II

The Redmantle Club was more advanced than Charles, and he knew it. And

when he told his relative that he was going to it for stimulus, he must

have been secretly well aware that it was but a treacherous stimulus he

was likely to get.

The Club had been founded by Mrs. Frederick B. Seaman, who had once had

a novel published, long ago, at a nominal expense of two hundred and

fifty dollars. The name Redmantle had some significance which eludes

memory, but there seems to be no doubt that the founder's original idea

had been merely to gather together a few congenial persons to abuse the

publishers to. The times, however, chanced to be ripe for a broader

forum, one where the most advanced women of both sexes could meet and

freely speak out the New Mind. The Redmantle had seemed to fill the

long-felt want, from the start. Now its meetings began with a Programme,

and you may be sure nobody bothered with such small fry as a publisher.

The Redmantle speakers won salvos only by completely exterminating the

Family and the Home, or proving beyond successful contradiction that

Love Is Going Out.

By arriving late on purpose, Charles Garrott missed a speech by Mary

Wing on the New Education, for which he was rather sorry. For a year or

more he had regarded Miss Wing as one of his best friends, and he always

liked to hear her demolish, in characteristically forceful sentences,

the surviving tradition that the true object of education is to

ornament gentility. He liked to see Mary Wing lay her hand upon her

breast, her Self, and cry out: "So long as I live, whatever I do or

think or am, the center of the world for me is _here_. I will not

conjugate dead languages or recite the imports of Uruguay, before I

learn the first fact about my Self--my body and my mind, my background

and my opportunity!" On the other hand, by his late arrival, Charles

missed Miss Frothingham's advanced harp-solo, and Professor Clarence

Pollock's tribute to a celebrated lady anarchist. As to the elder Miss

Hodger's address on the New Ego, he was not much less opportune. Miss

Hodger was nearing her peroration as the writing tutor appeared at the

door.

He took up a position just inside, and looked through the parlor smoke.

The smoke emanated principally from the ladies, who were, however, as

five to one. Miss Hodger towered by a baby-grand piano, one hand upon an

album, and clamored for her Rights. She demanded these Rights of hers,

whatever they were, with such iteration and passion that a kindly,

simple person, had there been any such present, must needs have cried

out, "Give that lady her Rights there!--and quick about it!"

Miss Hodger's was a tall figure, bony but commanding; she had a flat

chest, a tangled mane of sorrel hair and a face somewhat like a horse's.

Of her argument, little need be said; you may find it in detail in the

very books where Miss Hodger found it. It was, in sum, an unanswerable

demonstration of woman's sacred duty of Developing her Ego. The exposé

of the Home proved particularly searching; it brought loud cheers. Much

Miss Hodger said, too, of the Higher Law and the Richness of

Personality, of Contributions to the Race and Enhancement of the Life

Stream. In Charles Garrott's ears one sentence seemed to ring and stick

above the rest: "Fiercely and relentlessly shall Modern Woman hack away

all that impedes her in her Self-Development--all, I care not what it

is!"

She ended with a kind of yell, thumped the album twice, and strode away

from the baby-grand. There were bursts of clapping, a chorus of

approval, and then general buzzing and commotion. The Programme was

over. Everybody was standing: all talking, nobody left to listen.

Servants entered bearing trays of light refreshments; light, indeed,

they looked. It was the Redmantle's social hour, the hour of good, free,

courageous talk.

Charles Garrott moved into the noisy room. All his sides, of course,

were not known to his fellow members, and yet he had a standing here. He

was recognized as one of the pioneer Rightsers; his last year's speech

before the Club, on "Work for Women," had been generally adjudged a

first-rate piece of Modern Thinking. And all the Redmantlers seemed to

like to talk to him, too; they would get round him and back him up into

corners in a way he scarcely liked. Mrs. Frederick B. Seaman looked as

if she meant to kiss him. "And now," she said, beaming, "for a good long

talk about my new book." He cleverly evaded her, but in so doing fell

right into the net of the hearthside anarchist, Professor Pollock, who

drew him in with a hand as large and soft as a beefsteak. Pollock was a

thin, bald young man, with the conventional flowing necktie, and the New

disappearing chin, and secretly Garrott had always thought him a most

terrific jackass.

