One very hot morning early in July Mike Prim came up the staircase of
the National Bank Building. He stood for a moment in the hall, breathing
heavily from the exertion of bearing his great weight up the steps. He
took off his straw hat and mopped his red face. Then he glared at the
door of Judge Regis's office.
"That's the long-legged old devil's horse who's put the women up to all
this damnation!" he growled as he entered his own office and closed the
door.
He took off his coat, then his collar and tie, flung them with his hat
on a chair, and sat down to his desk. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs and
rolled up his sleeves. He placed his elbows on the desk and his enormous
folded chin in his two hands. So he sat, a monstrous figure, with his
great paunch filling his white shirt like a concealed balloon, with his
hideously hairy arms naked halfway, and his thick hands purple beneath
the weight of his amorphously fat face, his little reptilian eyes
staring at the opposite wall.
He was at his wits' end. He was not making good at his business, and he
knew it. What was worse, everybody else knew it. He had had few callers
of late. Campaign collections had dwindled to almost nothing. They were
getting bold in their refusals to contribute at all. "Why didn't he do
something?" "What were they paying him for if it was not to do
something?" "Was he going to let a set of fanatical women down him and
take things in their own hands?" These were some of the questions they
asked him which he could not answer satisfactorily. In vain he advised
patience, and even more vainly he vowed he could and would stop the
women's damphulishness at the proper time. They did not believe him;
they pointed out that business had already stopped. From being the one
who threatened, he had become the one who cajoled, while every man who
came in offered him veiled threats instead of dollars.
He was furious, and he was obliged to conceal his fury. He hated these
rebellious men even more than he hated the upstart women. He was
determined, if the opportunity offered, to be revenged upon them for
their insolence. But how? This was the matter he revolved in his
snake-licking mind as he stared at the wall, and he was in a hurry to
reach a solution of his difficulty. Stark Coleman had called him before
he was out of bed that morning to say that there had been a citizens'
meeting the night before, and that he, Coleman, would be up to see him
at ten o'clock. In the first place, why had he not been notified of the
citizens' meeting. He usually presided on these occasions when the
tutelary deities of Jordantown gathered in Coleman's office, or more
frequently in his own office, to discuss the ways and means by which the
principles of the Democratic party could be made to contribute most
liberally to the liberty of man, especially in Jordantown. In the second
place, the tone of Coleman's voice was cool, offensively so. He detected
a note of command in it. Suppose Coleman should be coming up to inform
him of certain changes in the policy which would govern the
manifestations of the democratic principle? In short, suppose he was
about to be dismissed from his office? True, it was an office without a
name, but it had been a lucrative position.
There was a knock upon the door. He flung himself back, looked hastily
at his watch and saw that it was barely nine o'clock. Coleman must be
anxious, he thought, to keep an appointment in such a hurry, which was a
good sign.
"Come in!" he shouted, whirling around on his swivel chair to face the
door.
It opened with a quick inward thrust and Susan Walton walked in. She
carried her everlasting little black reticule in one hand, and in the
other she held--of all things in this world--an empty brown-linen
laundry bag, swinging by the strings!
"Good morning, Mr. Prim!" she said, looking at him pleasantly over the
top of her spectacles, as if it was the most natural thing for her to
drop in informally.
He was too amazed to return her salutation. He stared at her, then he
bowed his thick neck and stared at the flabby bag. He did not even offer
her a seat, but she was in no way disconcerted by that. She chose a
chair, drew it up in front of him, sat down, and crumpled the bag up in
her lap.
"I came to see you on a matter of business, Mr. Prim," she said, coming
briskly to the point. "I suppose you've been expecting me?"
"No," he managed to say.
"I'd given you credit then for more sense than you seem to have, for I'm
the only hope you have now."
She said that in tones of conviction.
"You are the last person in the world I'd look upon as a--hope!" he
returned slowly, widening his lips into a grin which was also a sneer.
"You are at the end of your rope. You've been so for a month. You can't
squeeze another dollar out of this town for your campaign fund. The men
have lost confidence in you."
"How'd you come by so much useful information?" he interrupted.
"I have it. That's the point. You'll never dare announce yourself a
candidate for representative. You gave that up three months ago."
"What makes you think so?" he asked, fixing his eyes upon her face with
deep reptilian concentration.
"I don't think, I know it. You went on with your collections for
private, personal reasons. But you did not deposit a single dollar of it
in this bank, and you knew from the day Sarah Mosely's will was read up
here in Judge Regis's office that you did not have a ghost of a chance
to be elected, and you made up your mind that day not to run."
"Your powers of penetration are well known, Madam, but again I must ask
you how you have penetrated so far into my secret thoughts, granting of
course for the sake of argument that you have done so?" he said, now in
complete possession of his faculties, and coolly on guard.
"I saw you listening at Judge Regis's office door the day the will was
read, and the day we first discussed our plans for winning equal
suffrage for women in this country. You are the only man in it who has
known positively from the first that we can do it!" she answered, and
showed her nerve by keeping her gaze fixed imperturbably upon him.
He bent forward, his face slowly purpling with rage, his fists clenched,
his upper lip skinned back from his teeth as he hissed: "You are a--you
did not see me!"
"I didn't see you, that's a fact, but I saw your shadow in the
ground-glass door, cast by the light from the window at the end of the
hall. Nobody could mistake it for any other shape who'd ever seen you,
Mike Prim!"
They sat for the briefest moment measuring each other, he with
incredible ferocity, and Susan with her lips primped, grimly fearless.
"Now that we understand each other, let's get down to business!" she
began.
"To business?" he snarled.
"Yes, this is the situation: you can't run for the legislature; you
don't want to! You have squeezed every dollar you can get out of the
Democrats here." She sniffed at the word. "They have lost confidence in
you as manager of their political ends. They've begun to suspect your
game. It's only a question of hours, I might say of one hour, before you
get your walking papers, so to speak; for they are mad, Mike Prim. They
are as angry as men always are when they realize that they've been duped
and robbed----"
"If you were not a woman you couldn't sit there and say such things to
me. Anyhow, I won't stand it! What's your business, as you call it?" he
exclaimed, heaving his huge bulk from the chair and coming to his feet.
