NEWSPAPER CUTS
I
The State Convention was imminent. In the vast barrenness of the
Auditorium rows upon rows of ticketed chairs were filling up with
delegates, sectional banners waved in the various parts of the big hall,
flags made the background for the speakers, chairs and table.
“The machinery for creating a government is in progress,” said Margaret,
“what do you think of it?”
Helen shook her head.
“Inadequate. When you think why they have come, how they have come, what
destinies they hold in their hands. Would women do it better I wonder,
Margaret?”
“Women are more serious. Perhaps. Anyway we must try it. If we don’t
like that machinery we’ll have to invent another kind.”
“Funny male gathering. Think they all have their women--and their
feeling towards their own women must influence their feeling towards all
of us. Their own women to treat cruelly or kindly--or possessively.”
“They’re on the last lap of their possession,” answered Margaret.
The gallery was filling with women, reporters, spectators with one
interest or another. The men were taking their places, formality
settling on the assembly. The temporary chairman was on the platform,
welcoming them, bowing grandiloquently with a compliment that was
inevitable to the ladies in the gallery. Nominations for a chairman
were in order. The temporary chairman retained his place as he had
expected. The committees on credentials, resolutions, organization,
retired and the delegation heard with some restlessness further
exhortation as to the duties which lay before them and the splendor of
opportunity awaiting the party in the immediate future.
The platform was read. Cheers, a little too well organized and not too
freely spontaneous, punctuated it. The women listened to it attentively,
Margaret frowning now and then at some of its clauses.
It was a long task. On its consummation the convention adjourned for
lunch.
It was mid-afternoon before the business of electing the delegates at
large to the National Convention had been reached. Helen felt her face
grow hot and her heart go a little faster even while she mocked at
herself for those signs of nervousness. Margaret watched as if her
finger was on the pulse of a patient.
Hedley’s name went through nomination as every one had expected. Then
Jensen was on his feet.
He was good. The women admitted that after his first words. He dwelt
upon the fact of suffrage, on the practical differences it made in the
electorate. He spoke of the recognition of women as a privilege. Then
with a reference which Helen had feared must come he spoke of the one
woman whose name is “familiar to us through the fine party loyalty of
her husband” and who is herself “the unspoken choice of hundreds and
thousands of women of this State” as their delegate. Helen heard her
name come forth unfamiliarly, heard the burst of clapping, faced the
barricade of glances with a smile.
There was little doubt about it from the start. What opposition there
was must have decided it unsafe to show its teeth. An hour later a
discomfited man, pushed off the party slate by a woman, edged his way
out of the back of the gallery and the woman was surrounded by a group
of men and women, all anxious to be early in their congratulations, some
from sheer enthusiasm, others from motives more questionable.
“And where is Gage passing the cigars?” asked one man jocularly.
Helen looked around as if in surprise that he was not there.
“He isn’t here, is he?”
She knew he wasn’t. She had known he wouldn’t come, even while she could
not quite kill the hope that he would.
At the door were photographers, even a moving picture man waiting for
the new woman delegates. Margaret dropped Helen’s hand and Helen, on
Mrs. Brownley’s arm, moved past the range of picture-takers with an air
of complete composure. In a moment she was in her car and moving out of
sight. Margaret turned to walk back to her own apartment, complete
satisfaction on her face.
II
Helen entered the house quietly and leaving her gloves and wrap on the
hall bench, went into the kitchen to see how things were going there.
There was a pleasant air of competence about it. The maids were busy and
the dinner in active preparation. Upstairs the nurse had the children.
She played with them a little, a warm sense of satisfaction at her
heart. It was so absurd to choose--to fake a choice. This other work,
this other business could be done without sacrificing anything. Gage was
absurd. She was no less a mother, not a bit less good a housewife
because she was a delegate to the Republican Convention. It took a bit
of management, that was all. If she was treating Gage badly she would
feel different.
But there was a guilty feeling which she could not control. He was
unhappy and she the cause. They had been too close for that not to hurt.
At seven o’clock, a little late for dinner, came Gage, a guarded
courtesy in his manner. He asked her pardon for not dressing and handed
her a sheaf of evening papers. She was thankful that they had been
issued too early to contain the news of her triumph. It postponed
certain altercations. She thought suddenly of her barrage of
photographers and of what she had completely forgotten, Gage’s
tremendous dislike of having her picture in the papers.
“I can’t bear the thought of your picture tossed about the
country--looked at casually for an hour and then used as old newspapers
are used--to wrap a package--line a stair-rug--heaven knows what!”
Of course it had appeared occasionally for all of that but Helen had
made the occasions infrequent. She had always liked that prejudice of
his. As she looked at him to-night she thought he looked tired. There
were strained lines around his eyes, and he was very silent.
She said several little things and then, because avoidance of the big
topic seemed impossible, joined him in his silence. He looked at her at
last, smiling a little. It was not the smile of a rancorous man but
rather a hurt smile, a forced smile of one who is going to go through
pain wearing it.
“I have been congratulated all the way home on your account, Helen. It
seems to have been a landslide for you.”
“There was hardly any opposition.” It was meager but she could not go on
without seeming to run into a forbidden or aching subject.
There they had to stop. Helen had a vision of the closed topics between
them, a sudden horror of this cleavage. Suppose he didn’t see that he
was foolish, that she was not treating him badly, that she must lay up
something for herself as a person against the day when he himself might
weary of her as a woman. Fiercely she recast her arguments in her own
mind. Yet there was that tired look in his eyes. You can fight rancor
but not weariness.
“How is Miss Thorstad getting on?”