"How are we going to relieve this White Slave situation, Garrott? How?

How?"

"It is one of the grave problems of the day," said Charles. "At the

moment I can only answer, as President Taft answered the workman at

Cooper--"

"What, you admit that you have no remedy to lay down? None whatever?"

"At the moment, none. It is one of the grave--"

The younger and even freer Miss Hodger, who had been hovering near,

exploded a mouthful of cigarette smoke, and exclaimed excitedly:--

"Oh sister, only think! Mr. Garrott has no remedy for the White Slave

situation!"

They thought it most reprehensible of him to have no remedy, and closed

in on him, bursting with theirs. "Have you not considered the

necessities of the living wage!" demanded the elder Miss Hodger's

joyless voice, suddenly at his elbow. "Living wage--bah!" said Professor

Pollock, hotly. "A mere sop--a mere feeble temporizing--" "You must get

into their homes!" cried the youngest Miss Hodger, who admitted homes

only as places to get into. "You must take them very, very young...."

So they fell to quarreling among themselves, and Charles Garrott

wriggled away, wishing that he were as cocksure about anything as the

Hodgers were about everything, and resolving to try to be henceforward.

So he eluded Miss Frothingham, who was handicapped by her harp and

nearsighted besides, but ran at once against a crimson-faced woman in a

purple negligée, a stranger to him he felt sure, but she asked him at

once, in an angry sort of way, "Don't you favor a public reception

_immediately_ to splendid Flora Trevenna?" In spite of his resolution,

Charles's eyes fell before the threatening gaze. It seemed to be the

sixth time, at least, that he had caught the name of Miss Trevenna among

the Turkish fumes, but the idea of the public reception immediately was

new to him. "Don't you think she's struck a great Blow for Freedom?"

demanded the crimson one, with rising indignation. "Don't you think

she's weakened the hold of the horrible Tyranny of Marriage?"

Thus the Modern got stimuli, of just the sort he had known he would get

if he came. Members jostled him, blew smoke in his eyes, laid

demonstrative hands upon him. All about him in the dense air, he heard

hot voices crying out incorrect statements of things they had lately

misread; at best loose bits plucked from authors whom he, Charles, had

turned inside out year before last, as like as not. And why, he

wondered, need Redmantlers _look_ so queer? Why must new ideas, if only

the least bit radical, invariably attract people who liked to wear

breakfast-gowns in the evening, people with uncombed hair and burning

pop-eyes, people who had little chin, indeed, but yet far more chin than

humor?

And then suddenly, in the midst of the febrile Newness, the young

authority found himself talking to a sweet-faced girl from the country,

who looked at him with woman's eyes, and spoke simple little things in a

pretty voice: "Do you play bridge? Do you tango? It must be _wonderful_

to be a writer...."

It was really an extraordinary experience.

The development came by way of his good friend, Mary Wing, whom Charles

reached at last with a certain sense of making port. Miss Wing, it must

be known, was the assistant principal of the great City High School,

where no woman had ever been before her, where she herself had arrived

only after eight years' incessant battling upward. She was also, this

long time, president of the State Branch of the National League for

Education Reform, with the prospect of presently mounting far higher, to

nothing less, if you please, than the General Secretaryship of that rich

and powerful body. Considering her history and her exploits, it seemed

that she should have been six feet tall, with a gaze like a Gorgon and

a jaw like Miss Hodger's. But Mary Wing was actually a slight and almost

fragile-looking creature, with quite girlish blue eyes in a colorless

face that wore an air of deceptive delicacy.

She was two months older than her friend, Mr. Garrott, which made her

thirty in December. And she was undoubtedly the most distinguished

person in that strident room, not excepting (at the present writing) Mr.

Garrott himself.

The assistant principal was discovered leaning against a bookcase,

eating sandwiches in large bites, two bites to a sandwich, and paying no

attention to the earnest talk of the group she seemed to belong to. "It

must be the effect of speaking," she said to Garrott. "I'm ravenous. But

goodness, there's no nourishment in these little paper things." And

almost at once she demanded, firm as a Redmantler, if he had ever been

to call on Dr. Flower; some cousin or other of hers, this was, who

(through her connections in the educational world) had lately taken an

appointment as lecturer at the Medical School. Charles had agreed to

call on this worthy, it seemed, but naturally he hadn't done so.