"Sit down! Sit down, Mr. Prim. I am here to make you a definite
proposition!"
"Make it!" he growled, still standing, his feet wide apart, glowering
down at her.
"The Co-Citizens' Foundation is prepared to purchase your papers----"
"My papers?"
"Yes, your letters, your political correspondence."
"Think they are valuable?"
"We can get on without them, but we are willing to pay a reasonable
price for them. We know that they are valuable to a certain extent."
"How?"
"You remember your conversation with Stark Coleman the day you
threatened him with certain letters you had of his and of other
prominent citizens here. Miss Adams heard what you said on that
occasion."
"So she's added eavesdropping to her other accomplishments?" he
exclaimed venomously.
"Not eavesdropping, but Coleman left the door slightly ajar; she had
come back up here to get some papers from Judge Regis, and, hearing such
interesting conversation going on, naturally she listened. What will you
take for these letters?" she demanded.
"I'd have to think about it," he said, sitting down.
"I'll buy them now or not at all'" she said.
"Aim to publish them?" he asked, grinning. He was beginning to be in a
very good humour.
"That's our affair, but I don't mind telling you that we do not intend
to publish them."
"And if I refuse?" he held out.
"In that case you must abide by the consequences, you and the men who
wrote the letters. We shall publish all we know about them, what you
yourself claimed for them, and leave the next grand jury to make the
proper investigations."
"Humph!"
"Naturally we should try to see to it that you did not escape," she
added.
"What will you pay for them?" he demanded.
"Five hundred dollars for every scrap of paper in this desk, and
immunity for you--for turning state's evidence you know!"
"They are worth more than that," he said, taking no notice of the
insult.
They bargained back and forth. Prim was really in a hurry to close the
trade. He wished to be able to handle Coleman when he came in. It was
five minutes to ten o'clock when they finally closed the deal.
"But I can't take a check," he objected suddenly.
"I thought as much. I've brought the money. A thousand dollars is too
much. This bag isn't half full!" she exclaimed, shaking it down, drawing
up the strings, and looking at it. Then she counted out the bills on the
desk, every drawer of which was now empty.
Some one came up the stairs and walked briskly forward in the hall
outside.
Prim had barely time to snatch the fluttering green and yellow bills
before Stark Coleman entered the room, without the ceremony of knocking.
It would be difficult to say which showed the greater surprise at seeing
the other, he or Susan Walton, tightly clutching her bulging laundry
bag.
"Good morning, Mr. Coleman," she said, waddling rapidly toward the door.
"Good morning, Madam!" he returned.
"Fine large day!" She said this from the door as she went out.
Coleman turned angrily to Prim, who was standing reared back, feet wide
apart, hands in his pockets, grinning broadly.
"What's she doing in here?" he demanded.
"Wanted me to help the cause!" he answered shamelessly.
"What'd she have in that bag?"
"Dirty linen--wash day. Taking it to the Co-Citizens' Laundry!"
"Didn't know they had one."
"Yes, they have. She's soliciting patronage!"
"Well, I'll be damned! You don't mean to tell me that woman was up here
to get----"
"My soiled office linen," Prim obligingly finished. "She was, and I let
her have every scrap of it," he answered symbolically.
He turned, seized his collar and tie, and reached for the button at the
back of his neck.
"Look here, Mike, things aren't going right in this town," Coleman
began, having lighted a fresh cigar without offering one to Prim, who
went on adjusting his collar. "We had a meeting last night and the
general opinion was that you are not holding the situation down as we
expected you would."
When there was no reply from Prim, who was holding his head back and
struggling to make ends meet over his front collar button, he went on:
"We don't blame you, but the fact is we want to make a change."
"Good idea!" said Prim.
"Glad you feel that way. Knew you would, but the boys thought you might
be willing to dispose of the records and papers that have accumulated
here." Coleman looked up and caught Prim's eye fixed upon him. "They're
of no value to you. And we are prepared to offer you, well, more than
they are worth. We----"
"Want my memoirs, do you?" laughed Prim, seizing his coat.
"That's it, for the archives, you know. How much will you take for
them?"
"I wouldn't sell them to you, Stark Coleman, for all the cash you could
rake and scrape out of your measly little old Co-Citizens' Bank!" he
answered, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his coat, hunching it
up on his shoulders, and making for the door.
Coleman could not believe his ears, and now he could not believe his
eyes. The man was actually leaving the room. He took the cigar from his
mouth, and lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.
"Hold on, Prim!"
"Hold on yourself if you can! I'm off! A henpecked town is no place for
a _man_!" he sneered, banging the door.
Coleman stood a moment stupefied. He heard Prim thundering downstairs.
Then suddenly he returned to his senses. He rushed to the desk, and
pulled out one drawer after another. Not a scrap of paper remained in a
single one of them.
"My God!" he groaned, burying his face in his hands. He had no doubt at
all as to the quality of the linen in Susan Walton's laundry bag.
Meanwhile Prim was standing on the platform of the vestibule train tying
his cravat. He had not taken the trouble to buy a ticket. He had
actually swung on board the train as it moved slowly out of the depot
along the track which ran directly behind the National Bank Building.
* * * * *
The Fourth of July fell on Saturday, the day wisely chosen by the
Women's Leagues for their mass meeting. Bills were posted advertising
this "historical event" far and wide in every post office, and country
store, in mills, gin houses, and at every crossroad in the county.
_Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting_
_Great Historical Event!_
_At Jordantown Hall, July 4th, 3:00 p. m._
_Speeches by Prominent Leaders of the Movement!_
_Announcement of Election Plans!_
_Everybody invited!_
If anything could have added to the crowds which gathered in Jordantown
every year on this day, these impudent circulars were calculated to do
it.
"Election plans! by gad!" exclaimed Squire Deal when he found one of the
obnoxious bills posted on the door of the little courtroom in Possum
Trot. "Who said there was going to be an election, I'd like to know.
Darndest piece of impudence I ever saw in my life!"
"Maybe they'll tell us what their rickrack political platform is, too!"
said another farmer.
Nevertheless, they all went to Jordantown on the appointed day. It was
their custom to go, and they were determined that this woman foolishness
should not interfere with their long-established habit of celebrating
the Fourth.
