"The outlook, Captain Jones, is straight into a glorious millennium.
Marriage, in the future, is to mean the regeneration of the human race
through cold-blooded selection in mating. Only the physically and
mentally perfect will hereafter be selected as specimens for scientific
propagation. All others must remain unmated--_pro bono publico_--and so
ultimately human imperfection shall utterly disappear from this world!"
Her pretty enthusiasm, her earnestness, the delicious colour in her
cheeks, began to fascinate him. Then uneasiness returned.
"Do you know," he said cautiously, "that the Governor of New York has
received anonymous letters informing him that Professor Elizabeth Challis
considers him a proper specimen for the--the t-t-terrible purposes of
s-s-scientific p-p-propagation?"
"Some traitor in our camp," she said, "wrote those letters."
"It--it isn't true, then, is it?"
"What isn't true?"
"That the Governor of the great State of New York is in any danger of
being seized for any such purpose?"
She looked at him with a curious veiled expression in her pretty eyes, as
though she were near-sighted.
"I think," she said, "Professor Challis means to seize him."
The Governor gazed at her, horrified for a moment, then his political
craft came to his aid, and he laughed.
"What does she look like?" he inquired. "Is she rather a tough old lady?"
"No; she's young and--athletic."
"Barrel-shaped?"
"Oh, she's as tall as the Governor is--about six feet, I believe."
"Nonsense!" he exclaimed, paling.
"Six feet," she repeated carelessly; "rowed stroke at Vassar; carried off
the standing long jump, pole vault, and ten-mile swimming----"
"This--this is terrible," murmured the young man, passing one gloved
hand over his dampening brow. Then, with a desperate attempt at a smile,
he leaned forward and said confidentially:
"As a matter of fact, just between you and me, the Governor is an
invalid."
"Impossible!" she retorted, her clear blue eyes on his.
"Alas! It is only too true. He's got a very, very rare disease," said the
young man sadly. "Promise you won't tell?"
"Y-yes," said the girl. Her face had lost some of its colour.
"Then I will confide in you," said the young man impressively. "The
Governor is threatened with a serious cardiac affection, known as
Lamour's disease."
She looked down, remained silent for a moment, then lifted her pure gaze
to him.
"Is that true--Captain Jones?"
"As true as that I am his Military Secretary."
Her features remained expressionless, but the colour came back as though
the worst of the shock were over.
"I see," she said seriously. "Professor Challis ought to know of this
sad condition of affairs. I have heard of Lamour's disease."
"Indeed, she ought to be told at once," he said, delighted. "You'll
inform her, won't you?"
"If you wish."
"Thank you! _Thank_ you!" he said fervently. "You are certainly the most
charmingly reasonable of your delightful sex. The Governor will be
tremendously obliged to you----"
"Is the Governor--are his--his affections--to use an obsolete
expression--fixed upon any particular----"
"Oh, no!" he said, smiling; "the Governor isn't in
love--except--er--generally. He's a gay bird. The Governor never, in all
his career, saw a single specimen of your sex which--well, which
interested him as much--well, for example," he added in a burst of
confidence, "as much even as you interest me!"
"Which, of course, is not at all," she said, laughing.
"Oh, no--no, not at all----" he hesitated, biting his moustache and
looking at her.
"I'll tell you one thing," he said; "if the Governor ever did get
entirely well--er--recovered--you know what I mean?"
"Cured of his cardiac trouble?--this disease known as Lamour's disease?"
"Exactly. If he ever did recover, he--I'm quite sure he would be----" and
here he hesitated, gazing at her in silence. As for her, she had turned
her head and was gazing out of the window.
"I wonder what your name is?" he said, so naïvely that the colour tinted
even the tip of the small ear turned toward him.
"My name," she said, "is Mary Smith. Like you, I am Militant Secretary to
Professor Elizabeth Challis, President of the Federation of American
Women."
"I hope we will remain on pleasant terms," he ventured.
"I hope so, Captain Jones."
"Non-combatants?"
"I trust so."
"Even f-friends?"
She bent her distractingly pretty head in acquiescence.
"Then you'll give me back the papers?"
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for taking them?"
"No, sorry for keeping them."
"You don't mean to say that you are going to keep them, Miss Smith?"
"I'm afraid I must. My duty forces me to deliver them to Professor
Challis."
"But why does this terrible and strapping young lady desire to swipe the
draft of this bill?"
"Because it contains the evidence of a wicked conspiracy between the
Governor of New York, the Mayor of this city, and an abandoned
legislature. The women of America ought to know what threatens them
before this bill is perfected and introduced. And before they will permit
it to be debated and passed they are determined to march on Albany, half
a million strong, as did the heroines of Versailles!"
