might do, and further agreed that she ask Maud and Juliette if they
wanted to come and help her.
From this interview with Aunt Juanita, Selina went straight across the
street to the Addisons' to see Maud and find out.
She found her in her own room with an array of books, including a
dictionary, much paper, and a purple smudge from her ink bottle, on her
nose. Energetic, restless, and dissatisfied Maud!
"I've turned on china painting; it was pretence with me from the start,
Selina. Do you realize you haven't been over here for--well--almost
weeks? I'm working at my German again. If Marcus and Miss Pocahontas
did German verse into English, and even got some of the cleverest of it
printed in the back of a magazine, why shouldn't I try what I can do?
I'm working at some of the easier verses of Heine. Sit down and tell me
about your trip to Eadston."
Selina told her about the wedding and then explained her mission. "I
don't grasp in the least what Aunt Juanita's about, Maud. She never
explains. But she and Mrs. Higginson want to pay us to help 'em advance
what she calls the cause of woman."
"It's a phrase going the rounds," from Maudie. "I've run on it a good
many times lately. Selina, I'm not a snob, and neither are you, but I
must say I'd like to know and to work with Mrs. Higginson. And it's
not because she's our richest woman, in the finest home, and it's not
because she and Mr. Higginson give about everything that's given in the
way of gifts to the city. I think probably it's because that sort of
person _must_ be fine to know, and interesting."
"You'll come then?"
"I will if Mamma says I may. Let's go right now and ask her."
Mrs. Addison was downstairs lending a directing oversight in her
dining-room and ample pantries. The elderly downstairs man of many
years' service in the household had died this past winter, and she,
capable and impatient person, was going through the trials of a
succession of young and inefficient substitutes. Or so she defined
them. "They don't know one thing about their duties, Selina, and they
won't let anybody tell them. Listen to me and hold on to Viney till
she's actually tottering."
The same old story it was, differing only in that Mrs. Addison was
more fortunate than most in having her troubles deferred this long.
Having finished her own recital, she heard what Maud had to say,
somewhat testily.
"I'll consider the money as part of my mission offering, Mamma, if you
don't like the idea of my taking it," this person pleaded. "It will
give me something to do and be such sport being with Selina, and with
Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson."
"Do it then," from Mrs. Addison impatiently. "To have you moping around
the house the way you've been, tearful and complaining, is as much of a
trial as these worthless houseboys. I've got my hands full enough with
them. Thank heavens your sisters are still at school and occupied! Go
on if it will satisfy you and content you."
The two flew right over to see and ask Juliette. They found her also in
her own room. She slipped some textbooks in her desk before she turned
round to greet and to listen to them. She proved bitterly heroic. "I'd
be most glad to make the money. I happen to need every cent I can get,
and under the circumstances, considering what I want it for, I can't
take it from Papa. But I haven't time. I'm busy every moment I can get
to myself."
She didn't say what she was busy with, but the others divined. It was
the first of May. She was studying for those problematical college
examinations in June.
It was well past noon when Selina and Maud left her and started
downstairs to go home. The Caldwells had dinner at one, and at the
front door the two met Mr. Caldwell coming in.
Maud, with her chestnut hair and red and white skin and lively
carriage, was handsome, and Selina, slim and fair, was pleasing. Mr.
Caldwell liked pretty women. He was brisk and off-hand.
"Glad you've been over to see Juliette, both of you. Coax her out with
you, get her into the things you're doing, like she used to be, girls.
Get this college bee out of her bonnet and you'll do us a favor over
here. Advanced learning! College for women! Dr. Mary Walker trousers
next! She must have been crazy when she took this idea up. See here,
both of you, take these three two-dollar bills. Get Juliette and all of
you go to the matinée this afternoon--my treat. Blow in the change on
carfare and candy. It'll mean a lot to get her out with you again."
In their embarrassment, their faces crimson, the bills were actually
thrust in Maud's hand and left there, and Mr. Caldwell gone into
the house and clattering up the stairs, before they could collect
themselves sufficiently to refuse it. It meant going back into the
house now and finding Mrs. Caldwell.
She was in the kitchen, a would-be pleasant room, with wide windows
and a door opening on a porch. But right now it was unswept, the ashes
hadn't been taken out the stove which they overflowed, the sink was
full of unwashed, unscraped dishes.
