VIII.

The day Gertrude received Avery's letter about bill number 408, she

asked her father what the bill was about. He looked at her in surprise,

and then at his wife. "I don't know anything about it, child," he said;

"Why?"

Gertrude drew from her pocket Avery's letter and read that part of it.

Her father's face clouded.

"What business has he to worry you with his dirty political work? I

infer from what he says that it is a bill that I've only heard mentioned

once or twice. The sort of thing they do in secret sessions and keep

from the newspapers in the main. That is, they are only barely named in

the paper and under a number or heading which people don't understand.

I'm disgusted with Avery--perfectly!" Gertrude was surprised, but with

that ignorance and absolute sincerity of youth, she appealed to her

mother.

"Mamma, do you see any reason why, from that letter, papa should be

vexed with Mr. Avery? It seemed to me to have just the right tone; but I

am sorry he did not tell me just what the bill is."

"You let me catch him telling you, if it's what I think it is," retorted

her father, rather hotly. "It's not fit for your ears. Good women have

no business with such knowledge and--"

Mrs. Foster held up a warning finger to her daughter, but the girl had

not been convinced.

"Don't good men know such things, papa? Don't such bills deal with

people in a way which will touch women, too? I can't see why you put it

that way. If a bill is to be passed into a law, and it is of so vile a

nature as you say and as this letter indicates, in whose interest is it

to be silent or ignorant? Do you want such a bill passed? Would mamma or

I?"

Her father laughed, and rose from the table. "It is in the interest

of nothing good. No, I should say if you or your mother, or any other

respectable mother at all, were in the Legislature, no such bill would

have a ghost of a chance; but--"

Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon her father. They were very wide open and

perplexed.

"Then it can be only in the interest of the vilest and lowest of the

race that good men keep silent, and prefer to have good women ignorant

and helpless in such--" she began; but her father turned at the door

and said, nervously and almost sharply, "Gertrude, if Avery has no more

sense than to start you thinking about such things, I advise you to

cut his acquaintance. Such topics are not fit for women; I am perfectly

disgusted with--"

As he was passing out of the dining-room, John Martin entered the street

door and faced him. "Hello, Martin! Glad to see you! The ladies are

still at luncheon; won't you come right in here and join them in a cup

of chocolate?"

He was heartily glad of the interruption, and felt that it was very

timely indeed that Mr. Martin had dropped in.

"No, I can't take off my top-coat. Get yours. I want you to join me in

a spin in the park. I've got that new filly outside." Mr. Foster ran

up-stairs to get ready for the drive, and the ladies insisted that a

cup of hot chocolate was the very thing to prepare Mr. Martin for the

nipping air. He was a trifle ill at ease. He wanted to speak of Selden

Avery, and he feared if he did so that he would say the wrong thing.

He had come to-day, partly to have a talk with his friend Foster about

certain gossip he had heard. Fate took the reins.

In rising, Gertrude had dropped Avery's letter. John Martin was the

first to see it. He laughingly offered it to her with the query: "Do you

sow your love letters about that way, Miss Gertrude?"

"Gertrude's love letters take the form of political speeches just now,

and bills and committee reports and the like," laughed her mother. "Her

father was just showing his teeth over that one, He thinks women have

no--"

"Mr. Martin, tell me truly," broke in the girl, "tell me truly, don't

you think that we are all equally interested in having only good laws

made? And don't you think if a proposed measure is too bad for good

women even to be told what it is, that it is bad enough for all good

people to protest against?"

"How are they going to protest if they don't know what it is?" laughed

Martin. "Well, Miss Gertrude, I believe that is the first time I ever

suspected you to be of Celtic blood. But what dreadful measure is Avery

advocating now?" he smiled. "Really, I shouldn't have believed it of

Avery!"

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Poster, entering with his top-coat buttoned to the

chin, and his driving-hat in hand. Gertrude still held the letter. "No,

nor should I have believed it of Avery. It was an outrageous thing for

him to do. What business has Gertrude or Katherine with his disgusting

old bills. Just before you came in I advised Gertrude to cut him

entirely, and--"

Mrs. Foster was trying to indicate to her husband that he was off the

track, and that Mr. Martin did not understand him; but he had the bit

in his teeth and went on. "You agree with me now, don't you? What do you

think of his mentioning such things to Gertrude?" He reached over

and took the letter from his daughter's hand, and read a part of the

obnoxious paragraph.

John Martin's face was a study. He glanced at the two ladies, and then

fixed his eyes upon Gertrude's father.

"Good Gad!" he said, slowly and almost below his breath. "If I were in

your place I should shoot him. The infamous--" He checked himself, and

the two men withdrew. Gertrude and her mother waved at them from the

window, and then the girl said: "I intend to know what that bill is.

What right have men to make laws that they themselves believe are too

infamous for good women even to know about? Don't you believe if all

laws or bills had to be openly discussed before and with women, it would

be better, mamma? I do."

Her mother's cheek was against the cold glass of the window. She was

watching the receding forms. Presently she turned slowly to her daughter

and said, in a trembling tone:--

"Such bills as this one," she drew a small printed slip from her bosom

and handed it to Gertrude, "such bills as that would never be dreamed

of by men if they knew they must pass the discussion of a pure girl or

a mother--never! Their only chance is secret session, and the fact that

even men like your--like Mr. Martin and--and--" she was going to say

"your father," but the girl pressed her hand and she did not. "That even

such as they--for what reason heaven only knows--think they are serving

the best interests of the women they love by a silence which fosters and

breeds just such measures as--"

Gertrude was reading the queer, blind phraseology of the bill. Katherine

had watched her daughter's face as she talked, and now the girl's lips

were moving and she read audibly: "be, and is hereby enacted, that

henceforth the legal age in the state of New York whereat a female may

give consent to the violation of her own person shall be reduced to ten

years."