The sun rose blistering hot. Clouds of dust rolled above every highway
to the town, and out of it moved a long procession of vehicles, buggies,
wagons, even ox carts, all filled with men, women, and children.
Jordantown was doing its best to look glorious. It had thrown off for a
moment the lethargy of business depression. Flags waved, the Town Hall
was literally swathed in yellow bunting, with a great white canvas
stretched across the top of the doors, upon which was printed in black
letters a foot long:
_Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting!_
_3:00 p. m._
_Don't Miss It!_
The square teamed with life and glory. Mules brayed, horses neighed,
dogs yelped, man hailed his fellowman. Matrons in calico frocks and
sunbonnets walked side by side with their daughters in white muslin and
pink sashes, with gala hats on their young heads. The avenue was a sight
and a scandal. Strings ran across from house to house high above the
heads of the throng, upon which little yellow flags with "Votes for
Women" hung thick as waving goldenrod upon October hills, alternating
with the red, white, and blue larkspur of the national colours. The
Women's Cooeperative Store was a seething beehive of activity. There was
a cake and lemonade stand stretching across the entire front, where, for
the first time in the history of glorious Fourths, you got your lemonade
and gluttonous wedges of cake free of charge. This may or may not have
accounted for the fact that, as the day advanced, the avenue outdid the
square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by
means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top
of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd
yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally
a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his
breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd
went wild, threw its hats high in the air over this performance, then,
with the fickleness of its nature, it turned again toward the avenue and
the free lemonade dispensed by the fairest maidens in Jordantown. But
before the stream could turn the corner, a long-legged black pig greased
with the lard of its forbears was turned loose--to become the property
of any man who could catch and hold him. A wild scramble ensued. The pig
darted this way and that, slipped nimbly through detaining hands, until,
by much handling, his grease was rubbed off, and he was held, a
squealing trophy, by a young farmer. One after another the attractions
of the square failed, and the crowd surged into the avenue, where it was
fed to repletion--all free of charge. The stomach of man is singularly
elemental in its cravings, and not subject to political or any other
influence which fails to meet this demand.
Long before three o'clock in the afternoon the Town Hall was filled and
jammed to its doors with men and women. The farmers were in such high
good humour that, laying all masculine prejudice aside, they were
determined to witness the last feature of the day's entertainment, or
rather they would indulge in the humour of gratifying their masculine
prejudices at the mass meeting. They stamped their feet, they hooted,
they looked at the still empty stage and demanded to know where were the
leaders of the "Crinoline Campaign." They whispered and nudged each
other and shouted ribald laughter.
At ten minutes to three o'clock a line of women filed on the rostrum and
took their chairs at the back of it. They were the representatives of
the Co-Citizens' County Leagues. There were twenty-five of them, and
they ranged in age and dignity all the way from Granny White, who was
seventy, to the youngest bride from Apple Valley. Granny White looked
like a crooked letter of the female alphabet in a peroda waist frock
with a very full skirt, and a black silk sunbonnet upon her old palsied
head, which wagged incessantly. The bride wore her wedding dress, which
was now a trifle too tight for her. She looked like a pale young Madonna
scarcely able to bear the weighty honour which had been thrust upon her.
Some of the other women were enormously fat, some were pathetically
lean, but they all faced the jeering crowd below with amazing
assurance. They represented the harvest of all the virtues and sorrows
and sacrifices of women for centuries, and all unconsciously they showed
it with a calm accusing majesty.
The audience, which was largely composed of men, stared at them and grew
suddenly silent. They recognized their wives and mothers in those serene
faces, and manhood forbids that you should hoot at your own
blood-and-bone kin womenfolk. So they changed the subject. They began to
talk, a perfect hurricane of inconsequential comments on every
imaginable subject except the subject of women and their rights.
Promptly at three o'clock Judge Regis came through a side door upon the
rostrum, accompanied by Susan Walton and Selah Adams. The women took
their places in two empty chairs among those at the back; the Judge
approached the table in the middle of the rostrum, stood for a moment, a
tall and elegant figure, looking out over the sea of faces below him.
Then, lifting the gavel, he rapped for order.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began in slow, distinct tones, "I have the
honour and privilege of opening the most remarkable meeting ever held in
this county or state. We are about to make history, which is becoming
to this memorial day of American Independence. I shall not address you
upon the momentous issue at hand. Others far more capable will speak to
you presently on that. I shall only state the purpose of the meeting.
"We are assembled here to learn for the first time how the brave women
who have done such valiant work for the cause of suffrage in this county
have succeeded in their efforts beyond their most sanguine hopes----"
"Hear! Hear! Ha! ha! Oh, haw-haw, haw!" The wall shook with the
cannonade of masculine mirth.
The Judge waited patiently. Then he rapped loudly for order, and in the
lull he went on, not hurrying:
"--and to reveal to you the plans by which this county will have the
great distinction of being the first one in this or any other Southern
state to give the ballot to our women, who have proved by nearly three
hundred years of devotion and virtue and sacrifice for us and our
children their worthiness for this trust.
"The speakers of the afternoon are Miss Selah Adams and Mrs. Susan
Walton. I have the honour to introduce Miss Adams, who will address you
upon some general aspects of the question under discussion."
"Adams! Adams! Adams!" yelled the audience.
But before the Judge could retire or Selah could rise from her chair,
one of those incidents occurred which sometimes inform a public occasion
with humour and pathos. At this moment Colonel Marshall Adams entered
the hall. He had not heard Judge Regis's "opening remarks," but he had
spent an unusually glorious Fourth. He was magnificently befuddled, and
for the first time in three months he was the regnant intoxicated ideal
of what a gentleman and a soldier should be. He was a man among men,
equal to any emergency, capable of leading a forlorn hope, or entering
the lists for a lady's hand. He had forgotten, if he had ever known, the
object of this meeting; but when he heard his name loudly called, he
understood at once; he recalled the fact that he had something eloquent
and momentous to say.
He squared his shoulders, lifted his old standard-bearing presence, and
made for the rostrum. Before any one could stop him--if any one in the
roaring throng would have done so--he stood beside the table, one hand
resting heavily upon it, the other thrust into the tightly buttoned
breast of his yellow seersucker coat.
