Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

“ It spoke first in her vague wish that Howard had said he would rather talk to her than any "girl" he knew; and then it spoke in the wonder whether a man does like to be "asked."
"If he doesn't, it's just idiotic tradition. It belongs to the days of slavery!"
But how did the tradition grow up that a woman mustn't ask a man to marry her? She tried to remember something Arthur Weston once said about men being "born hunters." Her lip drooped, angrily; "Rot!" she said; "when it comes to love, a woman has as much at stake as a man. No, she has more at stake! She has the child. ”

“ It was not a personal ambition: there was no self-seeking in Fred Payton; she wanted to succeed because her success would show what women could do; show that a woman was as able as a man—as wise, as good ("better! better!" she told herself) ; show that a woman could rule, could achieve, could be "the head of the family"! The thing that was to be "in hers" was work to free women from the shackles of the old ideals, from content in sex slavery, with all its ignorances and futilities, its slackness of purpose and shameful timidities, that a man-made world had called "duties." ”

“ A puzzle of a thousand pieces is a darned sight more interesting than I am."
"You are a puzzle in one piece," he said.
"I'm not as much use to Mother as Father's old silk hat down in the hall; I never scared a burglar yet. I tell you what, Mother and I have about as much in common as—as Zip and that awful iron dog! Mother thinks she is terribly noble because she devotes herself to Mortimore. Mr. Weston, she enjoys devoting herself! She says she's doing her duty. I suppose she is, though I would call it instinct, not duty. Anyhow, there's nothing noble about it. It's just nature. ”

“ Since you were a girl, when you had to work because you were poor, you have never done a hand's turn to earn your living. Mother has never done anything. You are both parasites. Well, I am, too; but there's this difference between us: I am ashamed, and you are not. I am trying to do something for myself. But the only thing you two will do for yourselves will be to die." She looked at her speechless grandmother, appraisingly. "Yes, death will be a real thing to you, Grandmother. ”

“ Oh, I still call myself an anti, because the antis are, at least, harmless; but I really don't care much, one way or the other. No; the thing that troubles me isn't suffrage or non-suffrage; it's the fact that somehow women seem to be fighting Nature. That worries me. I know that Nature can be depended upon to spank them into common sense when she gets hold of them, but, unfortunately, men won't help Nature out. They don't like girls like Miss Payton—I mean, the young men don't. They don't like girls who are cleverer than they are; but no girl is cleverer than you! ”

“ The yard in front of the house was so shaded by ailanthus-trees that grass refused to grow there, and an iron dog, guarding the patch of bare earth, was spotted with mold.
The street was very quiet,—except when the barber's children squabbled shrilly, or Baker's livery-stable sent out a few funeral hacks, or when, from a barred window in the ell of the Payton house, there came a noisy laugh. And always, on the half-hour, the two mules went tinkling along, their neat little feet cupping down over the cobblestones, and their trace-chains swinging and sagging about their heels. ”

“ The bleary October dawn had whitened in the mist like a dead face, before they drew up at 15 Payton Street, and for the last ten miles they did not exchange a word. Fred was thinking, dazedly, of Flora; but every now and then would come the stab: "He refused me."
Howard was thinking only of Fred. "Stunning!" he was saying to himself. "She's not a girl! She's a man—no, I don't know any man who would have done what she did. I couldn't have, anyway. I take off my hat to courage like that!"
Not a girl? Fred, not a girl?... ”

“ Down-stairs, while he hunted for his hat and coat, he paused to draw a long breath and throw out his arms, as if he would stretch his cramped mind, as well as his muscles, stiffened by long relaxing among the cushions of the big arm-chair.
[Pg 26]
"Is there anything in this world duller than the pronunciamento of a dull woman!" he said to himself. On the street, for sheer relief of feeling the cool air against his face, instead of the warm stillness of Mrs. Payton's sitting-room, he did not hail the approaching car, but strolled aimlessly along the pavement, sticky with fog. ”

“ To Mortimore, first and foremost—she paused there, with a pang of annoyance at her mother's words: "I do not love him best!" she declared. She did her duty to Freddy, just as much as to Morty. When Fred had scarlet fever no mother could have been more devoted. She hadn't taken her clothes off for four days and nights! Her supreme dutifulness, however, a dutifulness of which she had always been acutely conscious, was in enduring Andrew's behavior. "Some women wouldn't have stood it," she thought, proudly. ”

“ It came to her that it was the business of women like herself—the "new" women, who are going to set Woman free!—it was their business to discard the absurdities, but keep the beauties and dignities; for beauty and dignity are "lures," too. "They attract. I suppose that is what Grandmother means by 'charm,'" she reflected; "she said I hadn't any." Her face suddenly scorched; to discover a temperamental deficiency made her wince; it was like discovering a physical blemish. She understood, now, what Arthur Weston meant when he "rowed" about her being in the apartment alone with Howard. ”

“ I don't know what the world's coming to, that girls know about such things!"
"Well, of course, girls are more intelligent than they used to be."
"If she's so intelligent, I'll give her a book on Bacon-Shakespeare that will exercise her brains,—and she can stop concerning herself with matters that decent women know nothing about. Thank Heaven, our Laura is as ignorant as a baby! Or, if Fred is so bent on reforming things, let her have a Sunday-school class," said Mr. Childs, puffing and scowling. "Look here, Mother, if you have any influence over her, try and get her to take young Maitland. ”

“ Howard, standing with his hands in his pockets, his back to the fire, had been telling Frederica that he was going in for conchology seriously. "I know you don't think shells are worth much," he ended, after giving her what he called a "spiel" as to why he was going and what he was going to do. "But to me conchology is like searching for buried treasure! I've been pawing round for a real job, and now I've got it. I don't have to earn money, so I can earn work! And I think research work means as much to the world as—as anything else. ”

