An American Suffragette Part 8

The spectacular manner in which the yellower part of the New York press had handled his first case after his return, brought him telephone calls and personal visits from many old patients, and a goodly number from new ones, not to mention freaky interviews with persons representing all sorts of cults. He was asked to address half a dozen different branches of the New Thought movement. The Society for the Propagation of Esoteric Buddhism asked him to tell them of his experiences in Hindoostan; "Purple Mother" and "Besant" Theosophists sent committees to wait on him, and various believers in Spiritist exploitations, astrologists, psychometrists and all sorts and conditions of dabblers in occultism pestered him with letters, circulars and requests of every conceivable nature.

It had been no part of his plan to return to his native land and set up a practice by which he should exploit to the world the results of his study. A real student, he knew very well that a lifetime would be all too short to devote to the as yet but little known field of mental therapeutics, and nothing could have been more foreign to his character, individually or professionally, than the fanfare of trumpets with which his return had been heralded. The principles which he wished to prove must be brought home to his profession if they were to be of great and lasting benefit, and the publicity and advertising which a man of a different calibre might have enjoyed, were annoying in the extreme to Earl. He was still a young man, and modest withal, and he felt that nothing could be more detrimental with the men whose regard he wished to secure and hold, so he declined all invitations to speak, all requests for articles or interviews, and gave himself up to getting back into the harness. His patients, both old and new, took up more time than he could have hoped for, and before the middle of summer he found himself not only well launched in his profession, but with all that he could possibly find time to do, and work piling up ahead of him, so that he could only promise indefinitely when the Ramseys urged him to come down to their Newport place, and Leonora had to put up with fractions of Sundays until she and her mother left for Bar Harbor.

There were times when that young lady was by no means certain that she wished to marry a successful physician. "You wouldn't like me any better if I were unsuccessful?" he asked teasingly, but she came back to her point, and he had to explain gravely that the theories of the laboratory must be worked out in actual practice before they can be trans.m.u.ted into accepted facts.

"But you don't need the money," she argued, trying dimly to apply some of the principles which he was fond of expounding. It seemed rather hopeless, but with infinite patience he sought to make clear to her that any human being whose life is not to be useless and profitless must have some object to attain, some work to do which will develop his character. When she replied that he had character enough, and her only object in life was to be his wife, what more was there to say? Flattery at once so charming and so complete left him defenseless, and he kissed her and went away, trying not to ask himself whether a legal ceremony could ever make wedded souls of two mortals of such diverse views of life. And yet, she was so sweet, so sweet!

In spite of the many other demands upon his time, Dr. Earl saw his first patient very frequently. Mrs. Bell did not appear cramped for means, and provided everything that could add to her little daughter's comfort, including not a few luxuries, which Dr. Earl felt convinced were the gift of Miss Holland. If he had vaguely hoped that he might meet her at his patient's he was destined to disappointment. Once her car arrived just as he was leaving, and another time they pa.s.sed on the stairs. He told himself that it was better so, and yet when he took her hand, and felt the firm, strong fingers, well-knit and efficient, for no soft, yielding little five-and-a-half glove-wearer ever compa.s.sed Beethoven, he knew that hers was a nature that could answer to his own, and his hand tightened involuntarily. There was something in his look as he met the blue eyes on the step above that brought the warm blood to her face, and she swayed toward him almost imperceptibly, and then with a word of courteous greeting went on her way, for she knew that according to common report he was to marry Miss Kimball that fall. Her lip curled a little, for she remembered Leonora of old; she knew her pink-and-white prettiness and the few and simple enfoldments of her elementary little brain, just large enough to hold a few attractive near-ideas, a thorough comprehension of all the social conventionalities, and a fixed and stubborn conviction as to what was or was not "smart." "If she has a soul," Silvia said to herself with rather unusual heat, "no one could tell whether it is in a condition of arrested development, hopeless atrophy or complete ossification. As well seek diamonds in a common sandbank as inspiration or aspiration in its sawdusty recesses." Then she laughed, and said, "Cat!" softly, which was really most irrelevant.

The day that the cast was to be removed, Silvia appeared laden with good things that they might celebrate the occasion with due ceremony.

With infinite care and gentleness, Dr. Earl cut down through the cast, and took it off. The fracture was perfectly knit, but there was a slight swelling about the knee, and as Earl examined it Silvia saw him compress his lips in a hard, straight line. Without looking up, or changing his tone, he asked the child if she had had a fall since the cast had been changed. She answered readily that about a week before her crutch had slipped as she was coming indoors, and she had fallen, striking the injured leg against the stone step, and she winced as he touched the thin knee.

"It's too bad," he said, "but there will have to be another cast about this knee, and you must be more careful, little girl."

The tears came to her eyes, and her mother turned to him with an expression of anxiety. His cheerful face rea.s.sured her. "We'll hope it won't be for long," he said, "but there's no use taking chances. Has her health generally been good?" he asked Mrs. Bell.

"The diseases common to childhood went rather hard with her and she had considerable trouble with her neck and throat a few years ago," Mrs.

