At the end of a week Honora showed a decided change for the better. The
horror had gone out of her face; she ate without persuasion; she slept
briefly but often. The conclusion of a fortnight saw her still sad, but
beyond immediate danger of melancholy. She began to assume some slight
responsibility toward the children, and she loved to have them playing
about her, although she soon wearied of them.
Kate had decided not to go back to Chicago until her return from
California. She was to speak to the Federation of Women's Clubs which
met at Los Angeles, and she proposed taking Honora with her. Honora was
not averse if Kate and Karl thought it best for her. The babies were to
remain safe at home.
"I wouldn't dare experiment with babies," said Kate. "At least, not with
other people's."
"You surely wouldn't experiment with your own, ma'am!" cried the
privileged Mrs. Hays.
"Oh, I might," Kate insisted. "If I had babies of my own, I'd like them
to be hard, brown little savages--the sort you could put on donkey-back
or camel-back and take anywhere."
Mrs. Hays shook her head at the idea of camels. It hardly sounded
Christian, and certainly it in no way met her notion of the need
of infants.
"Mrs. Browning writes about taking her baby to a mountain-top not far
from the stars," Kate went on. "They rode donkey-back, I believe.
Personally, however, I should prefer the camel. For one thing, you could
get more babies on his back."
Mrs. Hays threw a glance at her mistress as if to say: "Is it proper for
a young woman to talk like this?"
The young woman in question said many things which, according to the
always discreet and sensible Mrs. Hays, were hardly to be commended.
There was, for example, the evening she had stood in the westward end of
the veranda and called:--
"Archangels! Come quick and see them!"
The summons was so stirring that they all ran,--even Honora, who was
just beginning to move about the house,--but Wander reached Kate's
side first.
"She's right, Honora," he announced. "It is archangels--a whole party of
them. Come, see!"
But it had been nothing save a sunset rather brighter than usual, with
wing-like radiations.
"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Hays confidentially to the cook.
"Shouldn't you think they'd burn up with all that flaming crimson on
them?" Kate cried. "And, oh, their golden hair! Or does that belong to
the Damosel? Probably she is leaning over the bar of heaven at
this minute."
In Mrs. Hays's estimation, the one good thing about all such talk was
that Mrs. Fulham seemed to like it. Sometimes she smiled; and she hung
upon the arm of her friend and looked at her as if wondering how one
could be so young and strong and gay. Mr. Wander, too, seemed never
tired of listening; and the way that letters trailed after this young
woman showed her that a number--quite an astonishingly large number--of
persons were pleased to whet their ideas on her. Clarinda Hays decided
that she would like to try it herself; so one morning when she sat on
the veranda watching the slumbers of the little girls in their hammocks,
and Miss Barrington sat near at hand fashioning a blouse for Honora's
journey, she ventured:--
"You're a suffragette, ain't you, Miss?"
"Why, yes," admitted Kate. "I suppose I am. I believe in suffrage for
women, at any rate."
"Well, what do you make of all them carryings-on over there in England,
ma'am? You don't approve of acid-throwing and window-breaking and
cutting men's faces with knives, do you?" She looked at Kate with an
almost poignant anxiety, her face twitching a little with her
excitement. "A decent woman couldn't put her stamp on that kind
o' thing."
"But the puzzling part of it all is, Mrs. Hays, that it appears to be
decent women who are doing it. Moreover, it's not an impulse with them
but a plan. That rather sets one thinking, doesn't it? You see, it's a
sort of revolution. Revolutions have got us almost everything we have
that is really worth while in the way of personal liberty; but I don't
suppose any of them seemed very 'decent' to the non-combatants who were
looking on. Then, too, you have to realize that women are very much
handicapped in conducting a fight."
"What have they got to fight against, I should like to know?" demanded
Mrs. Hays, dropping her sewing and grasping the arms of her chair in her
indignation.
"Well," said Kate, "I fancy we American women haven't much idea of all
that the Englishwomen are called upon to resent. I do know, though, that
an English husband of whatever station thinks that he is the commander,
and that he feels at liberty to address his wife as few American
husbands would think of doing. It's quite allowed them to beat their
wives if they are so minded. I hope that not many of them are minded to
do anything of the kind, but I feel very sure that women are 'kept in
their place' over there. So, as they've been hectored themselves,
they've taken up hectoring tactics in retaliation. They demand a share
in the government and the lawmaking. They want to have a say about the
schools and the courts of justice. If men were fighting for some new
form of liberty, we should think them heroic. Why should we think women
silly for doing the same thing?"
"It won't get them anywhere," affirmed Clarinda Hays. "It won't do for
them what the old way of behaving did for them, Miss. Now, who, I
should like to know, does a young fellow, dying off in foreign parts,
turn his thoughts to in his last moments? Why, to his good mother or his
nice sweetheart! You don't suppose that men are going to turn their
dying thoughts to any such screaming, kicking harridans as them
suffragettes over there in England, do you?"
Kate heard a chuckle beyond the door--the disrespectful chuckle, as she
took it, of the master of the house. It armed her for the fray.
"I don't think the militant women are doing these things to induce men
to feel tenderly toward them, Mrs. Hays. I don't believe they care just
now whether the men feel tenderly toward them or not. Women have been
low-voiced and sweet and docile for a good many centuries, but it hasn't
gained them the right to claim their own children, or to stand up beside
men and share their higher responsibilities and privileges. I don't like
the manner of warfare, myself. While I could die at the stake if it
would do any good, I couldn't break windows and throw acid. For one
thing, it doesn't seem to me quite logical, as the damage is inflicted
on the property of persons who have nothing to do with the case. But, of
course, I can't be sure that, after the fight is won, future generations
will not honor the women who forgot their personal preferences and who
made the fight in the only way they could."
"You're such a grand talker, Miss, that it's hard running opposite to
you, but I was brought up to think that a woman ought to be as near an
angel as she could be. I never answered my husband back, no matter what
he said to me, and I moved here and there to suit him. I was always
waiting for him at home, and when he got there I stood ready to do for
him in any way I could. We was happy together, Miss, and when he was
dying he said that I had been a good wife. Them words repaid me, Miss,
as having my own way never could."
Clarinda Hays had grown fervid. There were tears in her patient eyes,
and her face was frankly broken with emotion.