MRS. PENNYBACKER TALKS
In Senator Southard's committee-room Mrs. Pennybacker found herself
surrounded with earnest women pleading for the weak and helpless of
their own sex, and life seemed suddenly to have widened out into a great
and noble thing. She drew long breaths as one does in stepping from the
confined atmosphere of a close room into the pure free air of heaven. It
was glorious to be alive and to have a part in a work like this. She
thanked God that she would be permitted to add her mite to the efforts
making up the sum total of this movement for the betterment of woman's
estate. She saw her duty now and was ready to do it. If opportunity
offered she would no longer shrink back from saying her word.
Opportunity did not offer until late in the interview,--after women's
property rights and business rights had all been disposed of. She had
said to Mrs. Greuze when that lady had urged her to take some part in
the discussion, "I couldn't help you a particle until it comes to the
item of joint guardianship. I don't know anything about those other
questions. But I have some views on maternal rights, and maybe I could
make them understood."
"That is exactly what we want you to talk about," said Mrs. Greuze.
"These other women who have studied up the subject can attend to the
first part of the bill, but when it comes to a mother's rights I know
you could say something to the point and that it would be put in a
telling way."
It is an insidious kind of flattery. Even Mrs. Pennybacker was not proof
against it. As they made their way through the corridors leading from
the Rotunda to the committee-room she was figuratively girding up her
loins.
When the delegation filed into his committee-room Senator Southard felt
glad that it was here he was to receive them. He was the kind of man
that relies upon office furniture and green covered table for moral
support in an encounter with the opposite sex. These things impress
women (some women); and the flim-flameries of a drawing-room depress men
(some men). The consciousness that they had invaded his territory put
him at his ease. He listened attentively to the various arguments
advanced, putting in a word here and there, bowing assent frequently,
and nodding thoughtfully as a new train of thought was suggested. All
seemed to be going so well that Mrs. Pennybacker began to feel that her
word would be superfluous. But Mrs. Greuze who had had wider experience
in these things observed that the Senator had never once committed
himself. She even thought she could discover a little vein of
combativeness in his attitude.
A Mrs. Allaine had just finished a forcible plea for the right of women
to carry on business in their own names.
"Ladies," said the Senator, "I hope you will pardon me when I say that I
seriously question the expediency of a woman's ever entering upon a
business career."
"We are not here, Senator," Mrs. Allaine replied quickly, "to argue a
question of expediency, but of right. You will not deny that it should
be lawful for a woman to earn her bread in any honest way, even if it be
not expedient."
The Senator fell back upon platitudes. "Man is the natural
bread-winner," he asserted with a trace--just a trace--of patronage. "It
is the privilege of the strong to provide for the weak."
"In these days of late marriages," retorted Mrs. Allaine with a laugh,
"men seem rather reluctant to claim their privileges. And in the
meantime a woman must provide for herself and those dependent upon her
or go to the wall. Suppose such a woman should ask you to show cause why
she should not do it in her own way, what would you tell her? Or
supposing even that it is not a question of support. She has a life on
her hands which must be filled with something. What would you advise her
to turn to?"
The Senator was not ready with his answer to this question, and a small
lady with very bright black eyes occupied his time.
"George William Curtis says tell her that God has given her the nursery,
the ball-room, and the opera; and that, if these fail, he has graciously
provided the kitchen, the washtub, and the needle."
The Senator emerged from the laugh that followed, not to answer the
question put to him but to say, "I am not yet convinced, ladies, that it
is the wish of the majority of the women of this District that this bill
should become a law."
"Our delegation represents five thousand women," protested Mrs. Allaine.
"I will admit that this is a large and representative delegation," said
the Senator, with a complimentary wave of his hand, "but even five
thousand is a small part of the women of the District. Where are the
ninety and nine that do not come forward?"
"Many of them, Senator, are too ignorant to realize their own wrongs or
to know that there is any redress for them. It is because of that very
ignorance and helplessness that we are here to plead for them."
