And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I
believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all
the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.