A WOMAN'S CRUSADE
Margaret's action in taking a dying woman into her home that she might
give her the blessedness of being with her child while life lasted
excited little comment. Indeed it was known to but few persons. Social
life in the capital city is an unstable thing. Congressional circles
change; army and navy people move away; there are the "ins" and the
"outs" with every administration; and fortunes rise and fall there as
elsewhere. Margaret found her world greatly narrowed when she came back
to Washington after years of absence. Besides, the few friends who were
closest to her had become accustomed now to expect the unusual. It is
the beauty of an unconventional life which keeps within the proprieties
that when one has made it definitely clear that she intends to follow
her own lead she finds herself by that act lifted above the realm of
harassing criticism.
Margaret had not felt it necessary to take even her own small world into
her confidence.
"We won't say anything to Maria about it," advised Mrs. Pennybacker.
"She wouldn't understand it, and besides, what Maria knows might just as
well be put in the evening papers. She gives of her knowledge without
stint."
The servants knew Mrs. Lesseur as a sick friend of Mrs. De
Jarnette's--Bess, as an unfortunate woman who had excited Margaret's
sympathies because of her friendless, widowed condition.
"That is enough for any young girl to know," said Mrs. Pennybacker, to
whom Margaret had told the whole story. "We'll tell Mr. Harcourt the
same."
Judge Kirtley was a little inclined to question the wisdom of Margaret's
burdening herself with a dying woman, but Mrs. Pennybacker had said to
him impressively, "Judge Kirtley, the time has come when you and I may
well 'put off the shoes from off our feet for the place whereon we stand
is holy ground.' The Lord is leading Margaret in ways we do not know."
And the Judge said no more. Watching the girl closely he halfway thought
it was true.
Two rooms in the third story where she could be quiet and have the
sunlight were prepared for Rosalie Lesseur. There she and a discreet
nurse were installed, and there she lay basking in the sunshine of her
child's presence and the knowledge that all was well. She had not even
questioned them about whose house she was entering. It was enough that
it was her Chamber of Peace.
It happened that the day after she was settled here Bess came into the
room with a big bunch of yellow daisies which she laid in Margaret's
lap.
"For 'Mrs. Osborne,' with Mr. Harcourt's compliments," she said, "'and
will she tell him what they recall to her?'"
"Give him 'Mrs. Osborne's' thanks," said Margaret, smiling at his
message, "and tell him they remind her strikingly of the black-eyed
Susans of South Haven."
From this Rosalie Lesseur naturally supposed that her benefactress was
Mrs. Osborne. She called her so once to the nurse, who had also seen the
flowers presented, and that judicious person, who was taciturn by nature
and prudent by profession, did not see fit to undeceive her. Perhaps
Mrs. De Jarnette had some reason for wishing to be known as Mrs.
Osborne. It was no part of her business to talk. And since Rosalie with
a trace of inherited Frenchiness always addressed Margaret as "Madam,"
or "lady,"--sometimes "sweet lady," "dear lady," her misapprehension in
regard to the name was never discovered.
Everything that could be done for the sick girl's comfort was done. The
child came in and out at will. He was a sweet, lovable boy, gentle like
his mother and easily led. When the two children were together, it was
always Philip that took the lead. Margaret took him often with her in
her visits to Elmhurst, thinking it was well for Philip to have
intercourse with other children. It added greatly to the happiness of
both, but Mammy Cely was never quite reconciled to the intimacy. "You
can't never tell nothin' 'bout these here pick-up chil'n," she would
say.
Rosalie was very responsive to kindness, never having had a surfeit of
it, and was so grateful for everything done for her that it was easy to
keep on doing. Margaret fell into the habit of being much with her,
reading to her, sitting beside her with her sewing, talking sometimes
but often simply giving her the comfort of her presence, and
receiving--ah, well! nobody can give of herself as Margaret gave and not
receive in return good measure pressed down and running over. Mrs.
Pennybacker, too, was kind and motherly. Her hand often rested on the
girl's forehead with the line on her lips unspoken--
"_She was so young, and then she had no mother._"
Bess and the little boy were the greatest friends and took long walks
together, often going to the Zoo, because the child, of course, was fond
of seeing the animals, and Bess was but another child. Mr. Harcourt
frequently accompanied them upon these tramps "to take care of the
children" he said. But with the responsibility of the little boy upon
her, Bess really seemed quite womanly, looking after him with a little
assumption of motherliness that was extremely pretty, John Harcourt used
to think. He watched her while she watched the animals.