Bell replied.

He made an examination of the glands of her neck, but said no more.

In spite of many insistent calls elsewhere, Dr. Earl remained long enough to help lend an air of festivity to the small party, which Silvia presided over with infinite tact, and with a last admonition to Mrs.

Bell to keep the little girl in bed until he came again, and as quiet as possible, he took his departure, and Silvia went with him.

"Tell me what is the matter?" she said, with her usual directness, when they were out on the street.

"What makes you think anything is?" he parried.

"I beg your pardon," she said, a trifle coldly. "I should not have asked."

He turned to her and stopped, mute reproach in his eyes. "There isn't a shadow of doubt that tuberculosis has developed in that knee, and while I hope to arrest it, and perfect a cure in time, I am very anxious, nevertheless."

"But the break has united?" she asked.

"Oh, yes, and that goes to show that this condition is very recent, and mild, but with her antecedent history no one can tell what may happen,"

he said.

"Antecedent history?" Silvia said, rather puzzled. "I thought you did not know the family?"

"I didn't," he answered, "but you may remember that I looked very carefully at the bruises about the knee when I set the leg, and I asked Mrs. Bell some general questions but received no very definite replies until to-day, and what you heard indicates that the child has already had a slight attack of tuberculosis. I had counted on my treatment to overcome the weakening influences of confinement to bed and crutch for so long a time."

Silvia was silent, as if thinking out some plan, and said suddenly, "Then it will all resolve itself into a contest between health and disease, with a considerable handicap against the patient?"

"Yes," he said. "With plenty of good food and good air and the right kind of care, there is no reason why she should not win. And I intend that she shall," he concluded energetically.

CHAPTER XIII

AN ANTI-SUFFRAGE MEETING

Dr. Earl redoubled his attentions to Leonora, determined to give her no just cause for complaint. The doubts that had beset him disappeared, for no one could be more charming than Leonora, when she was permitted to follow her own bent. Her mother also showed her gratification at his devotion, and tried, with consummate tact, to wean him away from his evident partiality for the suffrage cause. She gave him the best of the tracts issued by the Anti-Suffrage Society; while he was waiting for his offices to be fitted up, she took him to lectures and teas and receptions where anti-suffrage sentiment abounded, and tried in various ways to convince him of the superior social status of the "Anti" women.

The culmination was reached, however, when he escorted her and Leonora to a meeting in a large theatre one afternoon. They were prominent figures in one of the boxes nearest the stage, and Silvia Holland and Carroll Renner, who were sitting well toward the rear of the parquet, had ample opportunity to watch the effect of the meeting upon him.

Frank Earl, who had come in directly afterward and taken a seat just back of them, leaned forward and talked while the crowd gathered. "Oh, don't mind him," he said, when Miss Renner asked if that were not his brother with the anti-suffrage leaders. "He can't help himself, but if he doesn't go away from here ready to enlist under Miss Holland's banner I miss my count. Even I should, were it not that I have seen the folly of it all on its native heath. Don't make faces at me, Carroll, or people will know you are a suffragette."

The theatre had been profusely decorated with flags, flowers and bunting, and mottoes were festooned along the walls, one of which was "G.o.d Bless Our Homes," and another, "Imbecile Children Will Be the Product of Imbecile Voting Women."

Dr. Earl was much impressed with the audience, which, nevertheless, seemed rather chilly and unresponsive. A dignity prevailed which either could not or dared not give way to any decided demonstration, in marked contradistinction to the enthusiasm which characterized the suffrage meetings he had witnessed.

In addition to the bunting and the mottoes, there were a number of large pictures, done in the style of the cartoonist. One of these showed a colonial dame at her spinning-wheel, with the words "An American Lady of Four Generations Ago" beneath it; beside it was the picture of a masculine-looking woman, in a harem skirt, standing on a box at a street corner, addressing other women similarly attired; this was called "The American Suffragette." Another picture showed a nurse caring for the sick and dying soldiers on one side, and on the other a suffragette charging the police; this picture was labeled "Before and After Taking."

The meeting opened with a spirited address by the president of the a.s.sociation, Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, who was welcomed with a brief rustle of well-bred applause, led by Frank Earl.

"Got to do it," he said, in answer to Carroll's reproachful look.

"You'll see; even Jack will catch on before the end of the meeting.

Always applaud these folks when they begin; maybe you can't when they quit."

Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss told of the enormous gains recently made by the "Antis" among the select people of the city, and pa.s.sed off the suffrage parade as merely a tatterdemalion host of the riff-raff of the city led by a few notoriety seekers.

"You see, Miss Holland," Frank whispered, "what a good thing it is that I came here; I never should have known that that parade wasn't one of the finest a.s.semblages of women in the world if I hadn't."

Silvia laughed in spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform went on piling up the indictment against her s.e.x, and showing how demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and n.o.bler politics would be without the influence of woman, and wound up with a glowing peroration on behalf of the women who were fighting to maintain the sanct.i.ty of the home and the elevation of the children.