"And yet it is true, as Senator Southard says," said Mrs. Greuze, "and
we may as well admit it, that too many women are apathetic about these
things. I was once myself. I say it with shame and confusion of face,
for I see things very differently now; but I had always had all the
rights I wanted and did not know how many people there were in the world
who were not so fortunate as I. One third of the women don't know that
these things exist, because they have never been touched by them, and
another third don't care. It is left for a very small remnant--not a
third, though they will be a third some day--who both know and care, to
straighten things out."
"That is true," corroborated Mrs. Pennybacker, who had as yet taken no
part in the discussion. "I went by for a lady to-day to come over here
with us and she declined promptly. Said she had more important work at
home. She illustrates one class of women who--"
"And a very important class, let me say," interposed the Senator,
promptly associating all the womanly virtues with her who stayed at
home, especially with her who stayed away from the committee-room--"a
class which, it is to be hoped for the good of the nation, will never
grow smaller or less powerful. I trust you will pardon my plainness,
ladies,--I am a plain man and must talk to you to-day as one man talks
to another--"
"Or as a man may always safely talk to earnest women," said Mrs. Greuze.
The Senator bowed.
"It is to this class, I was going to say, rather than to those who go
outside the sacred precincts of the home, striving to stir up antagonism
between the sexes, seeking even as your honorable body is doing to-day,
to--to--"
"To secure a mother's right to her children," prompted Mrs. Pennybacker.
The Senator frowned slightly.
"--seeking to influence legislation, I was going to remark. It is to
such noble women, content to immolate themselves upon the altar of
sacrifice for their little ones--to find their broadest field of
endeavor within the sanctuary of home--"
Mrs. Pennybacker was regarding the Senator with marked attention. Had he
known her better he might not have considered this cause for unmixed
felicitation. As it was, he felt the subtle flattery of her deferential
hanging upon his every word, and, stimulated by it, soared higher.
"Ah, ladies, I cannot refrain from expressing the belief that it is to
such noble women that we must look for the regeneration of the race.
They are doing a great work--as somebody remarked--I cannot at this
moment recall exactly who it was that said it--but--"
"If you were going to say that they were doing a great work and could
not come down," remarked the small woman with the bright eyes who had a
satirical look of having heard this before, "it was Nehemiah, and he
said it to Sanballat."
"Yes, yes," said the Senator, who was a trifle weak in the Hebrew
prophets,--"that's it exactly. 'They are doing a great work, so that
they cannot come down.' That is what these noble women who stay at home
are doing--"
"Ye-es," observed Mrs. Pennybacker, reflectively. "This one was having a
dog party to-day and eight other noble women who couldn't come down were
going to take their dogs to it."
This punctured the Senator's oratorical balloon so sharply that it came
to earth with a thump, leaving him not even a parachute to hang to. And
while it was in collapse, Mrs. Pennybacker, whose tongue no longer clave
to the roof of her mouth, took the opportunity to remark:
"It is dangerous to generalize, Senator Southard, unless you have a good
deal of data. I have observed that not all of the women who stay away
from public gatherings and committee meetings do so because of their
devotion to their children. Some of them haven't any children and
_won't_ have. They can't take time from their pleasures to be bothered
with babies. Or they are not willing to give up the apartment house,
where they can have every comfort, every luxury,--except children. Some
of them substitute dogs, and give dog parties.
"But the women we are talking about, Senator Southard," she went on
earnestly, "are not of that kind. They are the women who _have_
children, and want to establish their legal right to them. The mother
part of this bill is the one I am talking for. It may be that a married
woman _has_ no right to her own property--though I will confess that it
beats me to see why; it may be that she should _not_ have the right to
buy, sell, or convey property. (So far as that is concerned, a good many
married _men_ ought not to have that right, having such poor business
judgment that their wives should have been appointed their guardians
from the start.) And I am not at all sure but I should agree with you
that it is not expedient for women to carry on business--I think a good
deal may be said on both sides of that question. (You needn't look at me
that way, Mrs. Allaine. I _said_ expedient. Of course it should be
lawful.) No, there is room for an honest difference of opinion on all
these points, but when it comes to the question of a mother having an
equal right with the father to the child she has borne, I cannot see how
there can be two opinions there. To my mind the question of joint
guardianship is the pith of this bill. It touches women at their
tenderest point,--and it touches them every one."