She stretched out her white gloved hand with an excited but graceful
gesture; he eyed her moodily, swinging the chenille cat by its fluffy
tail.
"What do they suspect is in that bill?" he said at last.
"We are not yet perfectly sure. We believe it is an insidious attempt to
sow dissension in the ranks of our sex--a bill cunningly devised to
create jealousy and unworthy distrust among us--an ingenious and inhuman
conspiracy to disorganize the National Federation of Free and Independent
Women."
"Nonsense," he said. "The bill, when perfected, is designed to give you
what you want."
"What!"
"Certainly; votes for women."
"On what terms?" she asked, incredulously.
"Terms? Oh, no particular terms. I wouldn't call them 'terms,'" he said
craftily; "that sounds like masculine dictation."
"It certainly does."
"Of course. There are no terms in it. It's a--a sort of a civil service
idea--a kind of a qualification for the franchise----"
"Oh!"
"Yes," he continued pleasantly, "it a--er--suggests that a vote be
accorded to any woman who, in competition with others of that election
district, passes the examinations----"
"_What_ examinations?"
He twirled the cat carelessly.
"Oh, the examination papers are on various subjects. One is chemistry."
"Chemistry?"
"Yes--that part of organic chemistry which includes the scientific
preparation of--er--food."
Her eyes flashed; he twirled the cat absently.
"Yes," he said, "chemistry is one of the subjects. Physics is
another--physical phenomena."
"What kind?"
"Oh, the--the proposition that nature abhors a vacuum. You're to prove
it--you're given a certain area--say a bed-room full of dust. Then you
apply to it----"
"I see," she said; "you mean we apply to it a vacuum cleaner, don't you?"
"Or," he admitted courteously, "you may solve it through the science of
dynamics----"
"Of course--using a broom." Her eyes were beautiful but frosty.
"Do you know," he said, as pleasantly as he dared, "that you, for
instance, would be sure to pass."
"Because I'm intelligent enough to comprehend the subtleties of
this--bill?"
"Exactly." He swung the cat in a circle.
"Thank you. And what else do these examination papers contain?"
"Physics mostly--the properties of solid bodies. For example, you choose
a button--any ordinary button," he explained frankly, as though taking
her into his confidence; "say, for instance, the plain bone button of
commerce----"
"And sew it onto some masculine shirt," she nodded as he sank back
apparently overcome with admiration at her intelligence. "And that," she
added, "no doubt is intended to illustrate the phenomenon of adhesion."
"You are perfectly correct," he said with enthusiasm.
"What else is there?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing--nothing very much. A few experiments in bacteriology----"
"Sterilizing nursing bottles?"
"How on earth did you ever guess?" he cried, overwhelmed, but perfectly
alert to the kindling anger in her blue eyes. "Why, of course that is
it. It is included in the science of embryotics--"
"What science?"
"Embryotics. For instance, you take an embryo of any kind--say a--a baby.
Then you show exactly how to dress, undress, wash, feed, and finally
bring that baby to triumphant maturity. It's interesting, isn't it, Miss
Smith?"
She said nothing. He twirled the cat furiously until its tail gave way
and it flew into a corner.
"Captain Jones," she said, "as I understand it, this bill is a codified
conspiracy to turn every woman of this State into a--a washer of clothes,
a cleaner of floors, a bearer of children--and a Haus-frau!"
"I--I would not put it _that_ way," he protested.
"And her reward," she went on, not noticing his interruption, "is
permission to vote--to use the inalienable liberty with which already
Heaven has endowed her."
Tears flashed in her eyes; she held her small head proudly and not one
fell.
"Captain Jones," she said, "do you realize what centuries of suppression
are doing to my sex? Do you understand that woman is degenerating into
an immobility--an inertia--a molluskular condition of receptive passivity
which is rendering us, year by year, more unfitted to either think or act
for ourselves? Even in the matter of marriage we are not permitted by
custom to assume the initiative. We may only shake our heads until the
man we are inclined toward asks us, when he is entirely ready to ask.
Then, like a row of Chinese dolls, we nod our heads. I tell you," she
said, tremulously, "we are becoming like that horrid, degenerate,
wingless moth which is born, mates, and dies in one spot--a living
mechanical incubator--a poor, deformed, senseless thing that has through
generations lost not only the use, but even the rudiments of the wings
which she once possessed. But the male moth flies more strongly and
frivolously than ever. There is nothing the matter with the development
of _his_ wings, Captain Jones."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]