She chided him for his remissness. It was a mild enough reproof, in all

conscience; yet it was at that moment that he, with his diagnostic

tendency, caught himself eyeing Mary Wing critically, as if she were any

other Redmantler. And then he seemed to become aware that, without

knowing it exactly, he must have been eyeing Mary Wing critically for

some time past now.

"He'll need some patients, too, to eke out. I must look into that," said

she, popping the second half of a sandwich into her mouth. "I suppose

you don't know anybody who intends to be sick soon, in a costly way?"

He shook his head. He himself, he intimated, had no idea of getting sick

merely to oblige her rural cousins.

"What does that girl do?" he added, almost irritably. "Didn't you tell

me there was a girl, twenty-five years old? Why doesn't she work, and

eke out?"

"She does work. She runs the house."

"Apparently you didn't see Mrs. Waldo's statement that quarter of an

hour a day was quite enough for that so-called work."

"Do you believe that?"

"I know it's false. Still there are ninety-six quarters of an hour in a

day, people estimate. What sort of girl is she? Little nitwit, I

suppose?"

"She's my cousin."

"Lots of people have little nitwits for cousins. Why doesn't she pitch

in and earn her keep, like a free personality--as our friend Miss Hodger

would say?"

Miss Wing was observing him with a strange air, resembling amusement.

"You must really ask her that yourself some time, Mr. Garrott."

"I'll do it with pleasure, the first time ever I clap eyes on her."

"Well, then," said she, with a sudden laugh, "do it _now_!"

And thereupon, within ten seconds, the managing young woman had whisked

him around a knot of Redmantlers, whisked him around the bookcase, and

was saying in merry, efficient tones:--

"Angela, this is the famous Mr. Garrott you've heard so much about--my

cousin, Miss Flower! Mr. Garrott's very anxious to--"

She paused wickedly, but after all finished without malice, "To make

your acquaintance." And so Mr. Garrott did not have to ask the country

cousin on the spot what she was thinking about not to earn her keep.

The girl had been standing against the other corner of the bookcase all

the time, it seemed. She was talking, in a polite sort of way, to

another guest--Mr. Tilletts, the wealthy and seeking widower--and

fanning away tobacco smoke with a hand too small for the heavy odds. Mr.

Tilletts was removed at once by the thoroughly competent Miss Wing.

Charles Garrott, recovered from the sudden little surprise, looked at

the cousin with interest, and was at no loss for easy conversation.

While he knew of Miss Flower very well, he pointed out, he had had no

idea that she was here this evening. In fact, he hadn't gathered that

Miss Flower went in for--well, for this sort of thing, exactly.

"Why--I really don't, I'm afraid," said she in her soft voice. "I don't

suppose I understand it all very well. I just came--because Cousin Mary

invited me!"

She hesitated, then laughed, and finally said: "And you see, it's the

first party I've been invited to since I came here to live!"

"And you like parties?"

"Yes, so much. Don't you?"

The remark, at, and as to, the Redmantle, seemed delightful.

"I did, when I was young and gay. Now, I never seem to have time to

enjoy myself any more. You've been meeting a good many people, I

suppose?"

"Well, no,--not many yet. Really hardly any." The girl laughed, and

again showed a charming naïveté: "You're the very first man I've met

since we came here--except Mr. Tilletts!"

"But that's a tremendous exception, Miss Flower. You appreciate that

he's one of our leading swains?"

"Oh, _is_ he!" she said, a little disconcerted. "Why--I hope he didn't

think I was rude! I thought he was--somebody's father, you see, or

uncle...."

Charles Garrott regarded the cousin pleasurably, with no thought of

cross-examination. He, the authority, it need scarcely be said, had

recognized this girl at sight. Manifestly, she was none other than the

Nice Girl, the Womanly Woman, whom he and all moderns were forever

holding up to scorn. Doubtless it was merely the increased conservative

reaction: but Charles, for the moment, seemed conscious of no scorn in

him toward Miss Angela Flower.

