A DISCUSSION OF PROGRESSIVE WOMEN
The group that had foregathered about Mrs. Ramsey's tea-table that
Thursday afternoon had scattered and gone its several ways. The last of
them was bidding her adieu as her husband entered and joined her
brothers, who were lingering for a farewell word with her, each occupied
in characteristic fashion, John gazing into the fire that smouldered on
the grate, for it was a raw and chilly afternoon, and Frank endeavoring
to coax a last cup of tea from the silver tea-ball and the still
steaming kettle.
"If you really want another cup, Frank, let me have the tea-ball
refilled," Mrs. Ramsey said, and then laying her hand on her elder
brother's shoulder, "A new Lincoln penny for your thoughts, Jack. You
look as if they might be romantic, but I suppose you are really off on
the quest of the blooming bacillus or the meandering microbe, or hanging
over--what is it you call your garden beds of disease--a culture?"
He looked up and patted her hand. "It is too bad not to be able to be a
hero to one's own sister, but the truth is, I wasn't thinking at all,
just wool-gathering. By the way, Frank, are you going to motor down to
that meeting of Miss Holland's to-night?"
"Wool-gathering, he calls it!" said the younger man, letting his lump of
sugar clatter on his saucer. "I'd say it was all cry and no wool; at
least you are pulling none over my eyes. Am I going to motor down to
hear the protests of the proletariat to-night? No, dear brother, I am
not. When I go out to mingle with the down-trodden and oppressed I take
the 'L'; a surface car would be even more appropriate, but they take
forever, and I compromise on the 'L,' but you never did have any sense
of dramatic fitness."
"Might I ask why this sudden interest in the militant laboring ladies?"
said Ramsey, drawing up his chair before the fire, and lighting a
cigarette. "Are you going to obtrude your somewhat massive personality
upon the scene?"
"Yes, that's what I'd like to know," added Frank.
The doctor laughed rather diffidently. "Why not?" he said. "Why
shouldn't I go, if I wish to?"
Frank flung out his hands with a gesture of mock despair. "Now, wouldn't
that come and get you!" he said. "I appeal to you, Hilda. You were
present; you heard Miss Holland invite me to this Manifesto Makers'
meeting. You know she never said a word to Jack; she didn't even look at
him. He was foolish enough to let her see that he was already a convert
to her little gospel, and therefore no longer in need of her
ministrations. But as for me, 'I was a wandering sheep; I did not love
the fold,' and hence, as a good missionary, she feels a deep interest in
me. Off and on, I should say at least fifty Colorado women have tried to
make a suffragist of me. Some of them were very pretty," he added
reminiscently, "and I've noticed that the prettier they are the longer
it takes 'em to make me see the error of my ways. Now with Miss Holland,
I wouldn't mind letting her tinker with my political views so long as we
both shall live."
"Frank, you are incorrigible," said his sister. "If Miss Holland knew
what a flighty, inconsequent infant you are, she wouldn't waste a
thought on you, let alone a whole evening. What makes you want to go,
anyhow?"
"What's the use of her wasting thoughts on a solemn dub like our
brother?" he demanded aggrievedly. "What business has he trailing the
soap-boxing suffragers around when he is about to take upon himself vows
to cleave only to the daughter of a militant 'Anti' leader, some time
when he can jar himself loose from his professional cares long enough
for a honeymoon?"
"I'm afraid, Jack, you will find your prospective mother-in-law quite as
strenuous as the most ardent of the suffragists," said his sister. "I
haven't gone into this thing at all, I haven't time, but it is certainly
amusing to watch the 'Antis' outdo even the most ardent suffragettes by
way of proving their contention that woman's sphere is home. If they
were consistent, they would never appear in public----"
"Except by 'Now comes the counsel for the defendant,'" interrupted
Frank, "but they never are. There is a little bunch of them in Colorado
who have failed to command the same attention in politics that their
money imposes upon the social world, so they rush into type and get
themselves interviewed and asked to speak when they come East, all by
way of proving their sensitive and shrinking nature. I don't agree with
the suffragists, not a little bit, but I can fraternize with them; they
are sincere, but none of the 'Antis' for me; never saw one yet who
wasn't either a snob or so narrow-minded that a toothpick would look
like the Brooklyn Bridge by comparison."
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "Miss Holland has certainly made an impression
upon you; not that I see what difference it makes, since women already
vote where you hail from."
"That just goes to show how foolish a smart man can be," replied his
brother cheerfully. "You think because you may have a vote on the
enfranchisement of women that it is very important what you think, but
is it? Not at all. But with me it is different. I've paid office rent in
Denver for two years, and spent a third of the time here or in
Washington. I've looked in on two State conventions, and forgot to
register at the last election, but because I come from Colorado I am
considered an authority on woman suffrage, and when I say it's no good,
and swell out my chest and look gloomy, it has great weight, great
weight!" He leaned back in his chair and gave way to unseemly mirth as
he recalled some occasion on which he had evidently hoaxed some trusting
reporter.
"Nonsense, Frank," his brother-in-law answered. "I don't believe you
know the first thing about politics or suffrage, or what the women have
done or haven't done."
"There you wrong me," the young man answered gravely. "The first thing
to know in politics is when to come into the game and when to keep out.
Personally, I can't make my firm believe that it is cheaper to buy the
other fellows' men after they are elected than it is to try to elect our
own, and have them raise the ante on us, but they'll come to it after a
while. As to the women, bless you, voting doesn't change their nature,
and so long as women are willing to believe what men tell them, it's
mighty unsafe to trust them with the ballot. Before you know it, they'll
find us out, and then you'll see the first result of the suffragist
dream of heaven on earth--there'll be no more marrying or giving in
marriage. Oh, I'm dead against it!"
They all joined in the laughter that followed this sally, and Hilda
said thoughtfully, "If you boys are intent on this meeting, I'll hurry
dinner, for they probably begin early." As she rose to go, Frank caught
her hand with the piteous entreaty, "Oh, please make my big brother take
his marbles and go home. He wasn't asked to this party. Miss Holland
didn't say a thing to him. I don't see why he has to have first show
with all the pretty girls in New York!"
"When Miss Holland knows you, and all your native charm, she will never
smile again upon your older brother," laughed his sister, "but in the
meantime I suppose it's an open meeting, and we can't prevent his going.
But don't worry; his fatal beauty will but serve as a foil to your more
sparkling type. Besides, with your vivid imagination, unhampered by a
slavish subserviency to facts, you should be able to furnish canards
that will occupy all Miss Holland's time for a month."
As she left the room her husband opened the door, and her brothers rose
and remained standing until it was closed after her.
"If all women were like her----" Frank said impulsively, but Ramsey
stopped him.
"If half of them were like her," he said reverently, "I would be in
favor of turning the government over to them, certain that the hand that
rocks the cradle would never give this storm-tossed old world more
shaking up than is good for it."