AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
In the year 1910, a certain large gathering of suffragists occurring
in New York, permission was sought and obtained for speaking in Union
Square. Here and there, beneath the trees, sprang temporary tribunes
sheathed with bunting the colour of gold; above them banners and
banneroles of the same hue, black-lettered, VOTES FOR WOMEN. From
each tribune now a woman was speaking, now a man. About speakers and
tribunes pressed the crowd, good-natured, commenting, earnest in
places. Each speaker had about ten minutes; time up, he or she stepped
down; another took position. Sometimes the crowd laughed at a good
story or at a barbed shaft skilfully shot; sometimes it applauded;
sometimes it indulged in questions. Its units continually shifted;
one or more speakers at this stand listened to, it went roaming for
pastures new and brought up before the next tribune, whose crowd,
roaming in its turn, filled the just vacated spaces. It was a still,
pearl-grey mid-afternoon, the pale-brown leaves falling from the trees,
the roar of the city softened, the square's frontier lines of tall
buildings withdrawn, a little blurred, made looming and poetic. All was
a picture, lightly shifting with gleams of gold and a woman's voice,
earnest, lilting. The crowd increased until there was a great crowd.
VOTES FOR WOMEN--VOTES FOR WOMEN--said the banners and the banneroles.
A man and a woman, leaving a taxicab on the Broadway facet of the
Square, stood a moment upon the pavement. "What a crowd!" said the man.
"There is speaking of some kind." He stopped a boy. "What is going on?"
"Suffragettes! Women speaking. Want ter vote. Ain't got no
husbands.--_I_ wouldn't let 'em! Say, ain't they gettin' too big for
their places?" The boy stuck out his tongue and went away.
"Young hoodlum!" exclaimed the man with disgust.
"Let us stay and hear them for a while. I never have."
"All right!--I'll pay the cab." He came back to her, and they moved
across and under the trees. "Are you interested?"
"I think I am. I haven't made up my mind. We're so far South that as a
movement it's all as yet only a rather distant sound. How do you feel
about it?"
"Why, I think it's an honest proposition. I've never seen why not.
We're all human together, aren't we? But building bridges for South
American Governments has kept me, too, a little out of earshot. I see
what the papers say, and they're saying a good deal."
"Ours chiefly confine themselves to being scandalized by the English
Militants."
"Then your papers are very foolish. Who ever supposed there weren't
Jacobins in every historic struggle for liberty? Sometimes they help
and sometimes they hinder, and sometimes they do both at once. It's
rather superficial to see only the 'left,' and not the movement of
which it is the 'left.'"
They came beneath the trees upon the fringe of the crowd about one of
the gold-swathed stands. This was an attentive crowd, not restless but
listening, slanted forward. The man from the taxicab touched a young
workman upon the arm. "Who is it speaking?" The other turned a pale,
tense face. "It's one that can hold them. It's Rose Darragh, speaking
for the working-women."
The two made their way to where they could see and hear. Rose Darragh,
speaking with a lifted irony and passion, sent her last Parthian
arrow, paused a moment, then cried with a vibrant voice, "Give the
working-woman a vote!" and stepped back and down from the stand. "By
George!" breathed the man from the cab. The crowd applauded--for such
a meeting applauded loudly.
The young man to whom the two had appealed cried out also. "Give the
working-woman a vote! She's working dumb and driven under your factory
laws! Give her the vote!"
A large, bald-headed, stubborn-jawed man who had been making
_sotto-voce_ remarks, turned with anger. "And have them striking at the
polls as well as striking in the shop! Doubling the ignorant vote and
getting into the way of business! You'd better listen to what I tell
you! Woman's place is at home--damn her!"
The man next him was a clergyman. "I agree with you, sir, that woman's
place is the home, but I object to your expletive!"
The bald-headed man was willing to be placatory. "Well, Reverend, if
we're only two words apart--Are you going to stay here? I'm not! I
don't believe in encouraging them--"
"I believe you to be right there, sir. Woman's Sphere--" they went off
together.
The man from the cab, John Fay by name, with his sister-in-law, Lily
Fay, who had been Lily Goldwell, moved still nearer the front. They
could see Rose Darragh pausing for a moment beside the stand before she
went away to another tribune. A woman dressed in wood-brown spoke to
her laughing; then, a hand on her shoulder, mounted to the platform.
Two women behind Lily Fay whispered together excitedly, "Hagar
Ashendyne?"