Mrs. Greuze nodded slightly to a lady across the room. This was going
all right. She motioned with one eye to the Senator, who was listening
with respectful attention. It had been a little more respectful,
perhaps, since Mrs. Pennybacker had agreed with him as to the
inexpediency of a woman's going into business. We are all human--even
Senators. Mrs. Pennybacker had lost herself in her subject. These things
had been seething in her soul since the night Margaret came to her, a
fugitive. Now that her tongue was loosed she was glad, more than glad to
give them utterance.
"Think of a mother having to stand and plead for a legal right to the
child she has borne," she went on, moving her chair a little nearer to
the Senator. "When you come right down to it, who has a right that
approaches hers? Leaving out of account all sentiment, all thought of
the price she has paid for ownership in her offspring, and looking at it
in a purely practical way, who has a right that can be better
substantiated? Who is it that risks her life every time there is a child
born into the world? _The mother._ Who is it that the Almighty has
fitted to take care of those children? _The mother._ Who is it that
keeps the family together? _The mother._ When a man dies and leaves a
lot of helpless little ones, what does a woman do? Give those children
away to this one and that--anybody that can be induced by love or money
to take them? Ah, no! She gets out her sewing machine or her washtub and
goes to work. She doesn't know any other way. She doesn't want any other
way. It may be but a poor little shack that she has to keep them in--it
hasn't any of the luxuries of the apartment house--but it has the
children. And it is a home. And _she makes it_. In nine cases out of ten
she doesn't ask any help about it either. It is often pretty short
commons with them. She gives them meat when she can get it, and
bean-soup and encouragement when she can't. But ten chances to one she
will make men and women of them. The most worthless men in a community
are not widow's sons as a rule. Did you ever think of that, Senator
Southard?"
The Senator nodded reflectively. He had often thought of it. This was a
hobby. He was a widow's son himself as it happened, and had been reared
in just such a school, though he was leagues and leagues away from it
now. There rose before him the little bowed mother in black who had
struggled for him at her machine. His eyes softened as he thought of it.
"Sometimes," continued Mrs. Pennybacker, "she is a grade beyond the
wash-tub and the scrubbing brush. What does she do then? Brushes the
cobwebs off the little acquirements the public school or the 'Ladies'
Seminary' gave her years ago, and finds a place to teach; or scrapes
together enough money to buy a type-writer, and goes to work. She may
have to be away from them through the day, but you never hear of her
making that an excuse for foisting her children on somebody else. She
makes some shift--gets somebody to stay with them while she is gone, or
does something--and _she keeps them together_.
"By the way, Senator Southard, speaking of scanty equipment, do you know
of anything crueler than thrusting a woman out into the world to fight
for herself and her fatherless children with no weapons but a needle's
point and a broom-stick? It is getting better all the time, I will
admit, but education in my day was like teaching a boy to swim and a
girl to wade, and then taking them out into deep water and shoving them
both overboard. Of course the boy can strike out. It was intended that
he should. Deep water helps him. But the girl--Beg pardon? The girl, you
think, generally shoves herself out in these days? Not always. Often the
swimmer who is bearing her and her little ones up goes down. Death
doesn't care anything about sex. And I have never noticed that he
enquires even whether a man can be spared, or how many are dependant
upon him. He just sends a big wave over him and down he goes. Then, of
course, the woman who has been carried along before this has to strike
out with one hand while she holds the children up with the other. Often
she can't do more than 'tread water' until the oldest boy is able to
swim."
And again the Senator's mind went back to the brave little mother in
black "treading water"--that was about what it was--she could hardly
keep their heads above the waves. He looked up at the ceiling with eyes
that did not see the frescoing. They were filled with a vision of the
little unpainted house, the hollyhocks, the kitchen fire around which
they had all crowded (she would not let one of them go)--the scanty
table--the patched knees. And she had never lived to see him here!