Silvia gave an impatient e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. "How can you take it so quietly, Miss Renner?" she asked. "I confess it always stirs me up."

"It wouldn't if you had the ballot," said the smaller woman. "It's just amusing, or tiresome, according to how well it is done. You women are the worried and worrying Marthas; we are the Marys, who have chosen the better part that shall not be taken away; we know it can't be, and this is something like hearing people laboriously argue that the world is flat with the sun revolving around it."

After the opening speech there were brief addresses by Dr. David Dearson on the disastrous results to motherhood should women partic.i.p.ate in the active life of the nation; by the Reverend Jayson Yerkes on the Pauline doctrine of the subserviency of the truly feminine woman; by Mrs.

Workman Werther on the decadence of feminine charm among women aping men's interests in life, and Crawford Dorer, a labor leader, opposed the movement because the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The "Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave an angry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr.

Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures and the pitiful spectacle that voting women make of themselves, he galvanized the audience into a semblance of real life and interest.

Dr. Earl found the speeches entertaining if not enlightening, and after the second, gave himself up to the silent enjoyment of collating the arguments presented in juxtaposition. No sooner had one speaker convinced his hearers that women would precipitate anarchy by their radicalism than the next proved equally conclusively that an era of dilettantism and millinery shop legislation would be the inevitable result of woman suffrage; no sooner were they filled with the horror of the degradation of politics by the cla.s.s of women certain to partic.i.p.ate in it, than another speaker a.s.sured them that politics was already so vile that any woman would be hopelessly contaminated who had anything to do with the gangrenous growth, and yet another showed that women wouldn't vote anyhow. It was all he could do to control the muscles of his face when the Reverend Mr. Yerkes told them in one sentence of the dissension that would rend families and in the next that married women simply voted as their husbands dictated, and he could not repress a smile when the doctor and the professor made it clear that if woman is to reproduce the race she must not be expected to do anything else, only to have Mrs. Werther show how woman must be free to take part in the enn.o.bling activities of the world, philanthropy, charity, etc., if she is to "bring to motherhood that crown which is the glory of the race,"

and much more of the same sort. He heard the ancient argument about bullets and ballots, and in the same breath his attention was called to Semiramis conquering a.s.syria, the Amazons invading Asia, the triumph of Sappho in song, Aspasia in the salon, Deborah among the Judges of Israel, George Eliot in literature, and a host of others who had won distinction.

The audience was told that it was entirely proper to agitate, cajole, coax, beseech, threaten, bully and browbeat men into voting for candidates and measures desired by the women; anything that stopped short of blackmail and personal intimidation bore the hallmark of refined femininity, but to take two minutes to accomplish results for themselves by depositing a ballot on election day meant everlasting d.a.m.nation to all feminine traits! And Leonora patted her pretty little hands, and looked up to Earl for approval, feeling that at last he must see that Silvia and her cohorts were routed horse and foot.

When the attack upon Western women was well under way, and Mr. Rice, a dapper little chap, looking like a freshman from high school, was rolling out his arraignment of Denver women in particular as typical of the nethermost depths to which the voting female may descend, Carroll Renner wrote a few lines on a bit of paper, and gave it to one of the ushers, and a few minutes later she had the satisfaction of watching the portly Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss read it. When Mr. Rice had concluded his diatribe, the lady stated in dulcet tones that Mr. Frank Earl was said to be in the audience, and as he lived in Denver, and was known to have strong views on this question, there was an urgent request that he should come to the platform, that they might know from one who had long witnessed with regret the deteriorating effects of woman suffrage that nothing that they had heard was in any way exaggerated. She vouched for Earl as one whom she had known since his boyhood, a member of one of the most highly respected families in New York, and who had never failed to reply when she had needed statistics from the field of woman's dethronement.

There was a bustle and stir over the audience, and John Earl looked a good deal startled, while Leonora was openly delighted. An excellent speaker, and a trained debater, the occasion had no terrors for Frank Earl. In fact, he confessed to himself as he made his way to the platform, he had not had so much fun as he expected to enjoy in the next fifteen minutes for many a long day. He was introduced with many rather florid expressions, and began by stating his position calmly, unmistakably, as opposed to the extension of the franchise to women. He then made a few complimentary references to those ladies who n.o.bly put aside their own devotion to the home, the sphere they adorned so admirably, in order to save their misguided suffrage sisters from the evil effects of their mistaken zeal.

There were a good many suffragists and some suffragettes in that anti-suffrage meeting, and Frank saw that the chilly audience had at last thawed, melted, warmed up and was rapidly approaching the point where it might reasonably be expected to boil over.

"I am unalterably against the extension of the franchise to women," he repeated, and went on, "but my reasons for this opposition are concrete and practical rather than abstract and theoretical, and are based upon the experience I have gained from my residence in Colorado. I am also opposed to it because it is all too evident that the suffrage should be restricted rather than extended. The ballot should be the reward of intelligence, education, and a comprehension of the great political problems of the nation."