The Co-Citizens Part 20

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 a.s.sembled 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 b.u.t.toned 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 G.o.d, 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 shanct.i.ty 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 G.o.d! My G.o.d!

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 pa.s.sionate appeal upon their faces.

"It was men," she went on, "who divided women into three great cla.s.ses--virgins, wives, and prost.i.tutes, a purely physical cla.s.sification. You commanded chast.i.ty. 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 pa.s.sed sons sustain only a sentimental relation to their mothers. They are inspired by them merely as religion or poetry inspires. Your inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sumed a terrific responsibility. But they a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sing 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 t.i.tters 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 sc.r.a.ped 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.