Pretty Mrs. Caldwell, flushed and disheveled, taking up dinner from the
hot stove, set down a dish to pin up her trailing negligée, and to take
the money Maud handed her.
"Juliette wouldn't have gone on it anyway, even if we'd felt we wanted
to take it," Maud was explaining.
"Juliette's behaving abominably," from Mrs. Caldwell. "Yes, of course,
girls, the last cook's gone, too. Impertinent! Demanding to know her
duties to the dot, and wanting me to specify her exact time off. Saucy!
At least, Maud, it's some comfort to know that your mother with her
reputation has come into her trouble, too. And, Selina, I hear that
someone offered more wages to your Cousin Anna Tomlinson's cook, and
she's left. After being with her ten years! Ingratitude! I don't see
what we're coming to."
That afternoon, Selina and Maud, while they were about it, went over to
see Adele. She had on an elaborate tea-gown in peach-blow silk and lace
that sat on her dejectedly.
When she heard about the offer from Mrs. Bruce, she sighed, and
her soft cheeks flushed and longing came into her dark eyes. The
awkwardness left her and she forgot the fripperies of the tea-gown that
so embarrassed her.
"If only I might make the third! I'm _so_ desperate for _something_ to
do, I envy the servants."
"_I_ envy the men digging gas-pipe trenches along the street," burst
forth vigorous Maud. "Do you know they're really considering letting
girls come to the athletic club certain afternoons this summer and
learn to play tennis? Mamma thinks it's too violent and unladylike, but
I'm going to do it anyhow if they decide to let us."
"I'm desperate sometimes," from Adele, sighing. "I'll tell you what I
did the other day. I was waiting for Mamma to be ready for a reception.
Oh, but I'm a dreary weight on her hands when she gets me to them. I
was in the library and I took a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote
down all the words that seem most full of thrill and lure to me when I
say 'em over. Then I wrote at the top of the paper, 'Thesaurus for the
Ennuied.' Papa came in just then, home a bit early for him, and for
some reason came over to me where I was sitting at the library table
and took the slip from me. He read it through and took me by the chin
and looked down at me as if he were studying me. Then he said right
oddly, "That bad, Adele?"
"What were the words you'd written down?" from Maud.
"Just what I was going to ask you?" from Selina.
"I don't remember exactly, there were so many of them. Any of them will
do. Words that I somehow seem to revel in--_hew_, _build_, _make_,
_do_, _fashion_, _kindle_, _evolve_! I don't know," wistfully and a
little embarrassed, too "that I can make you understand?" Then with a
change of manner, "Have you seen Amanthus lately, either of you?"
"No," from Selina.
"No," from Maud.
From Adele suddenly, "Mr. Tate's grandmother's dead. The wife of the
grandfather who left him the money."
"Who told you?"
"Amanthus. He'll come into a great deal of money now, he told Mrs.
Harrison so, Amanthus says."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Monday morning and ten o'clock found Selina and Maud, both more than a
little shy, and also a good deal excited, presenting themselves at the
door of the Bruce library where Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson awaited
them. The room itself was familiar to them both, with its faded solid
red carpet, its book-shelving from floor to ceiling behind doors of oak
and glass, its framed prints of Washington, Jefferson, Clay and Robert
E. Lee, its incredible litter of papers and pamphlets, its overflow of
books stacked into corners and upon chairs.
But to-day it was visibly made ready for the occasion. The big
central table was swept clean by the simple expedient of piling its
accumulation on the floor beneath, Marcus' old desk in a corner stood
cleared and open, and a kitchen table of deal, piled with stationery
and printed circulars, was placed near a window.
Mrs. Bruce herself, tall, unmended and ungroomed, and entirely
unconcerned as to that, was taking envelopes by the pack out of boxes.
Mrs. Harriet Polksbury Higginson, otherwise Mrs. Amos Higginson, was
seated at the table. Her iron-gray hair was drawn in rippling bands
either side her personable, big-featured face, her silk dress was
sensible, her big-faced watch with its short chain and bunch of charms,
laid on the table by her, was for utility, though the stones in the
rings on her strong, goodly hands, were wonderful.
To Selina and Maud, as said before, not the least exciting part in the
undertaking, was the thought of working under Mrs. Higginson.
"Not that we are snobs," Maud had diagramed yet again, "nor because
she's our richest woman in the biggest house. But because being the
richest woman in the biggest house, she's famous for being outspoken
and independent of the snobs and all the rest of it, and therefore
worth while."
Aunt Juanita, looking up, saw the two girls standing in the doorway
a bit diffidently, both in summer wash-dresses, Maud's gingham pink,
Selina's percale blue. As the two dimly realized even then, Aunt
Juanita saw femininity in the mass only, as a cause, an issue. Its
youth and its diffidence and its pink and blue habiliments were lost
on her, and its hesitation to come on in and get to business, only
irritated her.
"Well, Maud, well, Selina, come in, come in," testily. "Everything's
here in readiness," as they entered, "and the first thing's to get
our list of chosen names in shape with their addresses. Selina, since
you're to work with me, take the desk for the time being. Maud, sit at
the table across from--Mrs. Higginson, do you know my niece, Selina
Wistar, and my young friend, Maud Addison?"
They took, their places hastily, Aunt Juanita palpably having no
thought of confusing amenities with purpose.
"Selina," from Aunt Juanita brusquely, "here are three lists, a
combined church list, Mrs, Higginson's dinner and party lists, and the
names of women taxpayers in town that Aurelius secured for me. We're
checking these over and want you to make a revised list from them,
alphabetically arranged. And here's a city directory, Maud. As Selina
hands the lists to you, fill out their addresses." Aunt Juanita, though
she abjured amenities, was a credit to her sex in being definite about
what she considered her business.
Mrs. Higginson, checking names on her lists with a gold lead-pencil,
looked up, at the abrupt method of introduction and smiled
good-humoredly, at the assistant in pink, and then the assistant
in blue. For her woman in the mass still included individuals, and
amenities belonged to the life she knew.
"Every woman's name on the list you're to make, Miss Selina," she
explained, "is a target at which we two are proposing to fire our
convictions. It's a glorious thing at any time of one's life to have
convictions, let me tell you, if you haven't discovered it." Was she
laughing at them? "Mrs. Bruce and I are the two liveliest women in this
town, and always will be, because our convictions, whatever they be,
ride us."
Having finished unboxing the envelopes Aunt Juanita was going around
distributing ink. She paused at this point in Mrs. Higginson's remarks,
tweaked her nose with the side of the ink bottle in her hand, since
that hand was occupied with the bottle, and addressed herself to this
lady.
"Organize! _Organize!_ If we can just get that word and its
significances over to the women in this town! If we can make 'em
understand that woman's hope everywhere lies in this one word! If we
can show 'em that it's the instrument of the whole era upon us, for
class, labor, capital, too, Aurelius points out, as well as the one
instrument for them! Organize and discover our strength as women and so
on to our rights. That's the phrase. That's the slogan."
The clerical force in pink showed a bright spot on either cheek! The
open heart and the open mind were ever hers! Her handsome, hazel-brown
eyes beneath her red-brown hair were dilating with the beginnings of
zeal, of fire!
The clerical force with the heavy masses of pale flaxen hair, the
clerical force, that is to say, in blue brought some names on a bit of
paper over to the visibly impressed force in pink. "Organize for what,
Maud? Who'll organize? And where?"
"Hush," said Maud, "I don't know. But I feel right from the start I'm
with 'em! So you're, Selina." And so were others all over this fair
land to be with them; others as great in faith and zeal as Maudie,
though no better equipped in comprehension as to what it was about!
But it was glorious none the less to be there!
Mrs. Higginson was replying to Aunt Juanita. Her voice was good-humored
but ripe and decided. She was a person accustomed to being heard. "Now,
Juanita Bruce, you haven't any grounds whatever for assuming I'm with
you in any position. You know exactly where I stand in this movement
among women all over this land. You know the stand I've taken in it as
well as you know your own. And you know _why_ I want to organize our
own women in this town. _I_ say this movement, this quiver, so to put
it, running from side to side of this continent, has some underlying
cause. _I_ say it's woman's dissatisfaction with herself. _I_ say she's
roused and looked at herself and the sight's not pleasing to her. You
put the cause outside of woman. _I_ say to my sex, 'Organize and find
out what's the trouble with yourself.' That's _my_ slogan to my sex,
and that's _my_ present mission."
Aunt Juanita banged down the ink bottle still in her hand. Two hairpins
leaped from her hair with the impact, and the switch of gray hair
that all too palpably eked out her own scant store, promptly surged
forward and threatened her left eye. But the uplift of the moment
raised everybody's mind above such as that! The clerical force were so
enthralled they couldn't keep to work if salvation depended on it. And
on the other hand apparently salvation of some kind depended on their
listening and finding out about this thing? _Was_ there a movement
among their sex, a movement wide as the continent? Where had they been
during it? Why had they not heard of it? How had it manifested itself?
Had it spoken?
So these young and ardent two! Nor knew that they in their gropings,
their dissatisfactions, their restlessness, their eager scannings of
horizons, their questionings, their discontents with inaction, they and
Juliette in her revolt, they and Adele in her repinings, were part and
proof with it and of it!
Aunt Juanita retwisting her hair with that impatience called out in
the human breast by the depravity of inanimate objects such as hair
switches, was flinging back words at Mrs. Higginson.
"Don't expect me to believe in any such stand as that, Harriet
Higginson? There isn't but one issue to this thing. In a word, women
have discovered they haven't their inalienable rights, and they want
'em."
"I'm _so_ certain in my stand, Juanita Bruce, that I've come into this
local thing with you to work for the issue as I believe it to be.
I've given not a little thought and investigation and observation to
the matter, for a good many years, and so have you. But I tell you,
Juanita, your suffrage bee shall be proved a mere side issue in the
final adjustment, whenever this does come, sooner or later. You and
your adherents are diverting us from the main issue. We may lose it
through you for years. For just to the extent that you do divert us
you're putting the final outcome back."
Aunt Juanita snorted and started to reply. Mrs. Higginson, using the
gold eye-glasses in her hand, waved her to unwilling silence.
"No, let me finish, Juanita, and then take your say. This is mine. I
claim, and I'll go on claiming--I went up to your meeting in Rochester
and stood for it from the platform. I'm going over to Chicago week
after next and put it to 'em again from their platform. I claim that
our rights, as you call 'em, will come to us as our capabilities push
ahead of us, exactly as the flood follows the channel. I see it so
plain, it's come to be an obsession with me. Let me illustrate. Take
this town we live in, you and I. We're not the big mould of women now
our mothers and our grandmothers were. Reasonable and intelligent
administration of our homes and our servants and our income is the
exception, and who shall say this town's not typical? For my part, my
slogan is, and I'm here to cry it from your housetop, 'Organize and
find out what's the matter.' Ability engendered among us, Juanita, and
the rest of what you want will follow," Mrs. Higginson flipped the air
again with her eye-glasses, "as the night the day."
The clerical force drew breath. It was a thrilling and momentous
morning! They wouldn't have missed it!
"As the day the night is rather what my kind is demanding," from
Aunt Juanita grimly. "We're benighted enough in all conscience now.
Harriet Higginson, hear me. Not one woman in a hundred in this town,
no, not one in five hundred or a thousand, owns a bank-book. I've
investigated," grimly. "And if _this_ is so in this town, why not the
same thing elsewhere?"
The clerical force in blue felt this to be a sidelight. It brought
in Tuttle Jones. Had he in the end secured the information for Aunt
Juanita? How far away from this present battlefield seemed Tuttle and
his world?
Mrs. Higginson was replying. "H'm, now that's valuable data, Juanita,
I owe you some gratitude for giving me that. Putting that with some
conclusions I've arrived at myself, sheds light on my problem. The
whole cause of our present economic unfitness as I see it in woman, may
lie in this fact you give me--no bank account of her own. It's worth
looking into. It's only fair a woman should handle and apportion the
money through which she is expected to administer the home. And what
I've discovered for myself is this. Not one woman in your thousand in
this town knows the price of flour, or sugar, or bacon or any other
staple she uses every day in her household, except as quoted to her
at her nearest grocery. No, nor can tell you her running expenses of
this year as compared with any other year under her management. Nor
but is so harassed by the servant problem as it's grown to be, that
her peace and comfort and almost her self-respect is undermined. And
our mothers bequeathed us a wonderful article in servants here in the
South, too, in the house-servants of slave-time. Organize and find
out what's the matter, I say. If the fault's not in _us_, then find
out where it is, even unto bank-books," laughing. "And at all events,
Juanita," pacifically and smiling again, "we're agreed on one point,
the essential point right now. Organize 'em. Put it to 'em, pro and
con, you and I, and let 'em choose. But first, organize 'em."
It _was_ a thrilling and momentous morning as may be seen! The clerical
force in pink and the clerical force in blue, entirely unable to hold
its mind to the task in hand, felt that they were in touch at last with
issues, real issues, throbbing, vital and essential issues!
And who shall say they were not? Though these issues, a quarter of a
century old since then, are still open! And still open perhaps, and
again who may say not, because as Mrs. Higginson claimed, the movement
mistook the main issue?
Undoubtedly it _was_ a thrilling and momentous morning. Youth is eager,
youth is full of the ardor of impatient faith, youth is impressionable.
It longs to be fired! It yearns for a cause! 'Rights' is a stirring
word! 'Organize' is a new one! Had the clerical force found its cause
at last? It wondered.
On the way home at noon, Maud spoke to Selina. They were confused over
a few matters. "Mrs. Bruce is all for rights, Selina, as if it were a
personal thing. I don't suppose there can be a person alive, do you,
who comes nearer doing as she pleases."
"Just as nobody could be more capable than Mrs. Higginson with all that
money and children and grandchildren, and the retinue of servants she's
famous for running. Or maybe it's because they've each got what they
stand for, that they want it for other women?"
"'Rights,'" from Maud, ruminating. "It's a thrilling word, Selina. And
'organize' is a new one."
"Slogan," corrected Selina, "that's what they called it."
* * * * *
That evening Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Preston Cannon were at the
Wistars calling. By chance Maud and Juliette were over, too.
Maud and Selina were eloquent about their new word.
"Organize how and for what?" queried Mr. Cannon. "No, I'm not caviling,
truly I'm not, I want to know?"
So in a way did they, but they were not going to confess it.
"For--uh--consolidation," from Maud grandly.
"For--well--some general benefit," from Selina hesitatingly.
"It's in the air," from Maud authoritatively. She'd heard Mrs. Bruce
say it was.
Little Judy, quiet as a rule of late, spoke here so suddenly and so
unexpectedly, they all started. There seemed no haziness about it to
Juliette. They hardly knew her these days.
[Illustration: "Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and
spoke softly to her."]
"It's an impelling," she said passionately. "We're all feeling it.
Woman, I mean. It's driving us. We don't know where it's taking us. But
it's mandatory. I wouldn't say it's not instinct."
"What is?" asked Mr. Cannon breaking the silence which this astounding
outbreak from Juliette left behind it momentarily.
The young ladies, two of them at any rate, were indignant at his
levity. Figuratively they turned their backs on Mr. Cannon and
refused to answer him, and went on talking about the morning and its
revelations and purposes to the others.
* * * * *
Culpepper came across to Selina presently and leaned over the back of
her chair and spoke softly to her. His breath touched her cheek and her
pretty ear. Her heart leaped, treacherous, traitorous heart! And the
blood beat in her throat!
"Honey, when you going to let me come and talk to you? School's over
next week and I'll have to go home. I can't go on finding excuses for
hanging around."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Selina and Maud found themselves more and more thrilled with their work
under Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson.
"It's the virus of content for one thing," said Maud grandly, "we are
occupied, and then, too, of course, it's a cause."
There were varying happenings which went with the cause. The business
as the days went on, so overcrowded the library, that Aunt Juanita and
Selina and the especial medium they worked in, newspaper articles to be
compiled, and proofs of circulars from the printers to be corrected,
overflowed into the dining-room and onto the dining-table. Mrs.
Higginson and Maud in the library folded and directed and stamped all
this data in its final form.
Everyone was in earnest and the work engrossing. "You'll stay here to
lunch," Aunt Juanita would direct. "There's no time to be wasted going
off to hunt food." And the impatience in her voice for any quest so
unreasonable and unnecessary as one for food, kept anybody from going.