In all these weeks there was never a reference to Rosalie's past.
"That page is turned, Rosalie," Margaret had told her one day when she
made some depreciating reference to herself. "Let us never speak of it
again." She said it with a gentle firmness that was final, and from that
hour Rosalie Lesseur looked at her with worshipful eyes. The creature
comforts with which she was surrounded, the material kindness which had
been showered upon her, the blessedness of again having her child in her
arms,--all these were enough to awaken deepest gratitude. But what could
be said of a magnanimity, a Christ-like compassion which blotted out her
transgressions and loved her freely? It is related of the great-hearted
nurse of the Crimea that the sick soldiers turned to kiss her shadow as
it passed. Rosalie could have fallen at Margaret's feet and kissed the
hem of her garment, but that she felt her unworthiness.
One afternoon they were sitting in her room, Mrs. Pennybacker and
Margaret doing the talking and the sick girl listening. She never talked
much herself, but she liked to hear them. She was feeling unusually
bright that day, and looked actually happy, for the conversation was
about Philip and Louis and the rapidly approaching Christmas. It almost
seemed that God's peace was settling upon her face.
"We will have a little Christmas-tree for Louis in here," Margaret was
saying. Just then a servant appeared at the door with a card.
"A lady to see Mrs. De Jarnette."
Margaret looked at the card.
"'Mrs. Mary S. Belden.' What in the world does she want, I wonder. You
are sure she asked for me?"
"Yes, madam, she distinctly said Mrs. De Jarnette."
"Tell her I will be down at once."
"Who is Mrs. Mary S. Belden?" asked Mrs. Pennybacker.
"A lady who is quite prominent here in club circles--women's clubs, I
mean. I used to know her slightly, but I haven't seen her since I've
been back."
"Oh, she probably wants to get you into some club. And, Margaret,
suppose you join. I think it would be very pleasant for you. It gives
one an interest outside her own life."
Mrs. Pennybacker had followed Margaret to the door. When she returned
Rosalie had slipped from the pillows, and was lying in a dead faint. The
nurse was hastily summoned and restoratives applied.
"Oh," she said faintly as consciousness came back, "if I could have gone
then!"
"It was only a sinking spell," the nurse said soothingly, adding to Mrs.
Pennybacker in an aside. "She is liable to have them at any time now."
"Well, what did Mrs. Mary S. Belden want?" It was in the library a half
hour later. "To secure you for her club?"
"No," said Margaret, "she came to tell me of a meeting to be held the
last of the week in the interest of some 'movement' or other and to see
if she could secure my co-operation."
"What movement?"
"Oh, I don't know. I declined so promptly that she had no chance to tell
me. I think I offended her, but I can't help it. I have no patience with
all these women's meetings."
Mrs. Pennybacker pursed her lips, but said nothing.
Everybody must have observed from his own experience that when a new
word or thought comes to us with sufficient force to make an impression,
we invariably run across that word or thought again within twenty-four
hours, and so often thereafter that the wonder arises how we could have
missed it all this time. Taking up a _Post_ the day after Mrs. Belden's
call, Margaret saw a notice of a meeting to be addressed by Mrs. Greuze
on a subject of great moment to women. Walking down F Street that
afternoon with Bess she overheard two well-dressed ladies discussing
it--at least she supposed it was that. One of them asked. "Are you going
to the meeting?"
"Yes," the other replied, "it was made very clear to us at the Pro Re
Nata that we ought to do whatever we could to help the movement along.
You see--" they had passed and Margaret missed the rest. Their
destination was a milliner's establishment,--their object a winter hat
for Bess.
The milliner's girl was trying it on her, and Bess perking her head this
way and that like a bird and turning it up, down, and around to find a
possible objection, listening meanwhile to an occasional suggestion from
Margaret and a succession of compliments from the saleswoman, when
Margaret's ear caught a fragment that floated to her from the other side
of the store.
"I do hope, ladies," the proprietor, a woman, was saying earnestly,
"that you will give it the support of your presence at least. The
movement is a most important one for women in trade. The present laws--"
"Margaret, how is this? Wouldn't you like this feather tipped a little
more?"
Margaret wanted to hear what it was about the laws, but when the
question of the feather was decided the ladies were gone.... How could
the suffrage movement help a milliner?
The thing pursued her even after she got home. Mrs. Kirtley came in
toward night for a call, and said in the course of the conversation,
"Margaret, do you know anything about this movement the women are
interesting themselves in so much just now? Mrs. Delamere was telling me
about it yesterday, but it was just as I was getting off the cars and
she hadn't time to explain it to me. She urged me to go to the meeting
to-morrow evening--said I would find out all about it then. Have you
heard anything about it?"
"Yes," said Margaret, with some hesitation, "I _have_ heard of it, but I
really don't know what it is. I have an idea that it is the suffrage
movement. Don't you think so?"
"_No_, indeed! Mrs. Delamere would have nothing to do with that, I am
sure, and she told me to drum up everybody I could. Are you going?"
"Yes, I think I shall. My curiosity is a little aroused now to see what
the movement really is."
Margaret was trying to recall something she heard Judge Kirtley say one
day about somebody--she was thinking it was the suffragists--prodding
the legislatures up to a change of defective laws. She gave a faint
sigh. If only they would spend their time and energies on laws affecting
flesh and blood instead of forever harping upon property rights and
suffrage!
She felt heavy-hearted to-day. Judge Kirtley had just told her that
there had been a postponement of the case. It was not likely to come to
trial for months yet. The docket was so full that it was impossible to
tell when her case would be reached. They could only be patient and
wait. She felt that she could not be patient any longer. Her heart was
sick with waiting. It would soon be Christmas and she could not even
have the child with her then. That was a sore spot. She had written to
Mr. De Jarnette, asking if Philip might not be allowed to come to her
house for the holidays. It did not seem to her that she could bear it to
spend that season which was so much to both of them without him. She had
planned that Philip and Louis should hang up their stockings side by
side in Rosalie's room, and in the evening have their Christmas tree
there.
Mr. De Jarnette had replied briefly but courteously that he was sorry
not to grant her request, but for reasons unnecessary to state, it
seemed best that Philip should spend the holidays at Elmhurst. He
trusted that she would feel at liberty to come to him there for the day
if she so desired.
She tore the letter into bits, furious at him for refusing her request
and at herself for making it. Why had she humiliated herself to ask a
favor at his hands? Oh, when would it all be over? she thought with a
sick longing for her boy. When would she be freed from this man's iron
hand? Her heart was sending up the old, old cry, "How long, O Lord! how
long!"
"Margaret," said Mrs. Pennybacker the night of the meeting, dropping a
lump of sugar into her coffee as she spoke, "I can tell you the straight
of this thing now. While I was over at Maria's this afternoon she had a
call from a Mrs. Slyter who had come to enlist her in it. I thought she
was on rather a cold trail, but I did not think it necessary to tell her
so."
"Mrs. Slyter?" exclaimed Margaret, wonderingly, "Why, Mrs. Slyter is a
society woman. Of what interest could it be to her?"
"I don't know, but it has certainly enlisted her."
"What did Mrs. Slyter have to say about it?"
"She says it is a concerted effort on the part of the women's clubs of
the District to have some radical changes made in the laws relating to
women. This lecture is to call attention to the necessity for such
changes."
"In other words, the speaker is going to tell the women what their
wrongs are. They can't have been very hard hit if they don't know
without being told," said Margaret, a little scornfully.
The fact that people of all sorts and conditions were taking an interest
in the gathering of the evening aroused Margaret's curiosity in regard
to it, and it cannot be denied that it inclined her to look upon a
woman's meeting with more toleration than she had ever supposed she
could feel. As Mrs. Pennybacker had said, they certainly must be in
earnest, and earnestness always commands respect even if the zeal it
induces is ill-judged. She would try to go with an unbiased mind.
But when they entered the hall and she saw a woman speaker on the
platform, her inherited conservatism asserted itself. It seemed a bold
thing for a woman to do. She felt that she was doing almost a
disreputable thing to come here. Her father would not have approved of
it, she was sure. He had always felt that home was the woman's kingdom.
She could almost hear him now saying:
"Queens you must always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your
husbands and your sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond,
which bows itself, and will forever bow, before the myrtle crown, and
the stainless scepter, of womanhood."