“Fine. It was a great hunch. You know she actually saves me a lot of
thinking. It shows that a girl with wits is worth half a dozen expert
stenographers. She has an air about her that is dignified and calm and
yet she’s not a stick.”
“I imagine there’s a volcanic soul under that rather calm exterior.”
“Perhaps.”
“Gage, you look tired.”
He made a visible effort to rouse himself.
“Tired? Why, no, dear. Not especially.”
“What are we to do to-night?”
“I have some work to-night.”
She looked somewhat baffled as the door closed after him a half hour
later. Then going to the telephone she called Margaret. Margaret was not
at home. Helen read for an hour and went to bed early.
Gage had meant to work. But he was not working. He was fighting on
through a cloud of bitterness and of thoughts which he knew were not
wholly unreasonable. He was sitting at his littered desk, all the
paraphernalia of work strewn about him and a picture of Helen on his
desk confronting him, accenting his trouble. There she was. He had only
to close his eyes and he saw her even more clearly, breaking through the
clouded doubts of his mind as she had done in the first days of his
marriage--clearness, peace, the one real beauty in the world, the one
real truth in the world--Helen--love. And she had said she wanted to be
“clean of sex!” He scowled at the thought but it danced before him
defiling his memories. It would not go! From those early days, those
days of the “hardening process” there had persisted always in Gage
secret faith, fading now to a hope, flaring now to a conviction that sex
was clean, was beautiful until some other agency defiled it. He
remembered still his tortured adolescent mind revolving around the
problems of the mysteries of birth, stirring him to wonder and the
leering clandestine ugly talk which seemed an ugly wrapping around the
wonder. He had always thought that his son would have no such tortures.
His own proven conviction would carry the boy through all doubts. Now he
seemed cast back in the mire of his own old doubts. Had Helen always
felt defiled? Had all their life been a hideous mixture of shame and
complacencies and hidden revulsions? Had they really conquered nothing?
Or was there nothing to conquer? Was he over-fastidious, unmanly? Was
the necessary thing to blunt once more, this time permanently, these
illusions of his--to go home to Helen and play the part of the demanding
husband, demanding concession in return for concession? Laugh at her
whims, her fads, quarrel with her if necessary. If she must run to her
conventions, let her go. And let him coarsen his feeling so it was
willing to take what was left of her.
He wiped his forehead impatiently. It was damp and that sign of his
intensity shamed him. He had learned that the revealing of emotion was
man’s shame, to be hidden at all costs. Helen had given him a final
lesson in that. Angrily he flung himself into his work, concentrating
actually with his will for hours, mastering the intricacies of the
question on which he must give an opinion in the morning. When he had
done his notes lay ready. He cleaned up the litter of papers, a little
frown on his face and looked at his watch. Nearly midnight. He must go
home.
All the practical machinery of locking up, starting the car, steering,
driving into the garage, locking the garage, turning out the lights in
the library. Nothing was different from other nights. He was a man in
his own house. But over the formalism of his actions and his deliberate
definiteness of conscious thought his mind was in battle. He was trying
to kill the part of him that cried out against going to his wife in such
a mood. He was trying deliberately to kill it with a blunt edged thought
which read “Be a man--not a neurasthenic.” He cursed himself under his
breath. He was no damned temperamental actor to carry on like this
(Always, always, that choking necessity for repressing these
feelings, concealing the fact of feeling). A married man--seven
years--rights--duties--nature--foolish whims--but above that persisted
the almost tortured cry of his spirit, struggling with the hotness of
desire, begging, for its life--“Don’t go home like a beast to her!”
III
In the morning Helen was again worried by his appearance.
“What time did you come in, Gage?”
“About midnight.”
“You look as if you’d slept wretchedly. Did you?”
“Well, enough.” His tone was surly. He could not bear to look at her,
shining haired, head held high, confidence, strength, balance of mind,
justice, radiating from her. He knew what a contrast he made--she did
not need to tell him of his heavy, encircled eyes, his depressed mouth.
She pushed his hair back from his forehead, standing beside his chair.
It was a familiar gesture between them.
“Gage, you mean more than anything else to me. You know that?”
He mumbled an answer.
“But don’t resent it so awfully because I can’t believe that loving is a
woman’s only job. We mustn’t absorb each other.”
Quoted, he thought bitterly, from Margaret Duffield. Quite reasonable
too. Very reasonable. He suddenly hated her for her reasoning which was
denied to his struggling instincts. All desire, all love in his heart
had curdled to a sodden lump of resentment.
He picked up the paper. There was Helen, marching across the page,
smiling into the camera’s eyes. Curious men with hats and crowding women
showed in the blurred background. He looked from the picture to the real
Helen.
“Very good picture.”
His tone was disagreeable. And he had not answered her appeal.
“Be fair, Gage.”
Very well, he would be fair.
“I haven’t the smallest sympathy with all this, Helen. I know you regard
that as unreasonable. It may be that I am. But I don’t believe you’re
bigger or better because of all this. You’ve done it from no spirit of
conviction but because you were flattered into doing it. The Duffield
girl is simply using you for her own convictions. With her they at least
are convictions. But with you they’re not.”
“That’s quite enough, thanks, Gage.”
He was cruelly glad he had hurt her. How it helped the ache in his own
heart!
Helen thought: “He’s jealous of Margaret. Terribly jealous. It’s
abnormal and disgusting. What has happened to him?” She let him leave
the house with what was almost a little life of spirits when he had
gone. She had not time to sift these feelings of Gage now. Later, if
they persisted. She wondered if he should see a doctor, thought for a
moment of psycho-analysis, speculating as to whether that might set him
straight. But the telephone began ringing frantically.