He was received with deafening applause. He waited, as he must have
waited long ago at the charge of his regiment when it climbed the
breastworks of the enemy in the roar of a thousand guns, his head erect,
his nostrils dilated, his eyes glistening--only slightly wavering upon
his Fourth of July legs.
"Ladies and gentlemen: It was with surprise not unmixed with pardonable
pride that I heard you calling my name upon this momentous occasion. But
never has Marshall Adams failed to listen to the call of his country in
dishtresh!" he cried, making a determined effort to control his
inebriated aitches and waving his sword arm defiantly.
"And we are in dire distress, my countrymen! Never since the
bloodstained days of eighteen shixty-five have we been in such need of
courage. We face a terrible situation. I addresh you in behalf of these
fair woman whom we shee before us, and who are about to suffer the
irreparable loss of their sphere. No greater calamity could befall this
great nation. For four long years, through the snows of winter and the
heat of summer, we fought for them, my countrymen, to preserve their
homes, their traditions, their honour and pride as the fairest flowers
in this fair land!" Deafening applause, during which the Colonel waited,
sanctified by his emotions; then waving his hand for silence, he went
on:
"And we did preserve them! The Yankees relieved us of the burden of a
few unprofitable slaves. They slew the best and the bravest of our men.
They took our wealth and reduced us to unimaginable poverty and
hardship. But, thank God, we saved our women! We returned to them
ragged, wounded, footsore, and despairing, and we found them faithful as
the stars in their courses. More inspiring than 'pillows' of fire by
night and of cloud by day, they led us back to hope and love and
prosperity. They were the trophies of the brave which no enemy could
wrest from us----"
"Oh Lord! listen to him! That thar's a man talkin' up thar!" shouted an
old veteran.
"--and we went on shaving 'em, gentlemen! There has never been another
country in the world reduced to ashes by war where the women were not
forced to work shoulder to shoulder with the men afterward to reclaim
her. But we treasured our women. We did the work, we kept them comely
and fine. We educated them when we could not educate ourselves. We
poured our wealth at their feet--and that's why they have the smallest
feet in America, gentlemen, the fairest skin, the softest palms."
There was a slight sniffing to be heard here among the farmers' wives,
but he went on to his conclusion:
"And now, my comrades, we must save them again; they are about to be
dragged from the shanctity of the home, from the altar of the fireside,
into the grime and dirt of publicity. There is a movement on foot to
thrust the ballot, gentlemen, into their unsteady hands! My God! My God!
where is your gallantry and courage? Where is your manhood that you
think of giving these gentle creatures your work to do, and lose what a
hundred to one Yankees could not take from you?"
He looked about him with terrific scorn.
"I did not think that I should ever again appear in their dear defence.
I'm an old man, my glory has departed. You shee before you--you
shee--before--you----"
He lifted his hand to his forehead as if suddenly he was dazed, sunken
into the dream of years. His knees bent, he would have fallen. Selah
sprang swiftly forward, placed his arm over her shoulder, and supported
him. He sank slowly into the chair she had just vacated. She made sure
swiftly from long experience that he had only reached the coma of a
familiar state. Then she went back to the front of the stage and began
to speak.
The Colonel looked up vaguely, saw her standing there as one remembers a
vision in a dream.
"That's it, Selah, my love! Give 'em 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,'"
he murmured, as his head sank upon his breast.
"You have listened to the brave speech of a brave gentleman, my
friends," she began, "and I would not if I could subtract one lovely
word from that lovely tribute to the men and women and order to which he
belongs. What he has said is the truth, raised to the eloquence of a
martial soul. Until the present time we women, as he told you, have
figured chiefly in religion, poetry, and romance. We have been that
part of the imaginations of men which creates creeds, poetry, windmills,
and fiction. We have no reputation for any other form of existence. We
have been purely imaginary beings living in physical bodies for just
men. Our character is a legend invented by men; it could never fit a
real human being. Yet we have accepted it, and tried to believe in it.
You have indeed kept us, but we have not lived at all except for you. We
are not the authors of a single standard governing our lives. Do you
understand what that means, you men who live only according to your own
will and purpose?"
They listened to her in silence. They studied her in amazement. But we
do not applaud an accusing angel, and they did not applaud Selah, who
stood so elegantly fair and tall, a slim figure with earnest dark eyes
bent in passionate appeal upon their faces.
"It was men," she went on, "who divided women into three great
classes--virgins, wives, and prostitutes, a purely physical
classification. You commanded chastity. We have never had the right to
choose it. Women have never been real parents. They are only the mothers
of the children of men. The small, almost negligible influence they
have over their sons proves that. After the years of childhood are
passed sons sustain only a sentimental relation to their mothers. They
are inspired by them merely as religion or poetry inspires. Your
institutions, social, moral, economic, and political, do not represent
us nor our needs. But they represent you men.
"Every civilization is a bachelor civilization, with good or bad
provision in it for the protection of women. But we do live, and like
other sentient beings we desire to express ourselves in life, not merely
in poetry. Listen, men," she said, bending sweetly forward like a lily
in the golden gloom. "After they had knowledge, the first pair, man and
woman, went out of the garden _together_! But you, with your beautiful
but mistaken chivalry, have gone out and left us in the garden, the
helpless, kept women of your love and desires. We wish to come out, to
be with you. We must come! Once we have tasted knowledge, once we know
what better things we are for, we must follow you to the ends of the
earth. This everlasting garden where you keep us is no place for a
thoughtful person. It is too limited by innocence and idleness. We are
no longer innocent, we know the same things you know; we have the same
education, the same thoughts, the same aspirations. Disobedience is not
always a sin. When the first man and woman tasted of the fruit of
knowledge, they simply assumed a terrific responsibility. But they
assumed it _together_! You are withholding from us this right to live by
your side. We are doing too much, or nothing at all. And you are not
sharing justly with us. We are losing our old places in your hearts.
After all, this is not the golden age of poetry and knights. The very
pedestal upon which we once stood in your regard has been overturned by
realities. We have ceased to be your ideals dearly cherished. It is not
our fault nor yours. No one is to blame. This movement of women is as
natural as any other growth. We are migrating out of the legendary into
the real; we are passing from sentiment and romance into history. And we
have arrived! Nothing can stop us. You only shame yourselves, your
manhood, and your honour if you oppose us. We must succeed because we
are right!"