"I wonder they any of them reach the shore," Mrs. Pennybacker was saying
when he came back to the committee-room, "I don't believe many of them
would if it were not for the touch of little hands. They would give up
and go under. But the very thing that you would think would drag them
down is what buoys them up. With a child's hand clinging to her hand,
and a child's looking into hers, the way they look up into a mother's
eyes, a woman's _got_ to struggle. She can't help it any more than she
can help breathing."
"It is the parent's instinct, I suppose," said the Senator,
thoughtfully.
"I don't know. It doesn't seem to be the male parent's instinct. His
first motion generally is to disencumber himself. A _man_ can give his
children away and not half try."
Mrs. Pennybacker had been borne along by her interest in the subject and
its entirely familiar aspect, forgetting her companions and everything
else but the Senator she wanted to convince. The other ladies
telegraphed approbation to one another as she proceeded. But when she
thus began to turn the other side of the shield, for some reason glances
of disapproval and slight frowns began to pass among them. One of them,
leaning forward to lay something on the table, adopted the feminine
expedient of touching Mrs. Pennybacker's foot significantly. That lady
turned and looked at her with the obtuseness of a man at his own
dinner-table, and then proceeded:
"What does a man do when his wife dies and leaves him with a family of
children? Keep them together as she does? No, indeed! He knows he can't
and I am not saying that he can, for little children and the care of
them belong rightfully and naturally to women, and that is why we are
trying to have this law changed so as to give her a legal as well as a
natural right to them.... What does he do? Why, he gives them away to
anybody that will take them. It doesn't hurt him in the least,
apparently, to see them scattered to the four winds of heaven. Or--and
this is what he does oftener than anything else--"
There was now marked consternation in the faces of the ladies behind
her, for they knew as well as she did what men do oftener than anything
else.
"Oftener than any other way he looks around for some girl--usually the
youngest he can find that will have him--somebody, of course, that
doesn't know one thing about children--he isn't thinking about that--and
marries her, just as soon as decency allows, and sometimes sooner."
"Well!... She has done it now!" whispered Mrs. Greuze to the black-eyed
lady who was acquainted with Sanballat and Nehemiah.
Mrs. Pennybacker noticed a peculiar look on the Senator's face, whether
of amusement, embarrassment, or offence she could not tell, and was made
dimly conscious by a glance at her companions that something was wrong,
but she had thought of a story that she wanted to tell and was not to be
suppressed.
"Why, Senator Southard, I actually heard a Judge in the Supreme Court of
this District defend that atrocious law of Charles II by which a man has
the right to will his children away from the mother, on the ground that
women were likely to marry again! _Women_ likely to marry again! Will
you think of that? I wanted to rise up in court and say to him what I
said to a man who was trying to prove to me one day that more men died
than women. 'Just look at the great number of widows on South Street,'
he said, 'and compare them with the small number of widowers.' 'Heavens
and earth!' I said, 'that isn't owing to any undue mortality among the
men. It is because they won't remain widowers!'"
The Senator laughed a little constrainedly, saying that he guessed they
couldn't deny the soft impeachment, but that their defense was in the
attractiveness of the other sex. Mrs. Greuze put in a graceful word
which had the effect to switch the conversation gently to another track
without perceptible jar, and the conference was soon at an end.
Out in the corridor with the door of the committee-room safely closed,
they gathered excitedly around Mrs. Pennybacker.
"Well! What is it? What have I done?" she demanded.
"Oh!" groaned Mrs. Greuze, "you've killed us _dead_! We'll never recover
from this. Don't you know that is exactly what he did? Married a girl
younger than his daughter--and in less than a year!"
Mrs. Pennybacker's jaw dropped.
"I ought not to have come," she said. "I told you I would be sure to say
something! You ought not to have _let_ me come." Then her ever-present
sense of humor came to her relief. "Well, there's one comfort. It was
the truth! And he got it straight!"