"Yes. I didn't know she was going to speak to-day--but she and Rose
Darragh often do speak together. They're great friends.... Somebody
ought to tell them who she is--Oh! they know--"
"_Shh!_"
"Oh, she's holding them--"
Lily Fay clutched her companion's arm. "Hagar Ashendyne! I went to
school with her--"
"The writer?"
"Yes. How strange it seems.... Oh, listen!"
Hagar's voice came to them, silver clear as a swinging bell. "Men and
women--I am going to tell you why a woman like myself finds herself
to-day under a mental and moral compulsion consciously to further what
is called the Woman Movement--"
She spoke for ten minutes. When she ended and stepped from the
platform, there followed a moment of silence, then applause broke
forth. A dark-eyed, breathless girl, a lettered ribbon across her coat,
caught her hand. "Hurry! We're waiting for you at the next stand. Rose
Darragh is just through--" The two hastened away together, lithe and
free beneath the falling brown leaves. A Columbia man was speaking well
for the Men's League, but a good proportion of the crowd, John and Lily
Fay among them, followed the wood-brown skirt.
They followed from stand to stand during the next hour, at the end of
which time speaking was over for that day. The crowd broke up; the
speakers, after some cheerful talk among themselves, gathered together
their banners and pennants and went their several ways; committees
looked after the taking-down of the stands.
Lily went over to Hagar Ashendyne standing with Rose Darragh and Molly
Josslyn, talking to a little group of friendly people. "I'm Lily
Goldwell. Do you remember?"
Hagar put her arms about her. "Oh, Lily, how is your head? Have you got
that menthol pencil still?"
"My head got better and I threw it away. Oh, Hagar, you are a sight
for sair een!... Yes, I'm Lily Fay, now. I'm on my way to England to
join my husband. The boat sails next week. I'm at the ----. This is my
brother-in-law, John Fay."
"I've got to be at Carnegie Hall to-night," said Hagar. "And I have
something to do to-morrow through the day--but the evening's free.
Won't you come to dinner with me--both of you? Yes, I want you, want
you bad! Come early--come at six."
To-morrow was the serenest autumn day. Lily and John Fay walked from
their hotel through a twilight tinted like a shell. When they came to
the apartment house and were carried up, up, and left the elevator and
rang at the door before them and it opened and they were admitted by
a tidy coloured maid, it was to find themselves a little in advance
of their hostess. Mary Magazine explained with slow, soft courtesy.
"Miss Hagar cert'n'y meant to be home er long time befo' you come,
she cert'n'y did. But there's er big strike goin' on--er lot of
sewing-women--an' she went with Miss Elizabeth Eden early this mahnin',
an' erwhile ago she telephone if you got heah first, you must 'scuse
her anyhow an' make yo'selves at home 'cause she'll be heah presently.
She had," Mary Magazine explained further, "to send Miss Thomasine to
see somebody for her in Boston, so there isn't anybody to entertain you
twel she comes. If you'll just make yo'selves comfortable--" and Mary
Magazine smiled slowly and disappeared.
The large room had not greatly altered in appearance since Rachel and
Hagar first arranged it, three years ago. There were more books, a few
more prints, more signed photographs, a somewhat richer tone of time.
It was a good room, quiet and fine, not lacking an air of nobility. A
great bough of red autumn leaves flamed at one end like a stained-glass
window. A door opening into a small room showed a typewriter and
a desk piled with work. The two visitors, with fifteen minutes of
sole possession before them, strolled to the windows and admired the
far-flung, grandiose view, twilight beginning to be starred with the
city lights; then turned back to the room and its strong charm.
"We've lived through the revolution, I think," said John Fay. "The
senses move more slowly than the event. We're just taking it in, and we
call it all to make. But it's really made."
"I see what you mean. But they--but we--have all this monstrous amount
of hard work yet--"
"Yes. Introducing the revolution to the slow-minded. But I gather it's
being done." He moved about the room, looking at the photographs.
"Artists and thinkers and world-builders, men and women.... Those years
down there around the Equator, I could at least take the magazines,
and I got each twelvemonth a box of books. I know all these people. I
used to feel quite intimate with them, down there building bridges....