She turned suddenly, and went back into the wings.
"What'd she say?" asked a man in a hoarse whisper. "Gol dern if I know!
Foreign language to me!"
"The volypuke of the Woman's Movement! Didn't understand one word she
said!"
"Well, you'll understand what's coming now or I'll eat my boots!" the
other whispered.
He nodded toward the stage, where Susan Walton stood, flat-footed, fat,
belligerent, her mouth primped, holding her head very much as if she
wore horns instead of the black bonnet tied under her chin. And she was
looking over the top of her spectacles at every man, seemingly straight
in the eye.
"Don't look at us that way, Susan! Makes us feel like we'd been in
washing without your permission!" called some one, imitating a little
boy's whine. There was a gale of good-natured laughter.
"Men and women," she began in her high virago voice, "we have listened
to two very fine speeches this afternoon, one upholding the
sentimentality of the past, the other mystically prophesying the
sentimentality of the future. I'm an apostate from the past, and a
disciple of the future. I've got one foot in the grave and the other
foot on the ballot for women. I shall not deal in sentiment or
prophecies, but in cold facts!"
"Told you we'd understand her, boys!" shouted a voice.
"Go it, Susan! we all know you, and we don't have to give you no
quarter!" yelled a bearded farmer standing in the back of the hall.
"Yes," screamed the old lady, shaking her fist at him, "and I know you,
Tim Cates. You've been living on your wife's land ever since you married
her. And you've made her mortgage it to pay your debts!"
"Git a chip somebody and take po' Tim out on it. She's done ruin't him!"
"Come ag'in, Susan! you drawed blood that time!" shouted the voice.
"I'm coming, and I've got the facts with me!" she cried, flirting her
head in the direction from which the voice came. "I know every man in
this hall: how he lives, how he votes, what he owes, what he can't or
don't pay. I know how hard you farmers work your wives, harder than you
do your beasts, in spite of all that fine talk we listened to from
Marshall Adams, and I know how little you give them, how little they are
allowed to spend. There's one of you standing in plain sight of me
right now who took the fancy bedquilts your wife and daughters pieced
last winter and sold them to get money to pay his taxes, though he is
worth five thousand dollars! You needn't dodge!" she laughed shrilly.
"I'll not call your name if you keep quiet and behave. But if you men
don't stop your fuss and listen to what I have to say, I'll tell
everything I know about you."
The titters of the women became distinctly audible for the first time in
the indignant silence which followed this threat, for they knew that she
was as good and could be even worse than her word.
"Three months ago Sarah Mosely died and willed all of her property to
the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, with the distinct command that the
interest on this fund shall be spent to get suffrage for women in Jordan
County," she began again. "The property of this Fund consists in
mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county, in the
ownership of most of the business houses around the square in
Jordantown, in various loans, in 60 per cent. of the stock of the
National Bank, and in other properties, including the _Signal_. That is
to say, gentlemen, if we do not own this county, we control enough of
the property in it to have a right to say how it shall be taxed and
governed. And while there is a law against bribing voters or
intimidating voters, there is no law against foreclosing these loans and
mortgages, nearly all of which are overdue. And I give you my word as
one of the trustees of this Fund, that every one of them shall be
foreclosed as fast as we can do it if our rights as citizens are not
acknowledged with all the privileges that go with citizenship!
"And that is not all! Day before yesterday we purchased from Mr. Mike
Prim the written records of the political workings of the Democratic
party in this county during the past three years--all the letters
written by you men who control the county districts with the money you
received or were to receive for your services, and other letters even
more interesting--but not a single statement of what you actually did
with these contributions. I have not had time to go over Mr. Prim's
memoirs carefully, but as near as I can make out it has been a
blood-sucking business. Some of you have paid as high as three hundred
dollars a year to the campaign fund, and some of you have received as
much as a thousand dollars for delivering this town, say, in an
election, while your wives pinched and scraped to pay the preachers and
support missions in foreign fields! The appropriations for county
schools have been bitten into with outrageous expense accounts which
took thousands of dollars from the already meagre appropriations.
"I say these papers and letters are now the property of the Co-Citizens'
Foundation; and if necessary we shall use them, spend your reputations
as ruthlessly and extravagantly for our ends as you have spent the taxes
of this county for your political purposes.
"The time has passed, men, when we are to be deceived by that foolish
fallacy by which you have so long even deceived yourselves: that women
win by their gentle influence over you. They don't! If they influence
you at all it is for your good, not theirs. We are in the position to
use the same lever that you have always had--power--and we shall use it.
If you defeat us, you must destroy yourselves, your credit, and your
reputation.
"You have been boasting at the impossibility of our even getting this
issue as far as the polls. You have been challenging us to tell you how
that can be done. That's what we are here for this afternoon: to tell
you, and to leave you perfectly free to act as your judgment directs."
The audience moved, drew its breath, crossed and uncrossed its knees,
spat its tobacco quids upon the floor, and craned its neck to see her
better, to hear more distinctly what she had to say. Every man in Jordan
County had been waiting for this news for three months.
"How did you get stock low in this county fifteen years ago?" she asked,
and waited.
"Please, Marm, we voted on it!" whimpered the same waggish voice.
"But before you voted, you got up a petition signed by three fourths of
the voting register of the county, didn't you? And then you submitted
the petition to the Ordinary of the county, who by the laws of this
state advertised the election to be held not sooner than thirty days.
And you got prohibition the same way! Twenty, fifteen years ago this was
the only way to close saloons and grogshops that were open at every
crossroad and on the streets of every town and village. We have a
state-wide temperance law now as the result of local option laws that
were enforced first until public sentiment against liquor was
sufficiently strong to control state legislation."
She paused, opened one palm, and brought her other fist down upon it
with a smack that could be heard to the back of the hall, as she
exclaimed:
"That, gentlemen, is the way we shall win suffrage for women in this
state. We shall get it first by _local option_ in this county! Other
counties will follow your illustrious example and get it the same way,
until the boundaries of these counties shall touch, and the experiment
is no longer an experiment but an assured success!"
