with her. "No, certainly you can't have the dining-table," she told
Hester on an occasion when they all did stay for lunch, and that
person, cloth in hand, presented herself to set this piece of furniture
for the meal. It was quite as if Hester had asked for something as
irregular and preposterous as somebody's nose or ear. "Don't you see
Miss Selina and I are using it? That it is piled with our papers? Put
the food in dishes and set it around. Why ask me where?" exasperatedly.
"Anywhere. We'll help ourselves when we get ready."
And they did, from side-board, window-seat, and mantelpiece, without
comment and with equanimity. And be it remarked it was excellent food.
And excellently cooked. Trust a Bruce for that! They surprised you by
such unexpected characteristics as knowing good food and having it!
Another day Aunt Juanita departed betimes for the printer, leaving the
others at their tasks.
"What? What's that, Maud?" from Mrs. Higginson presently, looking about
her as she stood up, tying on her bonnet, "Mrs. Bruce told you to get
those circulars to the post-office when you finish them? Why there's
five hundred of them! That's Juanita Bruce! Go home and get your
lunches, both of you, and I'll send the carriage around here for you.
It can take you to the office with the circulars, and wherever you'd
like to go afterwards. Girls always have a round of calls to pay. Use
it for the afternoon."
And the Higginson carriage meant a pair as well and coachman and
footman and liveries!
"The greenhouses are going to waste," said this lady another day,
"waiting for weather to get the flowers out into the beds. Come back
in the carriage to lunch with me, both of you, and let the gardener
cut you what you want." And the Higginson house meant pictures brought
from abroad, and wonderful rugs, and articles of what Maud once
inadvertently called virtue! The clerical force were thrilled and
enraptured with their secretarial occupation!
And it would seem, too, that the time was ripe for the cause which Aunt
Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were furthering. Selina for proof of this
had only to take the cases of her mother and Auntie.
Mail from the outer and impersonal world, coming to either of these
two, was so infrequent as to be negligible, their correspondence being
altogether personal and intimate. When such mail began to come to both,
circulars, and clippings and marked newspapers, despite the fact that
their own Selina, or if not she, then Maud, was known to have directed
them, they were impressed and fluttered, and put their sewing aside,
needles in work, thimbles on sills, read it through with absorption and
remark and comment.
"'The Ladies' Library Club of Kalamazoo' is the oldest organization
of the kind in the West," Mrs. Wistar would read aloud. "'Four book
clubs recently were formed in the State of Pennsylvania.' I'm sure
such affairs must be altogether beneficial in communities. We think too
little no doubt of the things of the mind. Cultivation along such lines
as would be proper in a book club would be stimulating for us all here
in our community. Now take Anna, for instance," she referred to Cousin
Anna Tomlinson on whom she turned thus testily every now and then, "no
matter where she is, or what the occasion, she _never_ wants to talk
about anything now but the dishonesty or the appetites of her servants.
It's come to be wearing."
"'The Cosmos Club of West Newburyport, Mass.,'" read Auntie whose
vocabulary was circumscribed and confined to the familiar, darling
soul, and who conceived of cosmos only as pink and white and magenta,
grown on bushes and brought in in the fall and put about in vases,
"Now I'd like to see something like a cosmos club started here among
ourselves. I've always said it was an excellent plan to exchange seeds
and cuttings and ideas with other flower lovers."
Juliette Caldwell's pretty mother considered that she'd had a musical
training in her day. Hadn't she studied a whole _year_ as a girl at
the Conservatory of Music up in Cincinnati? She stopped Selina on the
sidewalk to speak about a marked article in a paper sent to her. "It's
really wonderful about that B-Sharp Club away out there in a little
town in Dakota. I'm so tired when I'm through with the servants, or the
no-servants, and the children and the house, I'd be grateful to any
incentive which would send me to my piano again."
Cousin Anna Tomlinson came by the Wistars with a circular report of
various kinds of Woman's organizations. "The Ladies' Tourist Clubs? Are
they parties for travel, Selina? I do get so tired when I go on a trip
with your Cousin Willoughby, who won't let me do a thing or see a thing
my way."
Selina one day chanced to report these things to her Aunt Juanita and
Mrs. Higginson.
"I've known it for some while," assented her aunt. "I've not waited
and worked, and worked and waited twelve years for this moment, not
to recognize it when it comes. The time is ripe." Aunt Juanita spoke
solemnly and as if genuinely moved. "I knew that when Mrs. Higginson
and I started upon this local agitation and movement."
