"I never noticed her looks," Howard Maitland was saying, as he and
another member of the Survey Expedition lounged against the railing of
their tubby little vessel and looked idly down on an oily sea. They had
been talking about women--or Woman, as Frederica Payton would have
expressed it; and, naturally, she herself came in for comment.
"Pretty?" Thomas Leighton had asked, sleepily. It was very hot, and the
flats smelt abominably; both men were muddy and dripping with
perspiration.
Howard meditated: "I never noticed her looks. She keeps you hustling so
to know what she's talking about, that looks don't count. She says
things that make you sit up--but lots of girls do that."
"They do. Boring after the first shock. But they enjoy it. It draws
attention to 'em. Our grandmothers used to faint all over the lot, for
the same purpose."
"Sometimes," Howard said, grinning, "when they get going about sex, I
don't know where to look!"
"Look at _them_. That's what they want. And as most of 'em don't know
what they're talking about, you needn't be uncomfortable. When they
orate on Man's injustice to Woman--capital M and capital W--I get a
little weary."
"I'm with 'em, there!" Maitland said.
The older man gave a grunt of impatience: "It isn't men who are unfair
to women; it's Nature. But I don't see what can be done about it. Even
the woman's vote won't be very successful in bucking Nature."
"I don't agree with you! Nature is perfectly impartial. Brain has no
sex!"
"Nature impartial?" Leighton repeated, grimly; "Maitland, when the time
comes for you to sit outside your wife's room, and wait for your
first-born, you will not call Nature impartial. Theories are all very
pretty, but just try waiting outside that door--" his face twitched; and
Howard, remembering vaguely that Mrs. Leighton had been an invalid since
the birth of their only child, changed the subject:
"Miss Payton's just sent me a cartload of suffrage literature; came on
the tug yesterday."
"Suffragist?--you, I mean?"
"Yes; aren't you? Let's get in the flap of that sail."
"Do I look like a suffragist?" the other man demanded.
Howard surveyed him. "I don't know the earmarks, but you show traces of
intelligence, so I suppose you are."
"I'll tell you the earmarks--in the human male: amiable youth or
doddering age."
"You're not guilty on the amiability charge, and you don't visibly
dodder. So I suppose you're an anti."
"Not on your life! It's a case of a plague on both your houses."
They were silent for a while, looking across the lagoon at a low reef
where, all day long, the palms bent and rustled in the hot wind; then
Leighton broke out: "For utter absence of logic I wouldn't know which
party to put my money on."
"Play the antis," Howard advised.
But the other man demurred. "It's neck and neck. Some of the arguments
of the antis indicate idiocy; but some of the suffs' arguments indicate
mania--homicidal mania! It's a dead heat. It's queer," he ruminated;
"each side has sound reasons for the faith that is in it, yet they both
offer us such a lot of--_truck_! One of the mysteries of the feminine
mind, I suppose." He knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the deck-rail,
and yawned. "As an example of 'truck,' I heard an anti say that for a
woman to assume the functions of a man, and vote, was to 'revert to the
amoeba.' Can you match that? But, on the other hand, look at the suffs!
My own sister-in-law (a mighty fine woman) told me that men 'were of no
use except to continue the race.'"
"That's going some!"
"But of course," the older man said, "it is ridiculous to make sex
either a qualification or a disqualification for the ballot; and it's
absurd that my wife shouldn't have a vote when that old Portuguese fool
from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who guts our fish and can't speak
English so that an American dog could understand him--has it."
"That's just it!" Howard said, surprised at his fairness.
"Why multiply him by two?" Leighton said, dryly.
"We wouldn't be a democracy if we discriminated against the uneducated!"
"I don't. I discriminate against the unintelligent. You'll admit
there's a difference? Also, allow me to remind you that democracy is not
the ballot; it's a state of mind."
"Very well!" Maitland retorted. "Make intelligence the qualification:
the women put it over us every time! They are far more intelligent than
men."
"I'd like to hear you prove it."
"That's easy! Girls can stay in school longer than boys, so they are
better educated."
"But I'm not talking about schooling!" Leighton broke in; "I mean just
common sense as to functions of the ballot. Let women ask for an
intelligence qualification, and I'll be the biggest kind of a suff! But
while they don't know any more about what the ballot can and can't do,
than to gas about its raising woman's wages--oh, Lord!" he ended,
hopelessly.
"Suffrage in itself is educating," Howard instructed him.
Leighton nodded. "It ought to be. But I can't see that it has
perceptibly educated our fish-gutter. Still, you'd like to meet his wife
at the polls?"
The suffragist hesitated: "When women get the vote, they'll change the
election laws, and weed out the unfit."
