THE Governor of the great State of New York was now running up Broadway
with his borrowed sword between his legs and his borrowed uniform covered
with confetti--footing it as earnestly as though he were running behind
his ticket with New York County yet to hear from.
After him sped bricks, vegetables, spot-eggs, and several exceedingly
fashionable suffragettes, their perfectly gloved hands full of
horsewhips, banners, and farm produce.
But his excellency was now running strongly; one by one his eager and
beautiful pursuers gave up the chase and fell out, panting and flushed
from the exciting and exhilarating sport, until, at Forty-second Street,
only one fleet-footed young girl remained at his heels.
The order of precedence then shifted as follows: First, the young and
handsome Governor running like a lost dog at a fair and clutching the
draft of the obnoxious bill to his gold-laced bosom; second, one
distractingly lovely young girl, big, wholesome-looking, athletic, and
pink of cheeks, swinging a ci-devant cat by the tail as menacingly as
David balanced the loaded sling; third, several agitated policemen
whistling and rapping for assistance; fourth, the hoi polloi of the Via
Blanca; fifth, a small polychromatic dog; sixth, the idle wind toying
carelessly with the dust and refuse and hats and skirts of all Broadway.
[Illustration: "Only one fleet-footed young girl remained at his
heels."]
This municipal dust storm, mingling with the brooding metropolitan
gasoline fog, produced a sirocco of which no Libyan desert needed to be
ashamed; and it alternately blotted out and revealed the interesting
Marathonian procession, until one capricious and suffocating flurry,
full of whirling newspapers and derbies, completely blotted out the
Governor and the young lady at his heels.
And when, a moment later, the miniature tornado had subsided into a
series of playful sidewalk eddys, only the policemen, the hoi polloi, and
the dog were still going; the Governor and the beautiful suffragette had
completely disappeared.
They had, it is true, chosen a very good time and place for such an
occult performance; Long Acre at its busiest.
Several mounted policemen had now joined in the frantic festivities. They
galloped hurriedly in every direction. The crowd cheered and pursued the
police, the small dog barked in eddying circles till he resembled an
expiring pinwheel.
Meanwhile a curious thing had occurred; the youthful Governor was now
chasing the suffragette. It occurred abruptly, and in the following
manner:
No sooner had the dust cloud spread a momentary fog around the radiant
young man--like a hurricane eclipse of the sun--than he darted into the
narrow and dark hallway of an old-fashioned office building devoted to
theatrical agencies, all-night lawyers, and "astrologists," and started
up the stairs. But his unaccustomed sword tripped him up, and as he fell
flat with a startling outcrash of accoutrements, there came a flurry of
delicately perfumed skirts, the type-written papers were snatched from
his gloved hands, and the perfumed skirts went scurrying away through the
dusky corridor which ought to have opened on the next cross street. And
didn't.
After her ran the Governor, now goaded to courage by the loss of his
papers, and she, finding herself in a cul-de-sac, turned at bay, launched
the cat at his head, and attempted to spring past him. But he caught the
whirling feline in one white-gloved hand and barred her way with the
other; and she turned once more in desperation to seek an egress which
did not exist.
A flight of precipitate and rickety stairs led upward into an obscurity
rendered deeper by a single gas jet burning low on the landing above.
Up this she sprang, two at a time, the young man at her heels; up, up,
passing floor after floor, until a dirty skylight overhead warned her
that the race was ending.
On the top corridor there was a door ajar; she sprang for it, opened it,
tried to slam and lock it behind her, then, exhausted, she shrank
backward into the room and sank into a red velvet chair, holding the
bunch of papers tightly to her heaving breast.
There was another chair--a gilt one. Into it fell his excellency,
gasping, speechless, his spurred and booted legs trailing, his borrowed
uniform all over confetti and dust from his tumble on the stairs.
Minute after minute elapsed as they lay there, fighting for breath,
watching each other.
She was the first to stir; and instantly he dragged himself to his feet,
staggered over to the door, locked it, dropped the key into his pocket,
returned to his chair, and collapsed once more.
After a few moments he glanced down at the cat which he was still
clutching. A slight shiver passed over him, then, as he inspected it more
closely, over his features crept an ironical smile.
For the cat was not even a ci-devant cat; it had never been a cat; it
was only an imitation of a defunct one made out of floss and chenille,
like a teddy-bear; and he smiled at her scornfully and dangled it by its
black and white tail.
"Pooh," he panted; "I suppose even your bricks and vegetables and eggs
were cotillion favours full of confetti."
"They were," she admitted defiantly. "Which did not prevent their serving
their purposes."
"As what?"
"As symbols!"
"Symbols?" he retorted in derision.
"Yes, symbols! The three most ancient symbols of an insulted people's
fury--the egg, the turnip, and the cat."
"_Mala gallina, malum ovum_," he laughed, adjusting his sword and picking
several streamers of confetti from his tunic. "Did they hurl spot-eggs in
ancient Rome, fair maid?"
"They did; and cats--_ex necessitate rei_," she observed with composure.
"_Ex nihilo felis fit_--a cat-fit for nothing," he retorted, flippantly.
Half disdainfully she straightened out the slight disorder of her own
apparel, still breathing fast, and keeping tight hold of the bundle of
papers.
"How soon are you going to let me have them?" he asked good-humouredly.
"Never."
"I can't permit you to leave this room until you hand them to me."
"Then I shall never leave this room."
"You certainly shall not leave it until I have those papers."
"Then I'll remain here all my life!" she said defiantly.
"What do you expect to do when the people who live here return?"
She shrugged her pretty shoulders, and presently cast an involuntary and
uneasy glance around the room.
It was not a place to reassure any girl; gilt stars were pasted all over
walls and ceilings, where also a tinsel sun and moon appeared. The
constellations were interspersed with bats.
The remaining decorations consisted of a cozy corner, some pasteboard
trophies, red cotton velvet hangings, several plaster casts of human
hands, and a frieze of half-burnt cigarettes along the mantel-edge.
"Are you going to give me those papers?" he repeated, secretly amused.
"No."
"What do you expect to do with them?"
"Deliver them to Professor Elizabeth Challis, President of the National
Federation of Independent Women of America."
"Is this a private enterprise of yours," he asked curiously, "or just
a--a playful impulse, or the militant fruition of a vast and feminine
conspiracy?"
She smiled slightly.
"I suppose you mean to be impertinent, but I shall not evade answering
you, Captain Jones. I am acting under orders."
"Betty's?" he inquired, flippantly.
"The orders of Professor Elizabeth Challis," she said, with heightened
colour.
"Exactly. It _is_ a conspiracy, then, complicated by riot, assault,
disorderly conduct, and highway robbery--isn't it?"
"You may call it what you choose."
"Oh, I'll leave that to the courts."
She said disdainfully: "We recognize no laws in the making of which we
have had no part."
"There's no use in discussing that," said the Governor blandly; "but I'd
like to know what you suffragettes find so distasteful in that proposed
bill which the Mayor and--and the Governor of New York have had drafted."
"It is reactionary--a miserable subterfuge--a treacherous attempt to
return to the old order of things! A conspiracy to re-shackle, re-enslave
American womanhood with the sordid chains of domestic cares! To drive her
back into the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery--back into the dark ages
of dependence and acquiescence and non-resistance--back into the degraded
epochs of sentimental relations with the tyrant man!"
She leaned forward in her excitement and her sable boa slid back as she
made a gesture with her expensive muff.
"Once," she said, "woman was so ignorant that she married for love! Now
the national revolt has come. Neither sentiment nor impulse nor emotion
shall ever again play any part in our relations with man!"