"I've studied the situation nearly five years myself," from Mrs.
Higginson. "Juanita is right, the time _is_ ripe, and the moment _is_
here!"
It was the crucial moment! Both ladies admitted it! Acknowledged they
had foreseen it and made ready for it! And then turned their backs upon
it!
Mrs. Bruce met her clerical force of two as they arrived at her door
the next morning. It was near the end of May.
"Important as I deem the cause here at home," she told Selina and Maud,
"and I hold nothing higher than the arousing of the individual woman,
Mrs. Higginson and I are called to Chicago. There's a chance that the
demand by women for representation on the commission of the projected
world's fair in Chicago is to be turned down. Mrs. Higginson hopes
to be appointed one of these women representatives if the demand is
granted to use the opportunity to spread her ideas about women among
women. I am interested on principle. We go to-day."
Here Mrs. Higginson arrived in her carriage to pick up Mrs. Bruce and
her satchel. She got out and came in for a brief conference.
"We had hoped to call on the women here in our own town and induce
them to meet and organize this week. We may have to be in Chicago ten
days, which will bring it well into June. By that time the various
commencements and such are all on, and after them the summer exodus
will have begun and the moment will be past. It's most unfortunate."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
When Selina and Maud became converts to the cause of Mrs. Bruce and
Mrs. Higginson, they carried Adele and Juliette with them. They also
offered of their enthusiasm and their enlightenment to Amanthus but she
only looked at them wonderingly.
The day after the two sponsors for the cause, Mrs. Higginson and Mrs.
Bruce, deserted it, the four were gathered at the Wistars' in Selina's
room, discussing the affair, when Amanthus walked in.
"You _ought_ to be interested in what we're talking about, Amanthus,"
said Maud severely, "though you're not. It's a question involving every
phase and--er--" Maud had lost the vocabulary of the article she was
quoting, "every side of woman" she finished a little lamely. "You ought
to be an espouser either for or against such a cause, or you ought to
know at least, whether you consider it a cause."
Amanthus heard Maudie out. How pretty she was in her attention that
didn't do more than just attend. Then she laughed protestingly. The
little wonder on her face, the bother in her eyes, made her sweet and
irresistible. Made you want to protect and defend her! Want to shield
her from the bothering Mauds of life with their perpetual attacks and
innuendoes!
"You're so queer, Maudie," smiling affectionately; "you and Judy and
Adele, and, yes, Selina, too. You all do get so worked up. Last time
it was about the reverting, or was it the reversion of the Scriptures?
And whether you approve of it? I don't see what it is you all are
always thinking you're about." She paused a perceptible time. Then she
blushed, dazzlingly, radiantly. While they wasted themselves in all
these puzzling fashions, _she_ had been about the real business of
life. "Mr. Tate has asked Mamma if I may marry him."
A mere puff from the May breeze ruffling the fruit tree outside the
window of Selina's room could have felled her audience over. Their
faces paled even to their red young lips. The first, she, their
Amanthus, for _it_ to come to! _It_, the incredible, the barely
formulated in thought, the well-nigh unuttered in phrase! They stared
at her, and at each other about the room! It was a space before
volition began to come back to them! And with the return of it, they
remembered! Bliss' father had just put him into business, Bliss was
working like a man, pretty Bliss, thinking it was for Amanthus!
Amanthus the meanwhile was continuing to drop further startling
information. "Mr. Tate is going to Germany. He wants to study. He says
if Mamma will consent to let me be married at once, and all of us go
over together, it will be better. We can live in any sort of way or
fashion Mamma and I choose, he says. There's a great deal of money."
Somebody gasped. It turned out to be Maud. Amanthus, sweet and
unruffled and definite, was going on.
"Mamma says, however, he's to go away. Quite away. And let her have the
summer to take me about. We're going to Mamma's two cousins who married
East, one at Narragansett, and one at Bar Harbor, and think it over.
But I know now. Mamma needn't bother."
Juliette more than ever these days was Spartan and accusing. She spared
not herself nor anyone. Her aquiline little face blazed and her dark
eyes flashed. "How do you reconcile it with yourself about Bliss?"
Amanthus colored. "I don't have to. I told him it was a boy and girl
affair all the time. It never would have been Bliss anyhow. There have
been several this winter I haven't talked about."