The cousin was pretty; not beautiful, no throne-shaker; but pretty, and

attractive-looking. Wholly normal she looked, quite engagingly so, with

her fine clear skin, smooth dark hair, and large limpid eyes. In her

manner there was something soft, simple, and sweet, an ingenuous desire

to please and be pleased; Miss Flower was feminine, in short,--it could

not be denied. In a company, where the women acted like men, and the men

acted like the Third Sex, this girl seemed content to remind you, like

her mothers, that she was a woman.

Her conversation, intrinsically speaking, was not remarkable. But--the

insidious contrast again--in a Midst where everybody else was conversing

remarkably, plain conversation itself became an episode, and a charming

one. She spoke of bridge, saying that she and Cousin Mary were hoping to

"get up a table" one night very soon; of Mitchellton, where she had

lived seven years till September; of the maxixe and the smallness of the

house Mary Wing had taken for them; a dozen such un-New simplicities.

And then, as she happened to be saying something about the strangeness

of the city, "just at first," Charles Garrott exclaimed suddenly, rather

pleased:--

"There's a friend of yours, at any rate, Miss Flower--Donald Manford!

The last one in the world you'd expect to meet here."

The engineer must have just come in; over bobbing heads, through waving

arms, his fine figure and bronzed face had been suddenly glimpsed at the

doorway. This young man was another cousin of Mary Wing's; she, indeed,

had raised him by hand; and he looked hardly less alien at the Redmantle

Club than Miss Angela Flower herself.

To Garrott's astonishment, Miss Flower did not know Donald from Adam.

"Is _that_ Mr. Manford?" she exclaimed, surprised apparently by her

cousin's cousin's good looks. "Of course I've known _of_ him for the

longest time, but--"

"Why, that's strange--he's like a brother to Mary Wing. But then," said

he, reconsidering, "Donald's out of the city half the time, and does

nothing but work when he's here."

"Oh! Cousin Mary said she was going to bring him to see us some

time--but--"

He enlarged upon the young engineer's industry (trained into him by Miss

Wing); explained how he was busier than usual just now in view of his

coming trip to Wyoming; mentioned the great Mora dam and cut-off

project, on which he expected a commission under Gebhardt himself.

"And your cousin Mary, too," he concluded, in the justest way, "is an

awfully busy person, you see."

"Yes, of course, I know! She does work _terribly_ hard, doesn't she?"

After the slightest pause, the girl added: "It's such a pity she has to,

don't you think so?"

On which Donald Manford dropped cleanly from Charles's mind, and he

inquired with authoritative interest, artfully concealed: "How do you

mean, exactly?"

"Well--I don't know--"

She looked at him, laughing a little, as if not certain how far she

could say what she meant; but finding his gaze so extremely encouraging,

she went on seriously:--

"Don't you think when a woman gets really wrapped up in business--and

all that--she's apt to miss some of the best things of life?"

He might have laughed at the quaint deliciousness of that, to him,

Charles Garrott. But he didn't.

"That's the great question your sex is working out, isn't it?" he said,

carefully. "I don't suppose work--just moderate, useful occupation--ever

hurt anybody much, do you?"

"Oh, no!--of course not. That's just what I believe, too. I believe

everybody ought to have work to do. But--all the work isn't teaching or

going to an office--or being a public speaker--do you think so?"

"Oh, never. No, indeed."

She hesitated and said, laughing: "I know _I_ find it work enough just

keeping a house and doing the housework--and being a daughter and

sister!"

It was at that point that Charles's purely conventional look altered,

his inmost self pricking up its ears, as it were. And a moment later the

simple girl said, in the naïvest way imaginable, what seemed immediately

to stick in his scientific Woman lore like a burr:--

"Of course I haven't studied and read like Cousin Mary, but truly it

seems to me that--just making a home is sometimes all the business a

woman could possibly attend to...."

He stood looking down at her in the strangest way, engrossed with novel

reflections. She would have been astonished had she guessed how her

chance phrase had set this man's mind to working, behind the pleasant

mask. In her innocence she clearly did not understand, even after all

the speeches, how at the Redmantle Club we talked of all businesses, and

everybody's business, but never the business of making a home.

The reactionary talk proceeded for a space. But shortly, there were

signs that the meeting was about to adjourn. And it was clear to

Charles, as a true writer of a philosophical tendency, that he should be

glad to be alone for a space now, and to think.