The women cheered. They made as much noise as they could, they waved
their handkerchiefs, and emitted little feminine chirrups. But the men
sat silent, staring in amazement at the little fat old lady who was
smiling at them like a gratified mother.
"Now I have told you, and all you have to do at present is to sign that
petition," she went on very pleasantly. "We have already secured to-day
and yesterday the names of many of the leading citizens of Jordantown.
And you will find just outside the doors of this hall two gentlemen whom
you all know very well, Mr. Stark Coleman and Mr. Martin Acres. Each of
them has a copy of the petition to be signed, and enough extra sheets of
paper for every man here to sign his name.
"Now," she concluded, "we will close this meeting by singing the
national hymn, not only because this day commemorates the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, but because, for all years to come, we
shall look back upon this day as the one upon which the men of this
county signed the petition which calls for liberty, rights, and justice
for women!"
The twenty-five women at the back of the stage came forward and gathered
about her.
"My Country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty----"
they sang, their voices rising high and keen, unaccompanied by a single
bass note. The women in the audience joined in. Colonel Adams, who had
slept peacefully since his own masterly effort to protect the ladies,
started now, sat up, saw the ecstatic faces of these women, arose,
stumbled off the stage. He was satisfied. The dear creatures were
singing! Nothing more becoming to women than song! Meanwhile, the men
filed out bustling, and whispering, with Acres and Coleman heading the
petition. That put a different face on the situation. One was the
president of the bank and the other was the leading merchant of the
county. If _they_ favoured the thing, far be it from the others to
oppose it--at least not the petition.
"Signing this here thing ain't votin' for women. We don't have to go to
the polls on election day!"
This whisper went the rounds as they stood in line, looking curious,
grinning suspiciously at Coleman and Acres, who had in fact stationed
themselves on either side of the door, at little writing stands upon
which the petition lay spread, with an ever-increasing list of names
beneath as one man after another "put his fist to it," chaffing one
another with grievous comments as they did so. And most of them secretly
determined that this was the last they would have to do with the
iniquitous thing.
But they were sadly mistaken. From opposing suffrage, many of the
leading men were now pushing the petition. Coleman, Acres, and Bob
Sasnett toured the county in their automobiles to secure signatures.
They literally took the movement out of the hands of the Co-Citizens in
their efforts to hasten the election. There was a tremendous spreading
of the news of events going forward in Jordan County. The press of the
state published extracts from the _Signal_, with numerous comments,
later with serious prophecies of the future effects of this experiment
so gallantly undertaken by the men of Jordan County. Reporters were sent
down for interviews, which they got from Coleman and Acres, who calmly
assumed the glory and responsibility of bringing about the coming
election. For the first time in their lives they figured in the
headlines of city newspapers, with their pictures on the front page.
Susan Walton laughed at their vanity till her fat stomach shook like
jelly.
Bob Sasnett figured as the first candidate in Jordan County who would
run for office on the crinoline ticket. "Mr. Sasnett is extremely
optimistic. He feels sure that he will be elected by an overwhelming
majority of the crinoline vote. He is a very handsome young man," was
the comment beneath his picture in a great morning daily.
The necessary number of signatures to the petition having been secured
at last, the election was duly advertised for the 16th of September.
The women were hopeful, but they were by no means sure of success. The
Foundation did not hold mortgages on all the farms by any means, neither
were all the farmers implicated in the Prim papers. The large majority
of them was still composed of free men of blameless characters, and with
reputations for stubbornness that were alarming. Still, public sentiment
was undoubtedly overwhelming in favour of suffrage now, and the county
women held frequent secret League meetings at which they discussed
plans, the great question being to get their husbands to the polls at
all.
* * * * *
The 16th of September dawned upon Jordan County like an irritable old
woman with a shawl over her shoulders and a broom in her hands. The sun
rose clear, but there was a hint of frost in the air and the east wind
was blowing. Ironweeds and goldenrods upon the hills bent low before it.
The cotton fields looked dishevelled with white locks flying. The
cornstalks, stripped long since of fodder, stood with down-hanging ears
like rows of soldiers at attention with knapsacks upon their lean backs.
It was as if, overnight, Nature had suddenly got in a hurry to shift her
scenes and change the season.
Whether it was the brushing, brisk, windy character of the day, or the
mood of the women owing to other circumstances, no one will ever know,
but it is already a matter of history that upon this day every woman
belonging to the Women's Co-Citizens' League had a fit of housecleaning.
They cooked breakfasts for their respective families in a frenzy,
scolding shrilly. They boxed the ears of their little boys, drove their
little girls to the churning without mercy, clattered the breakfast
dishes furiously, and in various ways indicated to their lords and
masters that the day belonged to them, to them exclusively, and that no
man could hope to remain in peace within range of their mops and brooms
till every vestige of summer dust and dirt was removed, every feather
bed sunned till it swelled tick tight, every quilt aired, every rug
beaten, every floor scoured, and they themselves relaxed, exhausted,
purified, and satisfied at the end of the day.
I say only their Maker could have told what inspired the women of
Jordan County to undertake these arduous labours upon this particular
day. Women have instincts to which the east wind appeals strongly. It
excites their neuralgic energies. On the other hand, it was a curious
circumstance, discovered afterward by an exchange of confidence between
the desperate male victims, that this cleaning rage was carried on
almost exclusively by the members of the Women's Co-Citizens' League in
each of the voting districts of the county.
When a mere society woman desires for any reason to avenge herself upon
the man nearest to her in the relations of life, or to bring him to
terms, she may engage in a discreet flirtation with some other man. She
knows how to exile him from his home with a reception or a bridge party.
But when a good faithful wife makes up her virtuous mind to humble her
man and declare her own supremacy, she pins an ugly rag tight over her
head to keep the dust out of her hair, doubles her chin, draws her mouth
into a facial command, tucks up her skirts, moves the furniture out of
the living-room, dashes twelve gallons of hot suds over the floor, leaps
into it with an old stiff broom, and begins to sweep. At such a moment
the most timid, man-fearing woman becomes august. Her nature undergoes a
swift change. She is no longer herself, she belongs once more to the
matriarchal age when she carried man like a sack on her back and dumped
him where she pleased, when she pleased. The most tyrannical husband
immediately abrogates his authority when he sees the symptoms of this
frenzy developing in her. He takes to his heels and remains away until
she puts things in order and returns to her senses. This is the proof of
a queer ineradicable cowardice in every man, that the bravest and
hardiest of them who does not shrink from marching barefooted through
winter snows to meet the enemy in overwhelming numbers will fly before
the face of one woman who has made up her mind to wet his feet with
scouring water if he does not get out of the way.
Before nine o'clock in the morning the domestic entrails of Jordan
County were out of doors, piled in the sun, hanging upon the
clotheslines, flapping in the wind. The swish of wet brooms could be
heard in every house, mingled with the sharp voices of scolding women.
The air was filled with clouds of dust, the sound of sticks in muffled
strokes upon rugs and carpets like the drums of an invading army. These
were answered by the strumming of other sticks similarly employed in
other farmyards.
It was a fact, five hundred men had been rendered homeless for that day
at least. Nevertheless, they were holding out. An hour later only one
ballot had been cast at the polls in Possum Trot. The crowd thickened
outside the courthouse door. Men eyed each other quizzically, morosely,
some even avoided each other's questioning glances.
"Where's Jake Terry?" some one asked helplessly.
"Who, Terry?" answered Bill Long. "He was the first man here after the
polls opened. Said if it was the last ballot he'd ever cast he'd vote
against woman suffrage, went and put it in first for an example to the
rest of us!"
"Susan Walton ain't got a mortgage on his sawmill, or he wouldn't be so
gol dern frisky about votin' ag'in her!" growled Deal.
"What we going to do about this business, anyhow?" demanded one
nervously.
"We could get drunk," suggested another. "There's nothing that takes the
starch out of women and shows 'em their place quicker than that."
"But we can't stay drunk. We got to go home some time or other and have
it out with 'em after we are sober and penitent," put in still another
victim philosophically.
At this moment Tim Cates rode into the edge of the crowd, his mouth
stretched in a broad grin, and his goatee working like a white peg in
his chin.
"Boys," he shouted, rolling out of his saddle, "you'd as well give it up
and take your medicine. I met a man coming from the Sugar Valley just
now, and he 'lowed that out of a hundred and fifty votes down there this
morning there wan't but three cast ag'in suffrage for women, and one of
them was challenged. Susan Walton's got a man stationed at every
precinct, with a list of the names of the men in that district that
ain't registered nor paid their poll tax, ready to drop 'em if they try
to vote!"
"Tim, step up to the store and telephone to Dry Pond and Calico Valley
and see how the election is going."
Cates stepped briskly. He was one of these meddlesome persons who would
sell his birthright to gratify his curiosity. Presently he returned,
cupped his hands over his mouth, and trumpeted the news.
"Dry Pond, forty-two ballots cast, forty-two for suffrage, nary one
anti!" This joke was greeted with a groan.
"Calico Valley, seventy-four ballots cast, sixty-eight for suffrage, six
anti-suffrage! Fellow at Dry Pond says the women are beating their
feather beds for miles around, and the men air scared to death. He
says----"
A tall, well-dressed man, past fifty years of age, joined the group.
This was John Fairfield, the only gentleman farmer in the community, and
one of the few men whose wife was not implicated in the Woman's
Movement. She was an invalid, nearly blind. Fairfield had been the
understudy of Prim in controlling the political affairs of the
community. He was very popular.
"Mr. Fairfield, how are you going to vote?" some one yelled.
"Yes, tell us what you're going to do!"
"A speech. Give us a speech!" came from a dozen husky throats.
"'We air po' wanderin' sheep to-day, away on the mountains wild and
bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our
tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden
us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?"
snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up
with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his hat and ascended
the steps.
"Gentlemen," he began, "you know me."
"Yes," sobbed the wag, "we know you and we know ourselves, unfortunate
creatures that we air--an' we thought we knowed the women in this
county. We've dandled some of 'em on our knees. We've drawed 'em in
times past to our unworthy bosoms--but now all is changed. We've lost
'em! Where, oh, where----"
"Shet up, you darn fool! and let us hear what he has to say."
The "darn fool" laid his head in the dust, and gave himself up wholly to
his grief.
"I was about to say," Fairfield began again, "that you know me----"
"Yes!"
"Shet up!"
"--and you know I have always stood for what was right among you----"
"Always! Give me five dollars for my vote last 'lection, ginerous man!"
Fairfield lifted his voice and hastened to drown these revelations of
his generosity.
"I believe in woman! She has been the 'pillow' of cloud by day and fire
by night----"
"Candle in the window, John, don't forget that!"
"--that guides us through the wilderness of the world, and now she has
become the bright new star of our better destinies! We must follow
her----"
"Dangerous to monkey with female stars!"
"--No man ever loses his way who trusts such women as we have among us."
"Sampson, oh, Sampson, listen to that!" cried the voice at his feet.
"For thirty years I have served one woman faithfully. I owe everything I
am and everything I have to this service."
Every man present had a vision of the little, frail, white-haired woman
who lay in his house helpless and blind. Never before had he referred to
her, but they knew his devotion. He lifted himself in their regard by
this one sentence. There are moments when even the demagogue may show
the halo of a saint. Fairfield, henchman of Prim, never suspected it,
but this was the crowning hour of his life, the one moment when he stood
without fear and without reproach like a true knight.
"My advice to every citizen present is that he vote this day for the
women who have cast so many ballots for us in their prayers!" he
concluded, bowing to their cheers.
Immediately after there was a rush for the polls.
In Jordantown the day passed quietly. The women were in strict
seclusion. All the "prominent citizens" were working earnestly at the
polls for the cause of suffrage. At last the hour arrived for counting
the ballots. The town had gone overwhelmingly for suffrage for women,
but the returns were slow in coming from the country precincts, and
great anxiety was felt about the issues there. The rumour was current
that the farmers were determined not to vote at all.
About seven o'clock some one came swiftly down the courthouse steps, and
rushed across to the National Bank Building. In five minutes the square
was in an uproar. Men shouted to men: "We've put 'em in! We've put the
women in!"
Stark Coleman snatched up the 'phone on his desk.
"Agatha, my dear, it's glorious news! Thank God, we've won by a majority
of 633! You are now a voter in Jordan County!"
He hung up the receiver and ran out to Acres's store. At the same moment
Sam Briggs, who was now a diligent clerk in Judge Regis's outer office,
thrust the door open and shouted:
"They're in, Judge, by a good 633 majority!"
"All right, Briggs! finish that list of election expenses. We want to
publish it in the _Signal_ to-morrow!" he said quietly, as he arose and
put on his hat. "I'll go over and tell Mrs. Walton. Think I've earned
that privilege, anyhow!" he added, smiling.
"You did it!" exclaimed Briggs, "you worked the whole thing and put it
across!"
"No, that speech she made in July did it," he said.
"It was a jo-darter all right, that speech!" laughed Briggs to himself
as he went back to his desk.
On his way to Mrs. Walton's residence, the Judge passed two men.
"Bill," one of them was saying to the other, "we can't never get rid of
our wives any more, nowhere, not even when we attend a political
convention. Apt as not my wife will be my alternate!"
"Apt as not, you'll be hers, you damn fool!" he retorted.
As the Judge came up on the steps Mrs. Walton appeared in the door. At
the sight of him there she threw up her hands and cried:
"Don't tell me we are defeated, John Regis, I can't bear it!"
"Susan, you may now run for sheriff of this county, there are enough
more women than men in it to elect you. And you've got 'em in your
pocket!" he concluded, laughing as he seized her hands.
"Oh!" she sobbed, sinking down into a chair. "I thought this day would
never end. Such suspense!"
"Showed the white feather, too, didn't you? I called at your office
early in the afternoon and you were not there," he teased.
"I couldn't stand it. I felt that if we should be defeated, I must hear
the news in my own house--in reach of my bed!" she sobbed, half
laughing.
"If I was twenty years younger, Susan, I'd ask you to marry me this
night by way of celebrating our victory," he said, looking down at her.
"If I was twenty years younger there'd be no such victory to celebrate,
John," she replied, "so you wouldn't have asked me!"
"You should see Coleman and Acres. They are taking all the credit of the
election, strutting like fighting cocks on the square!"
"Let them have it. I'd rather the world should think the men gave us the
ballot willingly, and that it should never be known that we beat them
out of it," she said, heaving a sigh of relief.
* * * * *
A young man and a young woman were seated behind the vine on the veranda
three doors down the avenue. His arm was about her waist, her head upon
his shoulder. The moon was doing what she could to cover them with the
mottled shadows of leaves.
"Could you manage it in two weeks, dear? I want you for my wife before I
begin my own campaign! We'd make a honeymoon of it then, canvassing it
together!" he pleaded softly.
"I'll marry you, Bob, but not for such a honeymoon as that! Oh, I'm sick
and tired of politics. I never want to hear the word again. I'll just
barely vote for you, that's all!" she sighed.
"Upon my word," he laughed, drawing her closer and kissing her. "I
thought you'd be keen for the canvass."
[Illustration: "'_Bob, I'll make a confession to you. It's been horrid,
from first to last. When we are married I want to sit at home and darn
your socks--you do wear holes in them, don't you?_'"]
"Bob!" she said, sitting up and looking at him solemnly, "I'll make a
confession to you, now it's over and we have won; it's been horrid, from
first to last. When we are married I want to sit at home and darn your
socks--you do wear holes in them, don't you?" She laughed hysterically.
"I believe it would relieve some outraged instinct in me if I could iron
your shirts! Isn't it awful! I _crave_ to do just the woman things--to
serve you and father. I feel as if nothing else will ever naturalize me
again as a woman!"
After an ineffable pause, during which her lover had laid a laughing
tribute upon her lips and brow, she added:
"Poor father, I wonder where he is?"
"Saw him going down the avenue as I came up, with an enormous bunch of
flowers in his hand," Bob told her.
"Poor father" was, in fact, approaching Mrs. Sasnett at that moment, who
was seated in mournful but resplendent grandeur upon a rustic bench
beneath the trees in her yard.
She was indignant at the day's doings. She had been indignant for
months, but she thanked God that she was still a lady, and she was
determined to remain one, to which end she had contributed that day
enough to make up for the deficit in the women's missionary collections
of her church. And she had dressed herself in purple and fine linen by
way of making out that she was a lady and nothing but a lady.
"Colonel Adams!" she exclaimed softly, as the Colonel approached.
"Madam, the sight of you is grateful after what I've been through this
day!" he said, kissing her hand, and depositing the flowers upon the
ground at her feet.
"Oh! Colonel, no one can have had more sympathy with you than I have
felt during these trying months," she sighed.
"I have felt it," he returned, parting his coat tails and seating
himself beside her.
"No one could have sympathized with you so keenly in your sorrow," she
murmured.
"I divined as much. I have suffered!"
"I know!" she breathed.
"My one pleasure has been the offering I have placed upon your doorstep
each evening," he sighed.
"So the flowers were from you, then?" she said, gazing at the bouquet so
significantly laid now at her feet.
"I trusted your woman's intuition to know that," he answered, with a
shade of offended dignity.
"I suspected, of course, but how could I know? You never confessed."
"Who else in this shameless town would have the sense, the feeling, to
approach a lady with flowers--they give 'em the ballot instead!"
"Don't speak of it!" she implored, lifting her hand tragically as if to
ward off a blow.
"But I _must_ speak of it, Lula," he exclaimed, seizing the despairing
hand. "As much as I hate to mention a matter so indelicate, I must,
because it concerns us." They looked at each other like two old doves.
"How should it matter to us?" she asked sadly.
"Because if we do not unite against this awful situation, we--well, we
are lost!"
She sighed, as if she saw no hope anywhere in the moonlight.
"Will you marry me, Lula?"
"Oh! Colonel Adams----"
"Under ordinary circumstances I'd never dare hope for such a boon. I'm
unworthy of you. No man can be--but consider what will happen if you
refuse?"
"What will happen?" she exclaimed.
"You must pass the remainder of your days, the sweetest, most beautiful
years of a woman's life, in intimate daily contact with a suffragist,
with a young woman who votes like a man!"
"God help me! What do you mean?" she cried in genuine alarm.
"Bob's going to marry Selah! that's what I mean. You'll have to live
with them. And if you don't marry me, I'll have to live with them!"
THE END