That night Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon came around again
to Selina's. As if drawn back by a common need of fellowship, Maud and
Juliette and Adele were there.
"Wonderful old Tate!" said Mr. Welling. "He's just broken it to us."
The four were silent. Maud was by Selina on the sofa, and Juliette who
was sitting by Adele, had her hand. They avoided Mr. Welling's eyes,
and the eyes of each other. As Amanthus herself had said, they took
things hard. Probe beneath this affair of hers with anybody, they could
not. Nor could they bring themselves to mention Mr. Tate. It was as if
silently and desperately they sought support in each other only, and
clung together.
Perhaps the others understood. "Fool Bliss," said Culpepper, "but then
he always has been."
They could not discuss that either.
"How's the cause?" from Mr. Cannon suddenly.
He having indulged in levity concerning it, was in disgrace in that
respect. The ladies eyed him doubtfully, and questioningly.
"But I mean it. No cavil. Who do you think called me up at the law
class to-day? Got the first private telephone line in town, just put
in, lively old girl! Aunt Jinnie Hines Cumming, _ætat_. eighty-three!
She was vigorously and impatiently saying, 'Hurrah,' 'hurrah,' instead
of 'Hello,' when I got to the receiver, having forgotten the cabalistic
word, but that's small detail. She promptly went on to tell me over
the telephone that she's always considered women such fools--her
words, not mine, ladies--she'd like to see 'em started toward some
sort of mitigation of their condition before she died--that she'd been
getting all sorts of data through the mail of late about women--that of
course, she knew it came from Juanita Bruce and Harriet Higginson. But
nevertheless it had given her an idea, and would I come round there?"
From Maud, "Of all people, even more than Mrs. Higginson, the right
one!"
From Juliette, "Do you suppose she _really_ means to do it?"
From Selina, "Does she know how unfortunately Aunt Juanita and Mrs.
Higginson were called away? We've got the lists of names and all the
data. Oh, go on and tell us, did you go?"
From Adele, "If anybody can put it through, Mrs. Cumming can!"
Mr. Cannon rubbed his hands and eyed his audience delightsomely. "My
Aunt Jinnie Cumming, _ætat_. eighty-three, sent for me in my legal
status, to tell her how to go about it! She proposes to organize!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It was a momentous assemblage, that gathering of ladies who responded
to the call of their erstwhile social leader, Mrs. Jinnie Hines
Cumming. This octogenarian person, about to go away for the summer with
her two maids and her six trunks when the idea struck her, delayed her
going but declined to have the covers taken off the furniture in her
drawing-room.
"Never put yourself out for women," was her explanation of this
to Preston Cannon, her nephew. "If they think you overvalue them,
they undervalue you, and the other way round for the reverse of the
proposition."
Consequently the meeting came to order in due time in Mrs. Cumming's
less formal library, which she declared was easier to unswathe and put
in order.
Thanks to the beneficent offices of Preston Cannon, right hand for all
the ladies concerned in planning the affair, Miss Selina Wistar, Miss
Maud Addison and Miss Adele Carter were present, established in the
dining-room opening off the library in the combined callings of ushers,
pages and tellers. It wasn't strictly parliamentary that they should
be there, and years afterwards they turned on him and told him so,
but then they were only thrilled and excited and grateful to him for
arranging it with Mrs. Cumming.
On the afternoon in question the three wearing immaculate white
dresses, and seated at a small table just inside the door leading from
the dining-room into the library, with trays of papers and pencils in
readiness, watched the ladies surge in, in pairs, trios and groups, and
find chairs.
Adele leaned across to speak to Maud and Selina. She had on a white
sailor hat with scarlet cherries on it, fruit being the rage in
millinery this season, a jaunty type which didn't at all suit her. "How
would it do to take some notes of the meeting for Mrs. Bruce and Mrs.
Higginson? They'll want to know everything." Conscientious Adele!
Maud looked stunning in her new white hat with crystallized grapes on
it. "Better than that," she whispered in reply, "Selina and I are going
to telegraph 'em when the meeting's over. We have their address."
Selina had been considerably worried over Mamma's extravagance for her
this spring, but since she could not combat it, looked rather nice
herself in a soft-brimmed leghorn with a wreath of strawberries, both
blossoms and fruit, upon it. She leaned across the table in her turn.