“ Well, buy your old shells, if you want to!"
"I will," he said, grinning. "How's business?"
When she announced some small success, he said, wonderingly, "You are the limit!" And added what he thought of her pluck and her intelligence: "I never knew a woman like you!"
"All women are like me—when you let 'em out."
"No, they're not!" he contradicted, with admiring rudeness.
The rudeness pleased her, as, no doubt, the male cave-dweller's candor of fist or foot pleased the female cave-dweller. His praise and wonder were like wine to her. She wanted more of it. ”

“ She was plainly disappointed in him.
"'Course I believe in suffrage," he said, "but I hate to see a lot of ladies walking in the middle of the street."
"We're not 'ladies'; we're women."
"You're a lady, and you can't escape it. And I'd hate to see Laura do it," he added.
Fred had not a mean fiber in her, and jealousy is all meanness; but, somehow, she felt a stab of something like pain. She did not connect it with Laura; it was only because he was indifferent to what was so important to her—and to Laura, too. ”

“ Laura turned an indignant face toward him: "Do you mean to tell me that Fred has only been flirting with you? I don't believe it! She's not that kind."
They were in the Childses' parlor in the yellow dusk of the autumn afternoon. Laura had given her caller two cups of tea with four lumps of sugar in each cup, and Howard, between innumerable little cakes, had been telling her again of Frederica's behavior that terrible night at the camp. It was at least the third time that she had heard the grim details, and each time she had shivered and wished he would stop. ”

“ She worked out new puzzles and dozed through stories in the magazines. She wrote twice a week dutiful letters to her mother, pausing occasionally to think of something to say or to listen, absently, to the swish of the watering-cart along the street; she liked the wet smell of the watered cobblestones mingling with the heavy odor of the blossoming ailanthus. There never seemed to be anything to tell Mrs. Holmes, except that she had been dreadfully busy, and that the "accommodating" waitress didn't keep her sink clean, and that the barber's children were very trying. ”

“ I want an occupation!"
"But it isn't necessary, Fred. And besides, there are home duties."
"In our house? Name 'em! Shall I make the soap, or wait on the table and put Flora out of a job? Where people have any money at all, 'home duties,' so far as girls are concerned, are played out. Machinery is the cuckoo that has pushed women out of the nest of domesticity. I made that up," she added, with frank vanity. "I haven't a blessed thing to do in my good home—I suppose you heard that I had a 'good home'? ”

“ Frederica frowned. "I don't see how you can bother with shells when the world is just buzzing with real things! For instance, Smith has come out for votes for women. Isn't that splendid?"
"He'd come out for votes for Judas Iscariot if it would put him in office," he said, sharply; "and let me tell you, Fred, research work, in any department of science, helps the world, finally, a blamed-sight more than most of this hot air that the reformers turn on. It isn't so showy, but one single man like Pasteur is of more permanent value than all the Smiths in our very corrupt legislature, boiled down!" ”

“ Sometimes," she said, with sudden sweet gaiety, "sometimes I think it's better than what Howard and Laura have!"
"No, it isn't," he said, sadly.
"I wonder," she pondered, "if I could have been ... like Laura? She hasn't a thought except for the baby and Howard. They are the center of Life to her;—which is all right, I suppose. But they are its circumference, too; which seems to me dreadfully cramping. I never could be like that."
He smiled, in spite of himself. "Nature is a pretty big thing, Fred; when you hold your own child in your arms—" he stopped short. ”

“ Let women ask for an intelligence qualification, and I'll be the biggest kind of a suff! But while they don't know any more about what the ballot can and can't do, than to gas about its raising woman's wages—oh, Lord!" he ended, hopelessly.
"Suffrage in itself is educating," Howard instructed him.
Leighton nodded. "It ought to be. But I can't see that it has perceptibly educated our fish-gutter. Still, you'd like to meet his wife at the polls?"
The suffragist hesitated: "When women get the vote, they'll change the election laws, and weed out the unfit." ”

“ Miss Eliza said.
Her cousin gave her a grateful look, but the other lady was very serious. "I thought her manner to her grandmother most unpleasant. Youth should respect Age—"
"Not unless Age deserves respect!" cried Miss Eliza, tossing her old head.
Arthur Weston had seen that same flash in Fred's eyes. ("How young she is!" he thought.) But her sister was plainly shocked.
"Oh, my dear Eliza!" she expostulated. "I am not drawn to Mrs. Holmes myself, but—"
"Neither is Fred drawn to her," Weston interrupted; "and she is so sincere that she shows her feelings. The rest of us don't. ”

“ After the first meeting she had turned it into a suffrage league, under the admiring eyes of ladies who whispered to each other that she was the Miss Payton—"you know? Society girl. Why, my husband says the Paytons could buy up every house in Lakeville and not know they'd put their hands in their pockets!" Fred had constant afternoon teas for these ladies—which would have been pleasanter if Flora, when waiting upon them, had been less haughty.
"She calls all our neighbors 'common people,'" Fred said.
Laura laughed: "Wait till we get the vote and we'll have equality, won't we, Fred?" ”

“ She saw that for a girl to love a man, unasked, is neither ignoble nor immodest. It is divine to love—always! Such love is a jewel, worn unseen above a girl's heart; to offer it, is to take it out of its white shelter and [Pg 239] fling it into hands that, not having sought it, will soon let it drop between indifferent fingers. She saw how this Race instinct has gradually—and oh, so painfully, oh, so foolishly, with failure, and agony, and tragic absurdities of convention, taught women the value of the reticence of modesty. ”