Building bridges is great work. I believe in it thoroughly and quite
enjoy doing it.... And these are bridge-builders, too, and I had
a fraternal feeling. I've cut their pictures, men and women, from
the magazines and stuck them up in my hut and said good-morning and
good-evening to them." He had the pleasantest, humorous eyes, and now
they twinkled. "Sometimes I like them so well that I really kow-towed
to them. And I've laid a platonic sprig of flowers before more than
one of these women's pictures. Perhaps I'd better not tell her so, but
there was a picture of Hagar Ashendyne--"
The door opened and Hagar entered. She wore the wood-brown dress of
yesterday--she was somewhat pale, with circles under her eyes. "Ah,
I am sorry!" she said, "but I could not help it. The strike ... and
they send the girls to the Island. Two or three of us went to the
court--oh, the snaky, blind thing we call Justice!" Her eyes filled.
"Pardon! but if you had been there--" She caught herself up, dashed the
moisture from her eyes and said--and looked--that she was glad to see
them. "We'll put the things away that make your heart ache! I'll go and
change, and we'll eat our dinner and have a pleasant, pleasant time!"
In a very little while she was back, dressed in white, amethysts in
an old and curious setting about her throat. They had been Maria's,
and to-night she looked like Maria, lines of the haunted mind about
her mouth and between her eyes. Only it was not her personal fate
that troubled her, but a wider haunting. At dinner, in the café at
the corner table, she told them, when they asked her, a little of
where she had been and what she had done during the day, told them of
this pitiful case and of that. Then after a moment's silence she said
resolutely, "Don't let us talk about these things any more. Let us talk
about happy things. Talk to me about yourself, Lily!"
"There isn't much to tell," said Lily; "I've been quite terribly
sheltered. For years I was ill, and then I grew better. I've travelled
a little, and I like Maeterlinck and Vedanta and Bergson, and I play
the violin not so badly, and Robert, my husband, is very good to me. I
haven't grown much, I am afraid, since I was at Eglantine. But more and
more continually I want to grow. Do you remember, at Eglantine--"
Dinner was not long. They came down to the grave and fair room with the
scarlet autumn leaves and the books, and here Mary Magazine gave them
coffee. They sat in their deep chairs and drank it slowly. The talk
dropped; they sat in a thoughtful mood. John Fay had a long and easy
figure, a bronzed, clean-shaven, humorous face and sea-blue eyes. Lily
was slender as a willow wand, with colourless, strong features. Her
eyes were dreamy--Hagar remembered how she sat and looked into the fire
when they read poetry. Like the faintest, faraway strain of a music not
altogether welcome, a line went through her mind,--
"Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles--"
Hagar, with her odd, pensive, enigmatical face, drove the strain back
to the limbo whence it came. She and Lily talked of the girls so
long ago at Eglantine, of Sylvie and Francie and all the rest, the
living and the dead, and the scattered fates. Neither had ever been
back to the school, but she could tell Lily of Mrs. LeGrand's health
and prosperity. "You don't like her," said Lily. "I was so ill and
homesick, I didn't have energy one way or the other, but she was very
smooth, I remember that, ... and we were all to marry, and only to
marry--marry money and social position--especially social position."
They talked of the teachers. "I liked Miss Gage," said Hagar, "and Mrs.
Lane was a gentle, sweet woman. Do you remember M. Morel?"
"Yes, and Mr. Laydon."
Lily started. "Oh, Hagar, I had forgotten that! But perhaps there was
nothing in it--"
Hagar laughed. "If you meant that at eighteen I sincerely thought I
loved Mr. Laydon--and that he, as sincerely, I do believe, thought that
he loved me--yes, there was that in it! But we found out with fair
promptness that it was false fire.--I have not seen nor heard of him
for many years. He taught at Eglantine for a while, and then he went, I
believe, to some Western school.... Lily, Lily! I have had a long life!"
"I have had as long a one in years," said Lily. "But yours has been the
fuller. You have a wonderful life."
"We all have wonderful lives," answered Hagar. "One is rich after this
fashion, one after that."
The bell rang. In another moment Denny Gayde came into the big room.
The six years since the Nassau month had wrought little outer change.
He was still somewhat thin and worn, with a face at once keen and
quiet, a little stern, with eyes that saw away, away--He was more light
than heat, but there was warmth, too, and it glowed and deepened all
around "Onward!" When he said the name of his paper, it was as though
he caressed it. He was like a lighthouse-keeper whose whole being had
become bent, on a wreck-strewn shore, to tending and heightening the
light, to sending the rays streaming across the reefs.