"We're going to the telegraph office before we go home. Come with us.
Thanks to Maud the message is written out in telling style."
"I felt it was a significant moment," said Maud, "a moment we may
be proud to feel we witnessed. And I felt the message ought to be
epigrammatic in a way and worthy of it. Read it, Selina."
Selina produced it from her pocket-book and read it softly, the library
filling rapidly with ladies by now:
Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our
rights and our realms our platform.
It was a representative gathering, this, in the library of old Mrs.
Cumming. Summer silks, summer grenadines, buntings, and this latest
thing, French satines, abounded. While fashion this season decreed
trains which swept pavements and floors impassively, the marked
characteristic of the hour was bustles. And if bonnets predominated
over hats, the bonnets made up for any over-sedateness in form by their
wealth in that rage of the moment mentioned, fruit in every shape known
to millinery if not to pomology.
Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle was there, Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones was there, and
also Mrs. Jones' three married stepdaughters. Mrs. William Williams
was there, and Mrs. Carter, mother of Adele, and Mrs. Grosvenor, her
grandmother, Mrs. Harrison, very lovely and very charming and smiling,
Mrs. Addison, Mrs. Caldwell, Selina's little mother, Mrs. Wistar, and
Auntie and Cousin Anna Tomlinson. And besides these, serried ranks of
others even the more impressive because the less well known.
"Mrs. Cumming ordered a hundred chairs from the undertaker's, though
she wouldn't have this known, every confectioner in town chancing to
have his engaged for this afternoon or this evening, I know that,"
whispered Selina to Maud and Adele, "for Mr. Cannon said so, and there
are just ten vacant."
Here Mrs. Jinnie Cumming rose from her chair in the front row of the
audience, tottery but equal to it, game old girl, as Preston Cannon
said of her. And deliberately reading the instructions furnished her
by her nephew through her lorgnette after she had risen, found what
she wanted, asked somebody near by to pound a chair back, and call the
meeting to order.
Having gotten it to order, and its attention fixed on herself, she told
the ninety ladies gathered in her library that they knew as well as she
did what they were there for, or ought to know if they had read the
card she'd sent 'em. And thereupon asked Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones to
take the chair.
Mrs. Jones in grenadine, trained and bustled, and red blackberries, had
prepared herself for this, so it was understood afterwards, having been
told beforehand. She swung matters deftly along from this point, being
a capable person and a Tuttle. When Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle in turn should
pass the social scepter to the next in line, there was very little
doubt as to who hoped to be qualified to receive it.
With a few graceful phrases explaining the reasons for their presence
here this afternoon, Mrs. Jones appointed a secretary, and this done
came to the point.
"Since we are here, because we are really interested, ladies, will
someone tell us a little of what women are doing elsewhere?"
Mrs. William Williams, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Wistar all got up. Mrs.
Wistar explained afterwards that however disinclined she might have
felt to do so, there was no choice left her, being Juanita's sister.
Mrs. Williams whose bodily proportions were by far the larger of the
three, and wearing a summer silk of green, a bustle, and a bonnet with
gooseberries, was recognized by the chair, and the other two ladies
sat down. Whereupon Mrs. Williams with a sudden change of countenance,
looked about her as if for help, colored violently and sat down
herself. It was as startling as it was uncharacteristic, and the first
exhibition of club-fright witnessed by any of the company. It added
verve to the occasion.
Mrs. Carter now arose, in bunting, bustle and pink raspberries, smiling
and propitiatory. Not for worlds, so said her manner, would she have it
thought that she was covering Mrs. Williams' confusion.
[Illustration: "'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment.'"]
"It would seem, ladies, that women everywhere are awaking to a need of
more uplift in their lives, are realizing that their lives on the whole
are starved. In proof of this, book-clubs, magazine clubs, culture
clubs are forming all over this land of ours. More uplift, more culture
is the cry of the moment among our sex." One recalled the nature of
periodical at the Carter house that no one read but Adele! "And who of
us but rejoices that women are awake to this need in themselves?"
Mrs. Wistar arose, all of five feet four, but none the less impressive
and none the less herself for that.
"She was a Livingston, too, like Mrs. Bruce," somebody whispered to
somebody.