Leighton lifted despairing hands: "When you say things like that, I feel
like putting my money on the suffs! Mait, get out of the cradle! Our
grandfathers made a mess of it, by dealing out universal male suffrage;
and our fathers made a worse mess in giving it to the male negro; now
the women want to make asses of themselves, just as we did. They are
always yapping about being our 'equals.' They _are_! They are as big
fools as we are. Bigger, for they have the benefit of observing our
blunders, and being able to avoid them--and they won't do it! Because
Mr. Portugee has the ballot, Mrs. Portugee must have it, too. They say
it wouldn't be 'fair' to leave her out. You'd think they were a parcel
of schoolgirls! If women would ask for a limited suffrage, ask for the
vote for my wife, so to speak--a vote for _any_ intelligent woman, cook
or countess!--I'd hold up both hands, and so would most men."
"It isn't practical."
"Practical enough, if we wanted to do it. And think what we could
accomplish--the intelligent men, _and_ the intelligent women! The people
who buy and sell Mr. Portugee would be snowed under;--which is the
reason the corrupt element in politics object to a limited suffrage for
women! They need Mr. Portugee in their business, and rather than lose
him, they'll take Mrs. P., too. So what's the use of talking? Votes for
Women will come, in spite of all the antis in the land, for in this
woman's scrimmage, though the antis have the charm, the suffragists have
the brains; and brains always win, no matter how bad the cause! They'll
get it--I'm betting that they'll get it in five years."
"You ought to hear Miss Payton talk about it," Maitland said; "she'd
floor you every time. She's got a mighty pretty cousin," he rambled off;
"_she_ has charm."
"Suffragist?"
"Laura Childs? You bet she is! And she has brains. Not like Miss Payton,
of course. But--" he straightened up, and his eyes began to shine; his
description of Laura was so explicit that his companion smiled.
"Oh, that's the lay of the land, is it?" he said.
To which Howard responded by telling him to go to thunder. "Trouble with
Miss Childs," he said, "is that the fellows are standing in a queue up
to her father's door-steps, waiting to get a chance at her."
"Why did you step out of line?"
"I'll tell you the kind of a girl she is," Howard said, ignoring the
question. "Of course, a man never would get stuck with Laura at a dance,
but she's the kind, if she _thought_ he was stuck, would make some sort
of excuse--say she wanted to speak to her mother--so as to shake him. No
man ever wants to get clear of Laura, but she's that kind of girl.
That's why men hang round so."
"You evidently didn't hang round?"
Howard yawned. "Did I show you the pearl I found yesterday?" he asked,
and produced, after much rummaging in his various pockets, a twist of
paper. Leighton inspected the pearl without enthusiasm.
"Good so far as it goes. Hardly big enough for the ring."
Howard gave him a thrust in the ribs. "I'm going down to the cabin."
In his sweltering state-room he looked at his find, critically. "No, it
isn't big enough," he decided. "Well, maybe I'll never have a chance to
produce a ring," he added, dolefully; then he dropped the pearl into his
collar-box, and mopped the perspiration from his frowning forehead.
"Wonder if I shall ever be cool enough in this life to wear a collar?"
he speculated. After all, why _had_ he stepped out of the line? "I wish
I'd prospected before I left home!" Yet he realized that he had not
known how much Laura counted in his life until he got away from her. Out
here, "digging for buried treasure" in the blazing sun, lying on deck
through velvet, starlit nights, the recollection of that "queue" lining
up at Billy-boy's front door-steps had become first an irritation, and
by and by an uneasiness. He had had one card from her,--"_7° above.
Don't you wish you were as cold as we are?_" The photograph on the back
revealed a snowy mountain-side that was tantalizing to a man who had
nothing to look at but blazing, palm-fringed reefs, and who, for weeks,
had been sweating at 104°. And it was not only the temperature that
tantalized him--in the foreground of the picture were half a dozen of
his set on skis. Laura, in a sweater and a woolly white toque, was
putting a mittened hand into Jack McKnight's, to steady herself. Howard
had not liked that card. "McKnight's got on his Montreal rig, all
right," he thought, contemptuously; "he always dresses for the part!"
It was that postal which had aroused his uneasiness about the queue, and
set him to counting the weeks until he could get into the line again.
Also, it made him write rather promptly to Frederica Payton:
"_Hasn't Jack McKnight got any job? He's a pretty successful loafer if
he can go off skiing all around the clock. Why doesn't Laura put an
extinguisher on him? How is Laura? I suppose she and Jack are having the
time of their young lives this winter._"
It was well on in July before Fred's reply to that particular letter
reached him, and it made him tell Tom Leighton that Miss Payton--"You
remember I told you about her?"--was the finest woman he had ever known.
"No sentimental squash about Freddy Payton!" This tribute was given
because Fred had said:
"_Laura hasn't confided in me, but I'm betting that she'll turn Jack
McKnight down. He's not good enough to black her boots, and nowadays
women demand that men_--"
At this point Howard folded the letter and put it in his pocket.
"Laura'll bounce him!" he said to himself; and for the next hour he
expatiated to Mr. Leighton upon the charm of common sense in a
woman--the woman being Miss Payton, of whom his hearer was getting just
a little tired; but he was confused, too. At the end of an hour his
gathering perplexity found words:
"But I thought it was the pretty cousin you were gone on?"
"You did, did you?" Howard said. "Digging shells has affected your
brain, Tommy."