Gertrude dropped the paper in her lap and looked up like a frightened,

hunted creature. "Great God!" she exclaimed, with an intensity born of

a sudden revelation. "Great God! and they call themselves men! And other

men keep silence--furnish all the soil and nurture for infamy like

that! Those who keep silence are as guilty as the rest! Those who try

to prevent women from knowing--oh, mamma!" Her eyes were intense. She

sprang to her feet; "and John Martin, who thinks he loves _me_ is one

of those men! Knowing such a bill as that is pending, his indignation is

aroused, not at the bill, not at the men who try to smuggle it through,

not at the awful thing it implies, but that so strict a silence is not

kept that such as _we_ may not know of it! He blames Selden Avery for

coming to me--to us--with his splendid chivalry, and sharing with us his

horror, making us the confidants of that inner conscience which sees,

in the intended victims of this awful bill, his little sisters and yours

and mine!" There were indignant tears in her eyes. She closed them, and

her white lips were drawn tense. Presently she asked, without opening

her eyes: "Mamma, do you suppose if you, instead of Mr. Avery, were

chairman of that committee, that such a bill as that would ever have

been presented? Do you suppose, if any mother on earth held the veto

power, that such a bill would ever disgrace a statute book? Are there

enough men, even of a class who generally go to the Legislature, who,

in spite of their fatherhood, in spite of the fact that they have little

sisters, are such beasts as to pass a bill like that? A ten-year-old

girl! A mere baby! And--oh, mamma! it is too hideous to believe, even

of--such a bill could never pass. Never on earth! Surely, Ettie Berton,

poor little thing, has the only father living who is capable of that!"

Mrs. Foster opened her lips to say that several states already had the

law, and that one had placed the age at seven; but she checked herself.

Her daughter's excitement was so great, she decided to wait. The

experience of the past few months had awakened the fire in the nature of

this strong daughter of hers. She had seen the cool, steady, previously

indifferent, well-poised girl stirred to the very depths of her nature

over the awful conditions of poverty, ignorance, and vice she had, for

the first time, learned to know. Gertrude had become a regular student

of some of the problems of life, and she had carried her studies into

practical investigation. It had grown to be no new thing for her to

take Francis, or Ettie, or both, when she went on these errands, and

the study of their points of view--of the effect of it all upon their

ignorance-soaked minds, had been one of the most touching things to her.

Their imaginations were so stunted--so embryonic, so undeveloped that

they saw no better way. To them, ignorance, poverty, squalor, and vice

were a necessary part of life. Wealth, comfort, happiness, ambition

were, naturally and rightly, perquisites, some way, some how, of the

few.

"God rules, and all is as he wishes it or it would not be that way,"

sagely remarked Francis King, one day. It had startled Gertrude. Her

philosophy, her observation, her reason, and her religion were in a

state of conflict just then. She had alway supposed that she was an

Episcopalian with all that this implied. She was beginning to doubt it

at times.

Mrs. Foster looked at her daughter now, as she sat there flushed and

excited. She wondered what would come of it all. She had always studied

this daughter of hers, and tried to follow the girl's moods. Now she

thought she would cut across them.

"Gertrude, you may put that bill with your letter. Mr. Avery mailed it to

me. Of course he meant that I should show it to you if I thought best.

I did think best, but now--but--I don't want you to excite yourself

too--" She broke off suddenly. Her daughter's eyes were upon her in

surprise. Mrs. Foster laughed a little nervously, and kissed the girl's

hand as it lay in her own. "It seems rather droll for your gay little

mother to caution you against losing control of yourself, doesn't it?"

she asked. "You who were always all balance wheel, as your father says.

But--"

"Mamma, don't you think Mr. Avery did perfectly right to send me that

letter and this to you?" broke in Gertrude, as if she had not heard the

admonition of her mother, and had followed her own thoughts from some

more distant point.

"Perfectly," said her mother. "He was evidently deeply disturbed by the

bill. He felt that you were, and should be, his confidant. He simply did

not dream of hiding it from you, I believe. It was the spontaneous act

of one who so loves you that his whole life--all of that which moves him

greatly--must, as a matter of course, be open to you. I thought that

all out when the bill came addressed to me. He--" The girl kissed her in

silence.

"You have such splendid self-respect, Gertrude. Most of us--most

women--have none. We do not expect, do not demand, the least respect

that is real from men. They have no respect for our opinions, and so

upon all the real and important things of life, they hold out to us the

sham of silence as more respectful than candor. And we--most of us--are

weak enough to say we like it. Most of us--"

Gertrude slipped down upon a cushion at the feet of her mother, and put

her young, strong arms about the supple waist. She had of late read

from time to time so much of the unrest and scorn back of the gay and

compliant face of her mother. "Mamma, my real mamma," she said, softly,

"I<am so sorry for papa that he should have missed so much, so much that

might have been his! A mental comrade like you--"

"Men of your father's generation did not want mental comrades in their

wives, Gertrude. They--"

"A telegram, Miss Gertrude," said James, drawing aside the portiere.

"The bill has been rushed through. Passed. Nineteen majority. Avery."

Gertrude read it and handed it to her mother, and both women sat as if

stunned by a blow.