"In our leisure," Mrs. Wistar deplored, "and I hope it is not disloyal
to say it, women are too inclined to talk recipes and seamstresses and
servants to the exclusion of more elevating and uplifting topics." Was
she getting back at Cousin Anna? "From the information on the subject
we all have been receiving recently, it would seem woman is lifting the
plane of her life to things more worth while. As one eloquent article
written by a woman herself, ably puts it, 'Woman has for too long
allowed herself to become subdued to the thing she works in.' In other
words, as the writer goes on to explain, domesticity."
At a signal from the chair that her time was up, Mrs. Wistar sat down,
and in compliance with a previous understanding between Mrs. Jones,
Mrs, Cumming and Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, Mrs. Tuttle arose, resplendent,
as becomes a leader, in purple silk and train, nature having provided
the bustle, and purple and green grapes combined with a modest crop
of seckel pears upon her bonnet. She arose and moved that the body of
women present organize themselves into a club for purposes to be set
forth following organization.
Seconded by Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson, and also by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle
herself, in a loud voice, she being on ground new to her, it was put to
the vote without remark, Mrs. Jones failing to recall she ought to ask
for any; and unanimously adopted.
"And the name of this club, ladies?" from Mrs. Jones in the chair.
"Perhaps the name will better follow after we determine the club's
purposes?" from Mrs. Harrison on her feet for the moment, lovely and
smiling in grenadine, bustle, and bonnet garniture of small oranges.
"Music," called pretty Mrs. Caldwell in a checked silk, bustle and
huckleberries.
"Literature," from Mrs. Carter, she of the pink raspberries.
"Art," from Mrs. Williams, recovered, with a reviving nod of her
gooseberries.
"Or," from little Mrs. Wistar impressively arising--surely this lady
had belonged to the ranks of the retiring and deprecating only because
the way had never opened to her to be elsewhere! "Or may we not include
_all_ of these suggestions, and say music, art _and_ literature?"
A newcomer, late in arriving, stood up, in a wool street dress, plain
but perfectly decent and genteel, though lacking a bustle. It was Miss
Emma McRanney, in a plain straw hat, poor, working creature, large of
feature, thick-set and good-humored.
"Ladies, it may be well here to remind ourselves of the two persons
who've done most toward this end of organization and common fellowship
among us. And who most regrettably to themselves and to us, I hope I
may say, are not with us to-day. I speak, of course, of Mrs. Aurelius
Bruce and Mrs. Amos Higginson, who have given of themselves and their
time and their money to bring about the present occasion. And I would
like to recall that each of these ladies has a conviction which she
feels should be at base of any such organization of women as we are
effecting now. Convictions which, I'm sure you'll all agree with me, we
owe it to them to consider."
A murmur went around the ninety ladies, and Mrs. Jones bowed graciously
from the chair in recognition of the general agreement to this.
Miss Emma McRanney went on. "One of these ladies, Mrs. Bruce, believes
and has believed for years that the great factor in the future of woman
is suffrage. Mrs. Higginson's conviction is as strong that woman will
come into her larger sphere and wider field of usefulness through a
better understanding of her own present business of domesticity. I
am merely the mouthpiece of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, ladies,
with whose views I chance to be familiar. They, hearing of the
meeting through Mrs. Cumming, who telegraphed them in Chicago to
such effect, have replied asking that their views be presented to
you this afternoon, and at the request of Mrs. Cumming I am here to
do it. Mrs. Bruce believes that the platform of this or any other
organization of women for woman's own betterment must be suffrage. Mrs.
Higginson maintains that such a club at start should be a forum and
clearing-house for the broadening and enlightenment of women as home
administrators."
But murmurs were many: currants were nodding in emphatic refutation to
cherries, blackberries to quinces, apples to gooseberries. Milliners
might dictate their common absurdities in head-gear; mantua-makers in
dress styles, but not Mrs. Bruce or Mrs. Higginson, hopeless dressers
both, their business to these ladies! Denunciations grew audible.
Remarks, while unofficial and made from lady to lady, nevertheless,
were to one end.
"Suffrage, with all apologies to Mrs. Bruce," said some apricots to
some Concord grapes next to 'em, "simply stands with and for freaks.
Who'd want to look like Mrs. Bruce?"
"And domesticity is exactly what we're running away from," returned the
grapes, outraged. "We want to turn our backs for a while on the servant
problem and its vexations."
As a unit the ninety were against Miss Emma McRanney! One only was to
rise to her support, and that one Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming!