MARGARET ENLISTS
The next day was the time for Margaret's visit to Philip. Not once in
all these months had she failed him. Not once had the dawn of that day
come without bringing first of all to her mind the thought, "To-day I
shall see him."
This morning, however, her waking thought was not of her child, but of
the cause which she longed so passionately to help. She had made an
engagement the night before to meet Mrs. Greuze at her rooms at ten. She
would postpone her visit to Elmhurst till afternoon.
"That's the way it goes," remarked Mrs. Pennybacker caustically as
Margaret, dressed for the street, announced this plan. "As soon as the
poison of public life gets into a woman's veins, it appears first of all
in her neglect of her children. At least that's what they say."
"I am not neglecting my child," Margaret declared indignantly. "I am
only trying to find out what I can do to help him. I never had Philip's
good more at heart than I have this minute."
"Oh, Margaret, you've got it--bad!"
But the girl was too much in earnest to respond to Mrs. Pennybacker's
bantering.
"You want to know what was the very beginning of the movement, you say?"
said Mrs. Greuze, as she and Margaret sat together in her well-appointed
rooms. "Well, if this ever grows to an oak, Mrs. De Jarnette, it will
have come from a very small acorn. The people who started it had not the
least idea of its ever reaching the proportions of a bill before
Congress, I assure you, for I was in at the start. You see, a few of us
last year undertook the study of civics as applied to local affairs. We
have found many laws inimical to women--laws of whose existence most of
those ladies had never dreamed."
"Judge Kirtley used to say to me," said Margaret, the remark coming back
to her with new force, "that people seldom know much about the laws
under which they live until they are touched by them."
"That's it exactly. We found laws in force here in this District that we
were amazed to know were in existence. That is to say, most of the women
knew nothing about them. A few whose lives or work had brought them into
contact with law knew. To the rest they were a revelation. Well, the
need of the revision of these laws was laid before the Federation of
Women's Clubs of the District, and they at once took it up. Our plan is
this: We want to get a bill through Congress to amend the laws of the
District of Columbia as to married women, to make parents (the mother
equally with the father), the natural guardians of their children, and
for other purposes of like character. We hope to have the bill
introduced early in the session. And then every woman in the City of
Washington who is interested in its success must go to work."
"How?" cried Margaret. "Tell me how. I am ready and anxious to work if I
only knew what to do."
"In the first place we have to make friends for this bill. Any woman who
has influence with any member of the Senate must use it now. I say
Senate because it is to be introduced there. It will go to the House
later. We want if possible to get personal pledges from every Senator
that he will vote for this bill when it comes up. Do you know anybody in
the Senate? Your case is so directly in point that it ought to make you
a powerful advocate."
"Yes, I have had a number of acquaintances in the Senate. My father was
thrown much with public men and was in the habit of having them
frequently at his home."
"Then certainly the position in which the present laws have placed his
orphaned daughter will appeal to them. Think up every one, my dear, that
you could possibly reach. This movement represents five thousand women
and to make it a success everybody that can do anything must go to
work."
"And these women are doing all this in order to secure a mother's right
to her child!" ejaculated Margaret, with a growing sense of her own
narrowness of vision.
"Why, bless you, no!" returned Mrs. Greuze. "That is only one item in
the bill that we shall present. You couldn't get a bill through on that
one point alone. People can't be depended upon to work unless their own
personal interests are concerned. It is a selfish world, my dear."
From Mrs. Greuze Margaret went straight to Mrs. Belden.
"I thought you did not understand," that lady said. "But now that you do
we will put our shoulders to the wheel together." There was inspiration
in the ring of her voice.
"Yes, as Mrs. Greuze has told you," she went on, "our plan is to canvass
the Senate thoroughly and systematically, not in any aggressive way that
would antagonize--we are not trying to exploit ourselves--but with a
quiet persistency that will secure the votes. I am sure you can be of
great service to us just here."
"Oh, I wish I could be!" cried Margaret.
"You see your case illustrates so perfectly the atrocious medieval
character of some of our laws. Your story will only have to be told to
furnish the argument. They cannot say to you as they have said to us,
'Oh, these laws are a dead letter.' In you, my child, we have a living
witness to the fact that they are _not_ a dead letter. Soon after the
Christmas recess I hope to have the pleasure of taking you with me to
call on Senator Southard, whom we are specially anxious to gain."
"I remember him," said Margaret. "I have heard my father speak of him."
"Yes. Perhaps other names will come to you in connection with your
father."
They did. For six years she had put the Senate, the House, and the whole
body politic out of view. They had all been obscured by one small child.
Now they suddenly assumed gigantic proportions. When she reached the
carriage her directions to the coachman surprised him.
"To the Capitol," she said.
An overwhelming desire was upon her to enter the Senate Chamber again
and look that august body over. Was there anybody there now that she
would know? Anybody that would know her?
As she went into the "ladies' gallery" a tourist in the front row with a
guidebook in her hand rose to go. Margaret slipped into the vacated seat
and leaned over the rail. It was the first time she had been there since
she used to come with her father. Then she always sat in the "reserved
gallery."
There were very few members present. A Senator from the West was making
a speech on irrigation to which nobody seemed to be paying any
attention, not even "Mr. President," whom he was so earnestly
apostrophizing. As Margaret looked at him more closely she perceived
that it was a man she had once met at Judge Kirtley's. She distinctly
remembered the occasion and Judge Kirtley's saying of him afterwards
that he was a "fair-minded" man. It had seemed to her then faint
praise,--now fair-mindedness seemed a cardinal virtue in a Senator.
Perhaps she could reach him through Judge Kirtley.... And there was
Senator Vest, of Missouri. Why, was it possible that he was still here?
She remembered his coming to her father's house when she was a young
girl--oh, so many years ago! He was one of her father's friends. She had
heard him tell often of Senator Vest's eulogy of the dog which by its
touching eloquence brought instantly a verdict against its slayer. And
there on the other side was Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, who had once
written a plea from the birds to be presented to the legislature asking
protection. Surely if the hearts of these men were open to dumb animals
and the fowls of the air, they would not be shut to a mother's cry!
Finally the Senator who felt that in storage reservoirs for the western
waters lay the safety of the country, sat down, gathered up his papers,
and looked around blankly at the empty seats, chastened, perhaps, but
without doubt reflecting that his great effort would reach the eyes of
his constituents even though the ears of his colleagues had failed him.
And now a new man was on the floor. The comatose Senate seemed suddenly
to have regained consciousness. People leaned over the railings and
craned their necks to see what was happening below. The Senators were
dropping in from every quarter. Employees were lining up around the
room. The mysterious button which announces a speaker worth hearing or a
question of moment had evidently been pressed. So far as Margaret was
concerned, neither the man nor the measure was of the least importance.
The subject might have been the condition of Boribooligha for all she
could tell about it. To her it was an occasion to look into the faces of
men who had power to change a law, nothing more. The Senate is not
subject to the fluctuations of the House. As she looked down upon them
she was surprised to see how many she knew, and every familiar face gave
her an added sense of potentiality. If only she knew how to begin!
As she passed through the corridor going home she ran into a florid
little man apparently hurrying to reach the chamber before the speech
was ended.
"I beg your pardon, madam! I didn't observe--why, bless my soul! Isn't
this little Maggie Varnum?" He had her by the hand. "My old friend's
daughter!"
"Senator Dalgleish!" cried Margaret with such genuine delight that the
little man beamed, Senator though he was. It is very charming for rotund
middle age to find itself a source of pleasure to youthful grace and
beauty. "How glad I am to see you again!"
"It has been a long, long time, has it not?--time for many things to
happen." He sobered suddenly. "Your dear father--yes, yes! Well, it
comes to us all." Then cheerfully, "You keep your girlish looks. Let
me--see. You--are married?"
"Yes," Margaret said slowly,--"and widowed."
"Ah, very sad! very sad indeed!" The Senator shook his head several
times, at a loss for appropriate words. These chance meetings after
years develop such uncomfortable topics.
"Is Mrs. Dalgleish with you?" Margaret made no bid for his sympathy.
"No. She will be up after the holiday recess. In the meantime I am
playing bachelor at the Raleigh. Don't like it either. There's nothing
like home for an old fellow like me."
"Come out and dine with me to-morrow night," suggested Margaret, with a
sudden inspiration. "I will give you a home-dinner and an old-fashioned
Varnum welcome."
"Good! I'll do it. Seven, you say? All right. And the place?"
Margaret handed him her card. As she left him he looked at it. "H--m ...
De Jarnette. Queer name. Seems as if I had heard it before. De
Jarnette.... Well, by George, she's a mighty handsome widow!"
* * * * *
"To the B. and O., ma'am?"
Margaret glanced at her watch. "No,--home. It is too late now for
Elmhurst."
In the carriage she leaned back, thinking not so much of Philip and his
disappointment as of this chance meeting and the opportunity it threw in
her way. It was better to have found this man than to have seen Philip.
She was launched now, actually launched, and that almost without
intention. The Fates certainly had favored her. With Senator Dalgleish
at her own fireside, anxious to hear the story of her life and how she
had fared, it ought not to be hard to enlist his sympathies. He was
always a warm-hearted little man. It was a distinct advantage to be able
to tell that story in her own home when he had been a guest at her
board.... And if this should prove advantageous with one--
Her course seemed opening up before her. She leaned back in the carriage
bowling up Massachusetts Avenue and deliberately counted her assets. She
had a beautiful home and means to open it whenever there was anything to
gain by doing so--she was opening it to-morrow for a distinct purpose.
Then she had social position, or at least she _had_ had, and that of a
kind that would make its recovery an easy thing--Marie Van Dorn had been
right about that. Well, social standing and wealth were good things, but
they were not all, nor were they the things she chiefly relied upon. She
had discovered that day in looking the Senate over that she was the
possessor of a number of inherited friendships with those who sat in the
seats of the mighty--her father used to say that elderly people liked to
be sought out by their old friends' children. Well! she would seek them
out. Those old friendships might stand her now in good stead. It was the
first time she had ever deliberately appraised her father's friends as
being likely to be worth so much and so much to her--but--it was a good
cause.... Then she had youth and beauty--she told herself this as coolly
and impersonally as if she had been reckoning up the points of a
rival--and neither was to be ignored. She had enough worldly wisdom to
know that.
She did not say to herself, as she might have said, that in addition to
and far beyond these was another possession--that impalpable, intangible
something which for want of a better name we call personal
magnetism--that subtle power which attracts and holds, which persuades,
convinces, enlists, kindles enthusiasm from its own flame, and
communicates life by the sheer force of its vital touch.
As she looked over her armory, her courage rose. They were a woman's
weapons, but they were not to be despised. Her spirit was girding itself
for the conflict. There was a positive sense of exhilaration in the
thought of action.