Even though the speaker was clothed in soft raiment and did not seem at
all masculine, she could not rid herself of the feeling that it was not
a womanly thing for her to be here on this platform. Ruskin was right
when he said:
"But alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at
majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest."
When Mrs. Greuze began to speak it was in no receptive mood that
Margaret listened, but rather in a spirit of impatient criticism. The
thing seemed so far apart from life.
After a while she found herself wondering with rather a curious interest
what the speaker would say next, but with no spark struck between them.
Mrs. Greuze was telling of the laws of the District in regard to married
women and their property rights, their inability to buy, to sell, and to
hold in their own right. Mrs. Pennybacker was listening intently.
"That is as true as Gospel!" she whispered in assent to some assertion
that struck her as specially forcible. "I've known a hundred cases in
Missouri where a woman's property was simply absorbed by her husband
when she was married and if she wanted five dollars to give to the
missionary cause in after years she had to go to him for it, and he
always thought he was making her a present of it!"
Margaret smiled with but languid interest. It might be that a man could
by law claim his wife's wages and get them; that a woman was not
entitled legally even to the clothes she wore;--that was all very hard,
but the world was full of hard things, and why should she burden herself
with other people's sorrows and wrongs when she was powerless to remedy
them? She had enough of her own.... What if women had not the right to
sue or be sued? This might be important in the abstract--to the people
who theorized--but it all seemed far away and irrelevant. These things
must touch very few people. She looked at her watch, thinking that
Philip had been in bed two hours now perhaps. She would charge Mammy
Cely to be very regular about his hours, and not let him--
"And if it is true that a woman has an inherent right to the money she
has earned, to the property she has inherited, to the home she has
labored with heart and hand to make, what shall we say of her right to
the child she has borne?"
Margaret sat up straight, with nerves and muscles tense. As a button
pressed a thousand miles away starts all the ponderous machinery, so had
this sentence been the electric spark to put her in instant touch with
the speaker and her subject. Heart, soul, and mind were alert now.
"And yet--there are laws in this District which impliedly deny that a
mother has an equal right with the father to those children. More than
this, there are laws which give that father a right to will away from
her her child. Nay, more even than that,--there are laws which give him
the power to will away her _unborn_ child! Do you say that our statutes
need no revision when this is where they place women in the closing
years of our vaunted nineteenth-century civilization?... You do not
believe that this is true? Study the laws. Find out for yourselves. Do
not take my word for it. But let me tell you in verification of my
statement that there is pending even now in the Courts of this District
just such a case. A father willed away his child from its mother, and
one court has sustained the will.... You have not known of this?... My
friend, that is because it has not touched you."
Margaret was staring at her with fascinated eyes. How had this woman
known? Was it her cause they were espousing? Was this the touch of
nature that made the whole world kin? She heard as in a dream Mrs.
Greuze's closing words.
"We do all honor in this land of ours to the brave men who have risked
their lives for their country; the soldier's claim to a nation's
gratitude is sung everywhere,--sometimes not over-modestly. In
Washington we talk of it not in empty words, but in marble, stone, and
bronze. We build our Soldiers' Home for the disabled veterans; we employ
armies of men for the disbursement of the millions we pour willingly at
their feet; when we can do no more we lay them to rest in our beautiful
city of the dead and deck their graves with laurel. Is this all? Nay, we
have made the Nation's capital a monumental city, raising memorials on
every hand 'lest we forget.' And we do well to honor them.
"But after all, how long does a battle last or a war, even though it be
a fratricidal conflict kept up until the flower of the land is cut down
and the rivers run red with blood? Not long. Not long as God counts
time. But oh, my friends, there is somewhere a brave woman fighting the
battle of maternity in every minute of time, and has been since the
world began, and they always _have_ met it and always _will_ meet it
gallantly and gladly. They have not marched into battle with the pomp
and panoply of war--with flags flying, drums beating, and the cheers of
comrades in their ears. Their fight has been single-handed, in the
stillness of the night watches and in the darkened chamber. But _never a
soldier among them but has known that she faced death_.
"And this great army of mothers all over the world, in all the ages past
and to come, ask no pensions, crave no honors, expect not even to have
written over their modest tombs, 'Here lies one who has fought a good
fight.' All they ask is the same rights to children, property, and
persons that their husbands and fathers have always enjoyed."
When the lecture was over Margaret went straight to the speaker.
"I am one the law has touched," she said. "Let me help."