The Twentieth Century Club had made the occasion a guest night and the
hall was well filled when Miss Reynolds’s party arrived. Places had
been reserved for them near the platform but Grace slipped into a seat
by the door with Atwood and Grayling.
“Thank you for this!” exclaimed Atwood. “I always sleep at lectures and
I won’t be so conspicuous back here.”
Mrs. Trenton, introduced by the president as one of the foremost women
of her time, laid a sheaf of notes on the reading desk and began her
address. Her subject was “Woman’s New Freedom,” and she summarized
the long struggle for suffrage before indicating the questions to
which women should now devote themselves to complete their victory.
She recited the familiar arguments against child labor and thought
existing laws should be extended and strengthened; and she pleaded for
equal pay for equal work for women. She advocated uniform marriage and
divorce laws on a basis of the widest freedom. There was no slavery so
hideous as that of marriages where the tie becomes irksome. She favored
birth control on the ground that a woman is entitled to be the judge
of her fitness and ability to bear and raise children. She advocated
state maternity hospitals with provision for the care of all children
by the state where parents lack the means or the intelligence to rear
them. She was not a socialist, she protested, though there were many
socialistic ideas which she believed could profitably be adopted under
the present form of government. Her “Clues to a New Social Order,”
she explained, contemplated the fullest recognition of the rights of
the individual. She expressed her impatience of the multiplication of
laws to make mankind better; the widest liberty was essential to all
progress.
Grace had listened with the strictest attention. Once or twice Grayling
whispered some comment and Atwood, deeply bored, inquired midway of the
address whether the first inning wasn’t nearly over. At the conclusion
the president, following the club’s custom, said that Mrs. Trenton
would be glad to answer any questions, but the only person who took
advantage of the invitation was an elderly gentleman who asked Mrs.
Trenton whether she didn’t think the Eighteenth Amendment marked a
great moral advance for the nation.
“On the contrary, a decided retreat,” Mrs. Trenton replied, so
incisively that the meeting closed amid general laughter.
“Was it the event of a life-time?” Atwood asked Grayling.
“Old stuff! Miss Durland could have taken the lady’s material and made
a better story of it.”
“A doubtful compliment!” said Grace. “Come along; we must say
good-night to Miss Reynolds.”
They went forward to where the other guests stood waiting while the
club president introduced to Mrs. Trenton such of the members as wished
to meet her.
“Don’t forget that I’m taking you home,” said Atwood. “That’s my reward
for coming.”
Grace had hoped to avoid speaking to Mrs. Trenton again but as Miss
Reynolds’s other guests were bidding her good-night she couldn’t very
well escape it.
“Ah, you stayed to the bitter end!” Mrs. Trenton exclaimed with a
forced brightening of her face. The hand she gave Grace was cold, and
the look of weariness in her eyes was intensified. “I wish we might
have you as a convert. No hope, I suppose?”
She turned away with a smile to greet the next in line.
“It wasn’t so shocking after all,” remarked Miss Reynolds, as Grace
bade her good-night. “I’ll always remember this, Grace. You helped a
lot--you’d have helped a lot even if you hadn’t said a word! I was so
proud of you, dear.”
When she reached home Grace found her mother and Ethel waiting up for
her and she sat down in the living room to recount the events of the
evening. Mrs. Trenton, she said, was not so terrible; she dismissed
her lightly and concentrated upon the other guests at the dinner. She
was at pains to give the impression that she had thoroughly enjoyed
herself, particularly her meeting with Professor Grayling. The
fact, carelessly mentioned, that Jimmie Atwood had brought her home
immediately obscured everything else. Mrs. Durland wished to be sure
that Jimmie was the son of the George Rogers Atwood who had made a
fortune in the stove business; Ethel thought he was only a nephew and
that Jimmie’s father operated coal mines somewhere near Terre Haute.
Grace, unable to assist in determining this momentous matter, left them
and sought the seclusion of her room.
As she closed the door she was oppressed by an overmastering fatigue;
she felt that innumerable, mocking, menacing hands were plucking at
her. The jealousy that had assailed her fitfully all evening now tore
at her heart. A vast loneliness, as of some bleak unhorizoned waste,
settled upon her. She locked her door and spread out on her dressing
table the sheets of Trenton’s last letter, which had reached her that
morning, and read them over as she brushed her hair.
... and there is no hour in which I do not think of you. The thought
of you is like a prayer in my heart. You have touched the best in me.
I rebel against the fate that keeps me from you. Sometimes it becomes
intolerable--I want you so much, _now_--just to see your face, to
look into your eyes, to touch your hand. You are the flower of all
the world, I think, and quick upon that comes a sense that you have
greatness in you; that you are stronger than I am--possess a truer
and broader sense of the meaning of life....
Her deep sigh as she finished became a sob and she laid her head upon
her arms and the tears came. It was possible that he had written just
such letters to the woman who was still his wife; that once he had
found in her this same exaltation.
But these thoughts she fought and conquered. As she moved slowly about
her room with its dingy old-fashioned furniture, its odds and ends of
memorabilia--her high school diploma, framed; a University pennant
hung over the mahogany bed,--she slipped back into her youth and her
heart went out to Trenton with a child-like faith and confidence.
The remembrance of him as he had held her and kissed her; his
tenderness, the wistfulness with which he regarded her at times, his
fine considerateness, the utter lack of anything common or coarse in
him--these memories wrought peace in her heart.
Ready for bed, she huddled inside the window draperies before opening
her window, gazing up at the stars. The same bright orbs shone over
him, wherever he was. Perhaps at that very moment, he, in the manner of
lovers from time immemorial, was invoking their council as he thought
of her.
“I love you! I love you, dear!” she whispered and repeated the words,
finding in them strength and solace.
She unlocked the door and got into bed just as her mother entered.
“Are you all right, Grace?” Mrs. Durland asked. She stooped and picked
up Grace’s party slippers from the middle of the floor and put them
away in the closet.
“Yes, I’m fine, mother,” Grace answered. “Please don’t bother about my
things. I’ll straighten up in the morning.”
“All right, dear,” said Mrs. Durland. “I’ll put your dress on a hanger
in the sewing room and press the skirt out tomorrow. It’s mussed a
little, I noticed.”
With the gown over her arm she walked to the bed.
“Are you happy, dear?” she asked, laying her hand for a moment on the
girl’s forehead.
“Yes, mother. Thank you so much for coming in!”
With an access of emotion she sat up and flung her arms about her
mother’s neck and kissed her.
“You _are_ happy, Grace?” Mrs. Durland repeated solicitously.
“Yes, mother; very happy.”